Rise and don't grind: a rant

I'm sure all of us have had a friend come back from Europe and comment about their work-life balance, saying "they work to live, rather than live to work". My experiences have been similar, learning from my whole family from Belgium and Spain, as well as the strangers I've had the fortune to turn into friends out there.

The root of the problem is the idea of constant growth. As soon as we reach a goal, our first thought is "what next?" without ever taking a second to breathe and appreciate the fruits of what we've accomplished. It's the culture of climbing to the top of a mountain, glancing at the view for a moment, then being ready to go.

Don't get me wrong - individual growth is a good thing. Improving at work, learning languages, getting fit, and practicing a sport are some of the purest paths to happiness. But past a certain point it becomes a sickness. It's when you can't crouch down and watch the ant colony for a bit on your walk. It's when you focus so much on learning the fundamentals of art that you don't doodle little anatomically-defunct critters for a day.

Progress on yourself is not linear. You'll improve at something, and then for a while you won't. It's vital to appreciate periods of stagnation. Those are the times in your life you can sit back and relax. They're not times to recharge so you can work hard later. They're times to be human. The hard work will come, it doesn't need to be your reason to exist and relax.

Many of my American peers will fill their schedule with work, gym, cooking, cleaning, aaaand oops, there goes the entire day. Meanwhile, a European will leave work for two or three hours to have a beer with a friend during the day. Once enough work gets done, they'll feel okay doing the necessary things slowly and peacefully because they actually got to enjoy their day. Since the American is so stuck in needing to grow their career, and their company is so stuck in needing to grow its revenue, there's just no place for creating happiness.

I'm sure all of us would love to have the more relaxed European schedule. The problem stems from the culture we're enveloped in - if we don't constantly grow, we'll get thrown out and left behind by the system.

In my experience mostly in young tech companies, awareness of this issue has been increasing. It shows itself as "burnout prevention". For example, coworkers will advise each other to take frequent breaks, go for walks, take their paid time off, etc (whether these things actually get done is another matter). Because - god forbid - if you don't do those things you'll burn out and your productivity will go way down! Enjoying the life you've been blessed with will prevent burnout, but that is not the only reason you should enjoy it!

It's insane to me that we can only encourage each other to be a human when it's framed by maintaining productivity. To grind is not to be human. In fact, it's the antithesis - work is a means to an end (working to live). Our fellow great apes have shockingly similar social dynamics to ourselves (something I can nerd out about forever). How many hours a day do you think a chimpanzee works? We should take breaks because we want a break, not out of fear of failing our quarterly goals. Bonobos don't care about quarterly goals.

This mindset doesn't just cause problems for people, but also for businesses. Of course, this doesn't apply to all companies, but generally business will desire to always grow -- revenue, headcount, influence, etc.

At the top level, this causes the kinds of problems we're used to seeing in the news. A big tech company wants to increase its market cap, so of course, why not lay off 12% of their employees and freeze promotions for the rest? The American desire to grow manifests in trying to maximize shareholder profits, which has proven to be the root of quite a few global disasters - like just recently the patterns of negligence at Boeing.

Human greed is one of our most base traits that we'll never escape, and it certainly isn't exclusive to America's culture. But while greed should be acknowledged, accounted for, and shamed, here it is celebrated and rewarded. A CEO who employs thousands and lives a lifestyle wanting nothing will still sacrifice the health of the planet they live on to turn an extra 1% profit. And, at the end of the day, they'll put that on their resume and go to sleep guilt-free.

Alternatively, that CEO could be content with what they already have and only work to maintain it. Don Vultaggio, a co-founder of Arizona (the iced tea), famously said:

“We’re successful. We’re debt-free. We own everything. Why? Why have people who are having a hard time paying their rent have to pay more for our drink?” he told Sellers. “Maybe it’s my little way to give back."

He's a rare example of understanding that growth has no place in society when building community and demonstrating altruism is being sacrificed for the sake of marginal gains.

At a smaller scale, I'm sure we've all used some piece of software that released a redesign strictly worse than its original. Decisions like these are made on products that are already complete and fine. Not all products need to continue to grow! It's an issue specific to the tech industry, where there's very little cost to iterate on a product. We get lost in that and continue to iterate so much that we start to make the product worse.

A clear example of this is in the gaming industry. Companies used to create finished products that were incredible in their own rights, despite flaws. Now, those are rarely found, and instead we get situations like Blizzard over-monetizing their IP Overwatch, resulting in an extremely negative perception of what was once a great product. The company took revenue growth over having a good product.

It's a hard cycle to break, because many of these small-to-mid sized companies are in an arms race with their competitors. They all rush to release new features to get a leg up until suddenly they release something like this:

I think that post speaks for itself as an example of unnecessary "growth". Reputation aside, that growth cost engineers, product managers, customer support reps, sales people, and others days or weeks of their effort.

A foreign concept as it is, I think we need to learn to be okay with letting a finished product be finished. So many software products would do just fine with a small maintenance team keeping it great before it inevitably gets ruined by profit-squeezing every corner of it.

Growth has diminishing returns, and something must always be sacrificed to grow. As a society, we need to learn that there exists a point where growth is no longer worth the sacrifice. We have one of the strongest economies and business ecosystems in the world, partially thanks to our innate desire to grow. Yet, despite our wealth, we're one of the most depressed countries in the world*. Which of these facts is more important to us?