The cult of overwork that dominates tech came to the fore this past month, and Susan Fowler led the discussion:
This week’s Twitter debate reminded Susan Fowler, the former Uber engineer whose allegations of a toxic work culture kicked off an independent investigation, of The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism, the major work authored by German sociologist Max Weber. “There’s this concept of the ‘Protestant work ethic’ that’s intrinsically related to capitalism, the idea being that, to the Protestant, ‘hard work’ is a religious duty, a profession of faith and devotion,” she tells WIRED. “The harder you work, the better a Christian you are, the better chance you have of salvation.”
The ideology has become so powerful, it’s had a strong downstream influence on startups, the types of markets these companies develop, and even the way they advertise contract work to their potential labor supply. (A recent New Yorker article about the gig economy’s marketing style called Lyft “ghoulishly cheerful” for celebrating the fact that a driver worked through her last week of pregnancy.)
[…]
Fowler says the pressure manifests itself in two ways. Either management and founders tell employees they need to work long hours or they don’t belong. Or bosses don’t explicitly demand 10 to 14 hour workdays, “but employees who don’t work these hours are denied promotions or are seen as ‘not being cultural fits’ or ‘not being committed or passionate.’” Fowler has seen both examples in practice, including employees with families who “can ‘only work ten hours,’ and therefore aren’t ‘cut out’ for the industry.”
It “definitely limits the idea of a ‘someone who belongs in tech’ to the small section of the population that is young, has little to no responsibility, and honestly who doesn’t know any better,” Fowler says.
David Heinemeier Hanson (of Ruby on Rails fame) was another vocal detractor of the work-till-you-drop mentality, and the leading voice in support of overwork is Keith Rabois, a venture capitalist who may have incited this cascade of chatter with a single incendiary reply:
Totally false.
— Keith Rabois (@rabois)//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Isn’t it surprising that we know so little about ourselves and our society that we really don’t know which of the two strategies – working ‘harder’ (meaning longer hours) or working ‘smarter’ (meaning fewer hours, but more productively) – is better (meaning leading to both long-term success and well-being).
The Gospel of Hard Work, According to Silicon Valley | Natasha Tiku
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