You can grind. But do it FOR YOU. If you are going to put in 12 hours, be damn sure it benefits your mission.

''Givers have to set limits because takers never do.'''

The reward for good work... is more work.

I have a saying. "The reward for work is more work." That is literally how the corporate world works. They don't necessarily pay you more, but they'll definitely give you more work.

"Minimum wage, minimum effort."

Josh is wise beyond his years. After > 20 years in the industry, I can tell you he’s 100% correct.

Work hard, but never sacrifice your health. *_Health_* is the one thing that will be with you FOREVER

Overproducing is dangerous. Not only because you wont be compensated, but because you will raise the standards for yourself and others

hustle culture is out of control, we need "live life and be happy" culture

This isn’t just for devs, this is advice for all working people. Don’t make it easy for them to exploit you. Labor without wages has a name and it’s called slavery.

Worked at a data entry job where a guy wrote a script that would read in forms and autofill everything electronically. He'd do a week's worth of work in minutes then spend the rest of his time researching and learning other stuff for himself, and every now and then click submit to submit something so management thought he was still working. He knew he couldn't move too fast or they'd catch on he was scripting or too slow so they'd notice he wasn't working on work. It was great. Work smarter not harder.

I can’t help but work hard at every place I do. He’s right guys, you’re quite literally rewarded with more work. Don’t DO IT!

"Never be good at something you don't want to do" - one of my best supervisors ever

I think the worst thing is those people who jump up and volunteer to work extra hours for free, and make you look bad for not doing the same. If you want my time, you have to pay for it. I'm not a charity for your business!

We have a saying here in Germany. "Stell dich dumm, brachste nicht arbeiten." Pretend to be dumb, save yourself work.

My job has a zero tolerance policy for working after hours, which I’m so thankful for. If we don’t finish work in the day, it’s ok, and we can do it the next day.

I was that guy. Got my first good job and wanted to work hard. Quickly I realized for working hard my reward was only extra work with zero compensation. Society always tell you “work hard and you will go places” but it’s not true at all.

I've seen this happen to others at my internship and one of my coworkers always told me "Never over work yourself since they'll expect it all the time and you'll work yourself to death". Josh is right guys.

There is a joke doing the rounds - it goes like this: Always give 100% a work, 10% on Monday, 19% on Tuesday, 38% on Wednesday, 28% on thursday and 5% on friday. I used to think it was funny. After 28 years working in IT I actually think it's good advice and provides a nice home/work life balance.

"come at 9 and leave at 5" The Japanese office staff: *sweat furiously*

Holy shit, this is so real. Years later, I would go around the office and tell younger devs to go home and live life. When I burned out after four years, my supervisor had no sympathy.

I remember my first software engineering job in 1992. I worked until i passed out. I was so proud of myself of that job and what i was doing. I got laid off one year later.

His advice is true not only for the workplace, but for every human relationship! Set your boundaries / respect level early into the relationship and don't let anyone cross them!

TOTALLY AGREED. The minute you start helping for free, you end up being a free helper lifer!

I can testify. My job wasn't coding, but administration at a big insurance company. All I did all day was approve invoices. In the beginning I did about 300 a day (average employee did 50-100), and after a couple months it went down to 100 or even 80 or 50 a day. Boss noticed, *_talked_* to me about it, got fired a month later. *Never* doing that again. Just take it easy and be relaxed in the beginning. It's better to surprise them with your skills than to disappoint them with your empty tank.

So essentially think of yourself as CPU, work around 15-20%, but when something important is happening then turn it up to 70-80% and then back off. Never go 100% or you gonna overheat :P :D

Everyone, please take Josh's advice to heart. I wish I saw this video earlier, although maybe I wouldn't have listened. I grinded myself to bone in a course of almost 4 years. Afterwards, I fell apart both mentally and physically. I went through really bad and dark times and it almost cost me my life. Thankfully, I made it. Next month, I will be ready to return to work, once I find one. This time, I am not gonna take any crap and I am gonna put myself at first place, which is what I should have done from the beginning. Please, do the same!

"I've always subscribed to the idea that if you really want to impress your boss, you go in there and you do mediocre work, half-heartedly." -Jim Halpert

I learned this the hard way. For 4 years I worked my ass off on my first job. They sweet-talked me and said I was an idol to the company and offered me several raises. However, the moment I wanted to work regular 40 hours like everyone else, I'd get constantly called into review meetings asking "If I was okay, I seem unmotivated". I left that shitty place, got a new job earning double the salary, and working less. So yes, do minimal work necessary to keep everyone happy. Best advice ever man. Great content and KZfaq channel. You've got a new subscriber. P.S. You don't have an annoying voice lol.

Don't work hard, work smart. Nobody teaches this. You just learn it.

I work 4 hours per day, monday to friday. During those 4 hours my phone is in plane mode so my focus goes entirely to my job. I stand up every 25 minutes to rest my eyes for 1 minute, and every hour I stretch. Only when some client issues arise I work more. It has been a great balance and always finish my work in time without burnout.

this is why companies like people who dont have experience. because they know those people work hard.

"Ask not what you can do for your company, ask what your company can do for you"

Them: what do you do? Me: just enough to not get fired.

Having a solid work ethic just means you will get exploited nowadays.

This is so real. I was laid off for a year and a half and got a job and was so excited I got a job and they had tons of ot. I was working 80-100 hours a week because I wanted to work hard and get ot and also learned every thing and became the best at their job. Never got promoted for five years applying to many manager jobs while dumb people who don't do their job got promoted. If you make to much money for the company they will try to keep you at your position forever. Great advice Josh

I've done this advice for the entirety of my life and people still think I have amazing work ethic lol! 😂

My personal philosophy is that if you work too hard you will grow to hate what you are working on. Take the gym for example, most newbies go in and completely shred only to stop going after a week. Its better to take it easy at the beginning and build up as you go. If you dont feel it then workout easy and the next day you will feel better about it. This works well for personal projects but for a job its more complicated and I think you have summed that up nicely.

What I learned is you need an exit strategy planned asap. If you’ve got 3 months emergency funds in the bank and can quit any time, you have much more negotiating power. Some people in the comments seem to think you can just give your boss the finger and do simply what’s on the job description. That works only if you have backup. If you’re not sitting on a pile of money and you’re living paycheck to paycheck, you won’t have that negotiating power. They’ll just fire you or make your life so miserable you’ll be desperate to quit or you do whatever they want you to. So rule number one, always have a stockpile of money so you can take care of yourself should things hit the fan and keep your resume updated. Then you’ll have the negotiating power do do what you want. Seen both sides of this myself. Those with money in the bank and an updated resume just change to a better job. People without those get ground into the dirt by their employers.

Man this hits home. I always thought early on that working hard and doing extra work would seperate you from the crowd and lead to a promotion / raise. In fact it does the opposite. Why should they give a raise if you already do the work they require for free. I also saw others who did little work but got promotions simply because they asked for it. It is strange logic but a hard lesson learned. I have now even lost hours due to the pandemic while others who are lazy keep theirs. Time for a job change with my new approach. Wish me luck.

This is so true. I learned This when i was a assistant manager at a fast food restaurant, when I was 19. Did the whole grinding, cover everyone's shift, work crazy hard etc. Got fucked over of course. When I worked 2 jobs at once I changed my mindset. Boss at job A: "hey can you cover someones shift" Me: "oh well you know I am working a long shift at my other job that pays me more, sorry i really can't". Of course I'm actually off but they don't know that. On a super rare occasion ill come in and "save the day" just for fun. The Bosses think I'm super amazing for coming in despite me having 2 jobs. What I'm really doing is giving them the illusion that I actually give a fuck. Both of my Bosses don't realize they just gave me 4 days off right now. and they will NEVER KNOW lol

Big facts here. The standard you set when you first get a job will be extremely hard to change later.

It's not like Joshua is ahead of it's time. He lived, like many of us, many life changing experiences and learnt about the reality of the corporate world. He makes a difference by being open AND public about it. He's risking a lot. Much respect my friend, lots have seen it and lived it, few are public about it.

Sometimes you get "lucky" and get a manager/project lead that knows all this and you can be open about expectations and workload with him/her. There are huge skill differences in managers too.

As a professional software engineer, I expect to be paid for the amount of work not done 🙂

Story of my life. One thing to keep in mind: working hard does not mean working well. You just become tired and depressed if you push it to the limit, and then you try harder and do less. It's like running a marathon, you need to keep a steady pace.

What Josh has described is exactly how I have naturally worked all my professional life. You should see the looks on people's faces whenever I tell them that I value family and personal wellness more than a job (not the "wellness programs" companies force you to partake in THEIR way). It's almost as if they KNOW on a primal, instinctual level those things are way more important than bleeding yourself dry at work, but the wage slave inside of them is too afraid to say anything in response.

Bottom line every job you ever get is about expectations. A buddy at my first job ever taught me that when I asked him how he was able to come in late almost everyday and not get fired.

My motto: I work hard, to not work hard.

*Puts hard work on hold to watch a Joshua Fluke video about "Why you should stop working so hard. "

I totally agree with this. I remember several years ago, I negotiated two weeks vacation in August, it was October at the time. I got the salary and the two weeks vacation in writing. I worked hard, then 9 months rolled by. In July, I reminded my manager that I was taking two weeks vacation in August.They started to try to stop me from going on vacation and threatened to fire me. I went on vacation anyway. The day I came back from vacation our manager resigned and three members of my sales team resigned. I left a month later. I now run my own business. I will never rely on a corporate job again.

Health and well-being is everything FIRST. If you're dead or very sick, you cannot work. It is that simple. You can/will be replaced at the job. Eventually ppl will move on.

I usually only work at a 50-75% capacity depending on how interesting the task is. Backend work where I actually have to think about logic? 75%. Tedious front end shit like making form elements? 40-50%. That other 25% is spent reading unrelated shit and in the form of micro breaks. People who work 100% with no breaks are going to burn themselves out.

Thank you for showing us inexperienced devs the reality of corporate world! You're awesome

My first job was an hourly safety job 13 hr night shift. I worked 80 hrs a week overseeing 2000 people, scarified my health, and constantly work nonstop. After 2.5 years no raise, no promotion (got passed over twice), and increase job task. I quit and got another job with a 28 percent raise, and only work 45 hr with salary. Always work less and be prepared to job hop.

This guy is very honest. That exactly what I was doing in my first job, and I remember that I was really drained at the end of every day. Now, in my second job, I not giving 100% because they aren't paying the appropriate amount, and when I press to 40-50% the upper management feels like Wow you're doing great !

This month must have been the greatest plot twist in my life/career. I began with the mindset of getting the best job and just make money for a living to having the mindset of getting a job where I can learn more things and then actually progress in my career as an individual, not just with a company. Thank you Josh! much love.

When I worked as a line cook, I'd hustle hard every day. Slow season came around, and one day I ran out of work to do. So I told my chef..... His response: "Never say that again! You only know how to work fast, but now you need to work slow."

Absolute gold advise never bend over for any company always respect yourself and time and if they don't then look for another job that will respect your time.

Motto in life: be lazy and find which option is the most effective to do.

those impressions looks like our man has been through a lot of bs

Going through this problem now as I work for Amazon. As soon as I let off the gas for family time and took a vacation I got punished.

This was a pretty crucial concept that i missed. I was one of the top performers at my last job, got run down and burnt out, still out performed most people but got told i have dropped in performance and need to go back to how i was before.. because they expected that as a baseline

The first time I learnt this the hard way was in my local university where I took CS. This was during the start of the pandemic where institutions started to transition towards online learning. During that semester there were a lot of group work and final projects. Unluckily most of my assigned group mates on the classes I took flaked, leaving me to do all the projects alone. I had to work and study on average 19 hours a day for almost 4 months straight. At the end of it all I had to be hospitalized for overexerting myself. I had reported to the teaching assistants about this matter. Despite sparing no effort, they gave me a failing grade on one of my classes. There should be no way I failed after calculating my scores according to the syllabi. So, still in bed I protested to the teaching staff by phone. Gave proof that I did all my assignments. They told me to contact the administration. But the admins said there was nothing they could do about it because it was already past the deadline for scoring. Bullshit! How can the admins in charge of the database themselves not fix errors just because of a stupid rule! Yet they dare have the audacity to call themselves a "wOrlD cLaSS UniVeRsITy" that preaches honesty, truth and fairness! Their ranking isn't even above the 30th percentile of universities worldwide! Because I was marked as failing that class, I became ineligible to graduate with honors, all thanks to their incompetence. I swore never again to sacrifice my health for anything. It's not worth it. Just like companies, universities care about profit, and the more despicable ones like mine will do all they can to keep students in for longer.

I worked in the federal government if you complete your work you can pretty much do whatever you want because the boss does not want to find extra work because that will give him extra work on finding extra work. I want to go back to federal service since I finished university and do my 15 years and retire.

Why this channel is so underrated: comparing to other dev YT channels where they talk about unrealistic things and Josh come in here and gives actual practical advices no BS straight to the point.

Really really needed to hear this. Thank you Joshua. I experienced burnout from putting 100% for my first job (I felt extremely guilty because they hired me knowing that it’s my first job like you said and I didn’t even have the 2 years of experience that they put on the job posting and yet they gave me a chance). Right now I realized I am doing so much more than my fellow coworkers who have the same position as me, yet I’m getting paid the same or even less than some people. My company also has the tendency to guilt trip the employees into over time and without pay and I didn’t notice it as a wild red flag because I was just so happy to get a job after graduation. Really wish I had watched this video a little sooner! For all of you new employees out there, Joshua is so right. Do not put in 100%!! A lot of employers will just take advantage of you that way!!

It's fantastic how relevant this became with "quiet quitting"

Life; 8 hour work, 8 hour sleep, 8 hour frivolous thing. Work; 2 hour helping, 2 hour studying, 2 hour making things, and 2 hour idle. Based on my experience.

I started in my job right off after I finished my studies. One year later I'm (let's say) 3 times better/faster. Do I work 3 times faster? Hell, no. I work 2 times faster. My performance is better now working 6 hours than when I started working 8 hours, but I can "chill out" 2 hours a day doing tutorials, reading about code, etc and keep improving, but without pushing it to the limit every single day. And also, it benefits them that I keep growing.

The last job I had required mandatory overtime, even if you didn't have anything to do. I hated it, especially when the bosses could skip out on Saturdays but require us to work. I learned quickly to not rush and take my time with things. What really killed me is when I would take my time, I would constantly get in trouble for no reason. Even my coworkers asked why I had a target on my back.

It is 100% true. The last job I did this for I was working maintenance and I came in thinking I was hot shit. I would basically run the halls fast walking everywhere. I needed to go knock and stuff out left and right all day sweating And you know they would give me tons of compliments, but after about two months, it just felt like they were piling the work on trying to get the most out of me which makes a lot of sense. But they cross the line when they started pulling me in the office and telling me that things needed to get done faster and that there was no excuse as to why things weren’t getting done. And I eventually started to slow down because I couldn’t keep up the pace, and then they just were treating me even worse all the time, and always having morning meetings with me about how I could be more productive. And I eventually had to quit after about four months of pedal to the metal. These companies no matter where you work, big or small you come in that hard that’s what they’re going to expect they’re always looking for you to to squeeze as much work out of you as possible. It’s our job to work as the least amount as possible while making the most money.

Seems like a lot of people view setting good boundaries (which is often difficult and uncomfortable to do) as being "unethical".

I just started my job and I'm exactly doing these same things you are mentioning here e.g giving extra time, almost 12hours a day but i agreed upon 8h/day, burning my self out to the point I'm Unable to do any other thing when I'm home, trying so hard to prove myself... but now i know that I'm not gonna be that guy anymore , Damn u just opened my eyes! Thank you man 👍🙏

It's been 4 years but it's still relevant, thank you Joshua

I had a job where a person would do 3 hours overtime everyday and then complain about having to work so hard. After working there long enough I saw it was because management gave him harder projects because they knew he would sacrifice his livelihood to finish what was ever put in front of him. Meanwhile, people like me, who did the bare minimum, wouldn't do more when the boss gave us more. The boss would actually help us because he knew the extra workload wasn't going to get done otherwise. The guy I just described understood this but, after working himself to the bone for years, he was convinced if he started doing less he'd be fired. It was tragic to watch him running around frustrated, tired, and angry everyday. His reward? Earning about 25 cents more per hour.

Good advice. It's very mature for your age. It took me 7 years to realize all of that just because I loved what I did I put many years from 8:00 to 20:00 or if I've left at 17:00 I've took my laptop and worked from home until midnight. It didn't matter because as soon as the things started rolling out in a better way they would have thrown another thing to "make it challenging" but I was to young and naive to see it and I really loved what I was doing. In the end, when I have started feeling not very well I have finally realized that I've pushed myself much too hard.

In the startup I work at, I'm literally the only one who works their full 8 hours and thats it. They've been so used to working more than 8-9-10 hours a day that IM the one who feels bad for leaving at 5 or 510 and being the only one getting ready to leave =/

I can so relate to this. I worked so hard in the beginning that I had lot of back problems and sleepless nights. I just snapped and from one day started drawing my boundaries. Initially I was called me lot of time to office so that manager can get angry with me. i just told them to fire me if they think I am not doing the job. They didn't because I was doing a lot more in 8 hours than my peers who were working sleepless nights and going for office team building nonsense. I hope young people should value themselves more.

THIS !!! I'M OVERWORKED IN MY NEW JOB. OVERTIMED. I TRY TO SHOW THAT I'M WORTH IT. JUST BECAUSE I GOT THIS JOB DURING PANDEMIC. ALSO MY "MANAGERS" DON'T EVEN RESPECT ME. I REALLY SHOULD RESPECT MYSELF & MY TIME AND THEY SURE TF SHOULD TOO.

Josh, my man, ithink you are my lucky charm. The day i found your channel i got a call from a company for an interview, it went well and i had my first "technical interview" and yesterday, right after you motivational video, they called me to say they were hiring me. After FOUR FUCKING YEARS i finally get my first dev job. It can't be a councidence I'm finally gonna leave my mum's basement xD

It's really funny about the give you extra work bit, that's all my old works did. When I eventually told them to give me a raise they attempted to denegrade the work I did and didn't give me a raise. I immediately matched my co-workers output. Got asked what was wrong soon after. The nerve of management

Your content has been hitting very close to home lately. In my department, the work never slowed down the past year, and I've arguably done more than many groups of people from my department and others, with absolutely nothing to show for it. That's why I'm teaching myself an entirely new field to shift into as I see fit.

Very very good advise! My experience from enterprise IT job: every year in order to get a raise you have to exceed expectations and often even if you do, you still don't get a raise, they say you performed average... Aaand once you raised your own bar, next year you have to work even harder and still you won't get promoted. So basiclly you're setting a trap for yourself xD Don't do that! I learned it the hard way. Be average, change job every 2 years to get 20-30% raise.

This is the reason why I couldn't last more than 4 months in any job... Trying to please everyone, do everything now and today. After few months I start looking for a way out and by the time I leave I'm burnt to the ground... Feel like I don't know better, it's either 0 or a 100. Happy birthday man :)

fresh out of college engineer here. currently in a production engineering "fast paced, go getter, self motivated" environment and im quickly realizing that a lot of this video is true.

I like how you realize life is actually a game, even socially. I need to recognize this and play accordingly. Thank you for your content.

I wish i would have heard these words years ago, before my burnout.

Wish I watched this video when I was younger... Started this job giving it my all and doing as much as I could, pulling in 10 hours of unpaid overtime a week easy. Three years down the line and I'm still in the process of unraveling what I've done to myself. Keep up the awesome work Josh!

I'm starting an IT career next year and this kind of videos helps me a lot to be ready for what is coming. Thank you joshua

This is so needed! I was straight out of college and landed a job in consulting. Gave it my all then I ended up burnt out. Thank you for speaking the truth!

This exactly what I was trying to Explain to people in my team... DON'T SET THE EMPLOYER EXPECTATIONS TOO HIGH!....

Man you've for sure magic powers. First, you had talked about your dev history in corporations (pretty similar to mine) until started to talk about failure and i was about to drop a tear remembering failures everytime trying so hard, and to put the cherry in the cake, this video. Love your channel, thanks for all your content, it's very valuable and i appreciate this kind of videos, this gives me no motivation, moreover something to think and that's cool 'cause motivation is like having a ball (it works but only once a time) but thoughts stay a long time with us. Keep the good work! and ty again

I started watching your videos like a month ago and I am starting to fall in love with these vids man. So real, just genuine and raw, no bs'ing and straight to the point. Keep em coming!

Love this. So true and even more so for when you are starting out. Like don't burn yourselves out right off the gate. Do your job and your job only.

I need to follow this advice. I tortured this for years while working in places, i threw everything. I was afraid getting of in trouble and not meeting expectations, i was afraid i wouldnt be loved at some level. I almost cant work hard anymore because the anxiety it causes me is like someones holding a knife to my eye.

I've been trying to inform coworkers of this, but it's hard when they are willing to do the work to make themselves look better, so being the black sheep just makes you replaceable.

Fantastic message, Josh! I used to do this all the time in my beginnings and it always ended they way you described. True burnout is a horrible feeling. It's one step from depression.

Super important video. Always glad to check your channel

I did this in a digital marketing job i've just been let go from. Went in at 100% knowing I shouldn't, but i was excited to start the new role. Impressed them for 6 months then had to take my foot off the gas as I was burning out, and a baby was coming / lost a family pet and member. 3 months later, yearly review, and it was essentially "where did all that enthusiasm go" . Picked it back up, only to be let go this November for '"performance issues", even after I let them know they gave me no goals and targets to aim towards. You're right to say only give them what they need. I won't be making this mistake again.