‘They reward the most self-sacrificing’: Entrepreneur reveals dark side of hustle culture, cautions youngsters against working weekends
Working weekends and skipping vacations is a common practice among youngsters in the times of hustle culture. More often than not, youngsters are forced to burn the midnight oil on weekends to meet tight deadlines set by their managers.
Aryan Kochhar, an entrepreneur from Delhi, however, has advised youngsters against working weekends and skipping vacations to meet unfeasible targets and deadlines. In doing so, Kochhar went ended up exposing the dark side of the hustle culture.
“If you’re working weekends, you’re not building a career. You’re covering for broken systems. Here’s the ugly truth: Most companies don’t reward the smartest workers. They reward the most self-sacrificing,” Kochhar said in a recent LinkedIn post.
He further explained that answering emails at midnight was not leadership but unpaid crisis management. He added that skipping vacations is not ambition but normalised exploitation and working weekends is no hustle and just a system that failed Monday to Friday.
Kochhar also said that employees might think that they are impressing the leadership when, in fact, they are teaching the company management that they are available for free.
“Real ambition isn’t working yourself to exhaustion. It’s building something that doesn’t fall apart without you. The companies that glorify hustle? They’re not raising future CEOs. They’re churning through disposable heroes,” he signed off.
Kochhar’s take on hustle culture augured well with netizens, with some saying that companies are setting the wrong expectation among their employees.
“Great point, often companies consider the most sacrificing people as the best employees, which is so sad. Because they’re setting the wrong expectation among their employees,” a user wrote.
A second user commented: “Working weekends? “Employee of the weak-end”!!”
“This hit hard. Took me years to realize overwork isn’t a badge of honor,” a third user said. “Overwork is the term used quiet often . It’s when the HR fails to do resource mapping effectively, people on the floor and burdened with work beyond normal limits and that leads to excessive work,” a fourth user weighed in.
“If weekends are the emergency exit for weekday failures, it’s a sign the process—not the people—needs a redesign,” yet another user commented.
