A Parade of Wealthy CEO’s Spout the Hard Work Dogma

So…does it seem like a lot of the CEO’s or founders are pumping up the idea of working insane hours lately?

First it was Elon Musk who touted the Chinese “work ethic” of working from 9 am to 3 am in the morning, 6 days a week, something like that. CoPilot gave me the phrasing that I recall:

“They won’t just be burning the midnight oil, they will be burning the 3am oil, they won’t even leave the factory type of thing, whereas in America people are trying to avoid going to work at all.”

The Guardian, “Elon Musk praises Chinese workers for ‘burning the 3am oil’ – here’s what that really looks like”, Wilfred Chan, May 12, 2022

Then the next one I remember is some Australian guy saying that bosses need to inflict pain on the workers to make them see the light and work harder. Here’s my post on that sentiment with some links to the original article.

We have the Wayfair boss whose Christmas greeting was thus:

“Shah emailed Wayfair’s corporate employees in the thick of the holiday season. First he praised everyone’s effort in returning the online home-goods retailer to profit, then called on them to dig deeper.

“Working long hours, being responsive, blending work and life, is not anything to shy away from. There is not a lot of history of laziness being rewarded with success,””

The Wall Street Journal, “Wayfair’s CEO Wants Staff to Work Harder. Your Boss Probably Agrees.”, Vanessa Fuhrmans, January 1, 2024

And now we have Infosys co-founder:

“…he called on the nation’s youth to work long hours out of a sense of duty to the nation. He suggested the young “work twelve-hour days for the next 20 years, 50 years whatever it is.”

The Register, “Infosys co-founder doubles down on call for 70-hour work weeks”, Laura Dobberstein, January 15, 2024

Yes, hard work can get you somewhere but there is a large element of luck involved. There are a lot of people who work multiple jobs and still can’t get above the water. They are working hard but the effort is going nowhere.

We also have some billionaires who admit that they probably could have made a lot of money without all of that hard work. They admit that level of hard work was unnecessary. Bill Gates is the one that comes to mind when I think of billionaires admitting hard work was not the ingredient to success.

But that’s very rare.

You can’t be lazy but ruining your health is not the answer either. For some people, hard work is the path; for others, it is something else, maybe being in the right place at the right time. Each person appears to have a different path.

Unfortunately, when those wealthy bosses are telling their employees to work longer hours, I can’t help but think that the motive is to direct more money into their pockets. It’s not about their employees’ success but about their own wealth.