Doing the hustle
The gig economy can take a toll,
When Avery Francis thinks about the last three years of her life, she has plenty to celebrate.
The Toronto-based entrepreneur, after all, founded three successful companies — equitable hiring system developer Bloom, women’s workshop organizer Sunday Showers and tech education company Bridge School — in that timespan. But they have come with a cost. Francis often finds herself working until 3 a.m., and struggling to find time to keep up with friends she notices she is slowly drifting from. She jokes she’s packed on “the founder’s 15” due to eating out at meetings, late at night when she finally gets home and in her car as she commutes to the office.
“This is what it takes. I don’t think I could even run one of the businesses without having such strained hours,” she says. “There’s a lot to balance. A lot of sleepless nights and terrible sleeping patterns.”
Francis’s experience places her in a growing group of entrepreneurs, founders and workers feeling the emotional and physical toll of being employed by the tech and startup industries, where long hours, skipping occasions with family and friends and being available on weekends and evenings are the norm.
That culture has been perpetuated by a generation inundated with “hustle” culture — the fetishization of overworking yourself and prioritizing the office above all else. It often downplays the medical, emotional, physical and mental risks that such rigour comes with.
Tech companies ranging from heavyweights like Google, Facebook and Apple to startups haven’t helped matters. Their leaders live by the “move fast and break things” mantra, and often preach about staying hungry and “obsessing” over how their companies and products can be improved.
Take Tesla CEO Elon Musk as an example. There are easier places to work than his company, “but nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week,” he tweeted last year.
“A lot of founders and CEOs will write long stories of their journey to success and it will just be like I did 80 hours a week for like six years straight, and I lost all my friends and my marriage failed and all this stuff,” Francis says.
“They’re basically helping to perpetuate this whole concept that you have to hustle.”
Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey wakes up at 5 a.m., meditates twice daily, eats only one meal a day and walks eight kilometres to work — a trek he told Tools of Titans author Tim Ferris s he makes without checking emails or texting.
Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly wakes at 3:45 a.m., sifting through about 800 emails and hitting the gym, before making it to his desk.
“I don’t know how those people have the time to do that,” Francis says. “I don’t have time to meditate or go to the gym for two hours a day.”
Their offices — often with fully stocked kitchens, nap pods, showers, mini putt courses, foosball tables, gyms and lounges — don’t help matters either. They can send the message that “basically you’re going to live here,” she adds.
Stefan Kollenberg, at diversity and inclusion software company Crescendo, doesn’t completely agree. In some cases, he says, those amenities are meant to make employees’ lives easier and reward them, not keep them living at work. But he does believe hustle culture has a dangerous side because he encountered it in a previous job, when he was working roughly 12-hour days five or six days a week for four months. Eventually, he became less interested in the work and quit.
“Where it gets really toxic is when you’re not taking care of yourself and you’re working all these long hours,” he says.
“I wouldn’t agree it is toxic everywhere, but I think that when it’s not managed properly, it is toxic.”
His words echoed those of Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of social media platform Reddit and venture capital firm Initialized Capital, who recently opened up about how it triggered depression.
“This idea that unless you are suffering, grinding, working every hour of every day, you’re not working hard enough ... this is one of the most toxic, dangerous things in tech right now,” Ohanian said at Web Summit, a tech conferences. “It’s such bulls--t, such utter bulls--t. It has deleterious effects not just on your business, but on your well-being.”
Lekan Olawoye, the founder of skills-building organization Talent X and the Black Professionals in Tech Network, says the demands of the hustle culture can carry an extra need to be “on point” for workers who identify as minorities.
“For Black professionals in technology, you need to prove yourself beyond your work, but you also at times feel like you have to wear your identity constantly and ... represent your community on a constant basis, which is difficult,” he says.
He’s seen companies like Shopify and LinkedIn Canada put an emphasis on work-life balance, but says there are many more businesses that could follow suit.
Employees, he says, can also do small things, like turn off their phone when spending time with family or friends, so they are present.
Kollenberg, meanwhile, recommends keeping a journal to handle stress and build selfawareness. He has taken time away from work to get himself into a routine where he runs and eats healthy.
Francis deals with the demands of being a leader by trying to take a vacation almost every two months and using portions of the year that she works overseas to minimize her workload. Her passion for her companies and the fact that she’s always fulfilled by the work because she’s the founder keep her going.
“However, I’ve worked fulltime in environments before that totally had this hustle culture and it breaks you down. My concern is more so for employees,” she says. “Everything that I do, I’m getting something out of it, so it’s worth it.”
“Everything that I do, I’m getting something out of it, so it’s worth it.”
AVERY FRANCIS ENTREPRENEUR