Hustle culture

According to Monster, hustle culture is “ the mentality that one must work all day every day in pursuit of their professional goals.”

Abd Saddic said hustle culture emphasizes hard work to the extreme. 

“The version of work hard in terms of hustle culture is ‘work, work, work,’” he said. “Like there’s no end to what you’re doing.”

On the other hand, Bhatia said hustle culture contains more positive aspects than negative as it encourages people to work hard.

“The general objective of hustle culture is very much a positive one,” he said. “It’s encouraging younger people to work on their lives, to work harder to create a better life for themselves and to improve themselves.”

Even so, Bhatia said hustle culture becomes toxic when pushed to the extreme.

DuBose said several hustle culture influencers perpetuate the notion that merited individuals require wealthy and accomplished company, which she said is inconsiderate to those who are struggling financially.

“Often I’ve seen videos saying, like, ‘The most successful people have successful friends,’” she said. “It’ll be like, ‘You have to cut off all your poor friends to be able to do well.’ That’s pretty classist.”

Cruz said hustle culture encourages an imbalance between work life and personal life and many workplaces use this concept to take advantage of their workers.

“Companies have been using that aspect, that kind of like pressure to make people do more for less money,” she said. “If young people or anybody who’s in the workforce has that mentality of like, ‘I gotta hustle, I gotta do all this,’ the only one who’s benefiting is the employer.”

Cruz said she noticed the consequences of hustle culture manifest in a previous work environment, where she said many of her colleagues felt pressured to overwork. She said one colleague felt as if she could not prioritize her health by going home even when feeling unwell, and as a result, went into cardiac arrest.