More propaganda for working long hours coming from a VC. Surprise!
"""
You have to both pick the right problem and do the work. There aren’t many shortcuts. If you’re going to do something really important, you are very likely going to work both smart and hard. The biggest prizes are heavily competed for. This isn’t true in every field (there are great mathematicians who never spend that many hours a week working) but it is in most.
"""
"Work both hard and smart" is pretty much always code for "I want to exploit your work". It's bullshit.
Real productivity comes from working towards goals, yes, but then it comes from avoiding unnecessary work, not from working hard (https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/). There's no virtue in inherent effort. "Work hard" is a scam from people who are playing the numbers on your startup, where they have 10 other investments and they don't care if you burn out.
I appreciate your cynicism and can relate to your irritation, but I think Altman actually believes what he writes. So it's less "propaganda" and more preaching the community values of the SV culture back to the community itself. It may get tiresome after a while, but less so when you settle comfortably into your own work ethics.
On a related note, there is an essay "In praise of idleness" [1] by Bertrand Russell - he is one of the greatest minds, and his work gives excellent form to many of your thoughts. I think you will thoroughly enjoy it.
Funny, I wrote a blog post last night about the same thing but with a different outcome[1]. Instead of thinking of work smarter not harder, break it up into two problems: work harder and work smarter, then tackle each separately.
""" You have to both pick the right problem and do the work. There aren’t many shortcuts. If you’re going to do something really important, you are very likely going to work both smart and hard. The biggest prizes are heavily competed for. This isn’t true in every field (there are great mathematicians who never spend that many hours a week working) but it is in most. """
"Work both hard and smart" is pretty much always code for "I want to exploit your work". It's bullshit.
Real productivity comes from working towards goals, yes, but then it comes from avoiding unnecessary work, not from working hard (https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/). There's no virtue in inherent effort. "Work hard" is a scam from people who are playing the numbers on your startup, where they have 10 other investments and they don't care if you burn out.
Longer version: https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/09/18/when-startups-pay-le...