The "success isn't based on hard work" crowd
What happens when people start believing success is predetermined?
It’s trendy to argue that hard work doesn’t pay off. People increasingly believe it.
If you compare this to a similar survey from 2012, you’ll see that there has been a substantial shift in the US (60% believe hard work leads to success in 2019 compared to 77% in 2012):
The idea that hard work doesn’t lead to success is a popular article topic in the media. As evidence that success is based mostly on luck and circumstances, many articles point to surveys, wealth disparity or reference dodgy “research”.
“Research”
Consider this paper that argues that it is true that some degree of talent is necessary to be successful in life, almost never the most talented people reach the highest peaks of success, being overtaken by mediocre but sensibly luckier individuals.
Did the researchers create some way to measure talent, perform a decades long longitudinal study and track the outcomes of hundreds of randomly selected people around the world? No. They created a model, assumed some distributions of talent and its geo-location, ran it and saw how its outcomes differed from the real world. This isn’t science and this doesn’t prove anything. It does make a nice headline though: Three Italian professors created a model to track the success of 1,000 individuals over a series of lucky and unlucky events spanning 40-year careers.
Don’t bother applying to that internship, the CEO job is taken
Other arguments look at the top of tier of a competitive industry. Did you know that no amount of hard work will amount to an NBA career if you’re under 6 feet tall? Did you know that you’re incredibly unlikely to become the richest person in the world if you’re born in a slum? Might as well throw in the towel, the game is rigged.
Finally, people arguing hard work doesn’t lead to success write about upward mobility among groups, but ignore cultural differences. For instance, one group may act as though hard work will lead to success while the other group does not.
Success for me, not for thee
The most infuriating part is that people writing these articles don’t believe it themselves. Take for instance this Linked In post that declares “Success is really more Luck than Hard Work”. The author of the article has three professional degrees (bachelors in electrical engineering, masters in economics and political science and an MBA). He works as head of M&A at a company that has 125,000 employees. Do you think he believes that hard work doesn’t amount to success? Does he state this when interviewing for a job or hiring candidates? Does he teach this to his children?
Saying “I was lucky” is a sort of penance for those who have had success. It’s meant as a humbling statement used to almost excuse their immense success as an accident of fortune. And in the cases of extreme outcomes, luck certainly plays a large role. But it becomes a problem when people start to believe hard work is pointless. And what happens when we raise a generation of children that don’t believe in the virtue of hard work? Much of the stress of being a young person is lack of purpose. Hard work in school and athletics in hopes of a better life is all many students have. It’s cruel to take that hope away from them.
Whenever I hear that success isn’t based on hard work, it’s almost always coming from a place of privilege. Sometimes people point out someone performing a grueling menial job and wonder why he isn’t “successful” despite his hard work. But they never stop to ask, what would his life be like if he stopped working hard? Would what little “success” he has now carry over, since you know, hard work won’t lead to success?
The “success is random” article I would like to read
The “success isn't based on hard work” article I would like to read is one written by a mother or father of a teenage child. It would talk about how they discourage their child from any hard work, knowing that it’s unlikely to be rewarded. They would state that his life is predetermined by circumstances of his birth, so he can continue living in their basement and enjoying himself with television and video games. He could help manage their money and randomly select start-ups to invest in with no due diligence or insight, since you know, it’s all random. Their son should look to minimize his own personal suffering and discomfort.
Let’s stop the BS posturing and accept that the only way to lead a meaningful and successful life is hard work. It’s rewarding in its own right, at least it has been for me. In places like the US, the bar is low for most. The average math proficiency is 46% in the US high schools. That means if you’re merely proficient in math, you’re ahead of the curve.
That has been my experience throughout my life. Most of living the good life is doing what you’re supposed to do. Show up on time, be honest, be faithful to your partner, do what you say you’re going to do. The other part is don’t do things that you’re not supposed to do. Don’t eat or drink too much, stay away from addictive substances and dangerous activities, don’t hurt others.
Society stops functioning if people think that outcomes are predetermined at birth or random. Those that can least afford to think that way are those that are not born into an environment that sets them up for success.
I think the thing you are missing, and that many of the articles miss, is that hard work is necessary but not sufficient condition for great success. You need BOTH to achieve great success. The disillusionment felt in current society comes from increasing wealth disparity making it obvious that hard work alone is NOT enough. You either need to be incredibly lucky to cross the chasm of inequality, or you need the luck to be born into a position where you already don't need to.
It also doesn't help that what has constituted "hard work" to achieve "success" has also shifted over the decades.
It used to be that with a single income family with a job that you "worked hard at", i.e. 9-5 and coming home to your wife and kids, that you had enough money to be able to afford the mortgage on a house.
Now with a single income family earning minimum wage you are in poverty, and cannot afford an apartment, much less a house. Millennials are not purchasing homes and are delaying getting married and having kids because of it. College educated jobs now pay less than what adjusted minimum wage jobs used to pay. So now you need to work two jobs to get ahead and give up family life or sleep, or figure out a "side hustle" to make more than your salary.
The generational wealth gap is as large as it has ever been.
So no, "working hard" is no longer enough to be "successful" in the usual sense of the American Dream of owning your own home. You need to "get lucky" and be in the right place at the right time to cross that divide. The idea that hard work is not enough is a symptom of a larger systemic disease of wealth inequality in this country, not the cause of the larger disease.