The difficult relationship between hard work & success

Going forward, the only route to (subjective) “success” will be to find something one enjoys and has a natural aptitude for, while making peace with unpredictability. The “objective” version of success will be increasingly rare.

High attrition rates across industries in India remain a permanent HR gripe, but 20-somethings are unfairly written off as unreliable foot-draggers. (File)

4 min readNov 1, 2026 07:07 AM IST First published on: Nov 1, 2026 at 07:07 AM IST

Silicon Valley-based billionaire Vinod Khosla stirred the proverbial hornet’s nest with his recent post on X seeking a new “Chief of Staff”. Khosla, an early investor in OpenAI and DoorDash, has a formidable reputation for sussing out new opportunities, so anyone working closely under him as his executive assistant, aka CoS, could gain hugely from his vast experience. A quick glance at the Khosla Ventures website makes it clear that he didn’t get where he is by attaching any value to work-life balance: his requirements for candidates applying are in-person work, 12 hours daily, some weekends too. Typically, X was aflutter with disgruntled murmurings on our always-on culture and slave-driving bosses expecting constant availability.

Alas, there are always tradeoffs to be made. A chance to be Khosla’s right-hand means a crash course in unfamiliar technologies and a bird’s eye-view of how a seasoned entrepreneur evaluates and builds businesses. Meaningful work is hard to come by in the post-AI world. Considering the depressing dearth of jobs and how tenuous the future of employment looks — most likely — there’d be a mad scramble for applications for this post. Our feeds may throw up an alarming amount of psychology on “self-care”, “boundaries” and “me-time”, but anyone with even an iota of sense instinctively knows extraordinary success requires extraordinary effort — and even then success remains elusive. Luck and timing both play their part. To top that, if one is reluctant to forfeit the occasional weekend in the pursuit of something bigger, good luck getting through life.

As Malcolm Gladwell famously observed in Outliers, it takes a lot of practice to become excellent at complex tasks — 10,000 hours precisely, he worked out. (For these times, it better be at something AI can’t do, like cutting hair or playing golf). Having said that, not much good comes of romanticising striving, or spouting the sermonising mantras we heard in our childhoods, like “work hard and you’ll succeed”. It’s not true. Obviously, someone talented in Gaza has a very different path from their counterpart born in America. The young, in any case, are stuck between dreamy idealism and sobering realities. It is one of the pitfalls of youth that one innocently believes the world is fair. At some level, the students’ protests across Europe and India are a desperate cry for reassurance that indeed, effort will be duly rewarded. Past generations were fortunate enough to know that if they did well at work, they’d be promoted and incentivised to stay. In today’s landscape, companies have no loyalty to employees, so Gen Z correctly ups and leaves for the first better option that comes along.

High attrition rates across industries in India remain a permanent HR gripe, but 20-somethings are unfairly written off as unreliable foot-draggers. Actually, they’re understandably discouraged by the gap between the old-fashioned grind mindset and their dismal economic prospects. Interestingly, the job requirements of the to-be KV CoS suggest a heartening shift from the mere hardcore academic to someone with both soft and technical skills. Prioritising “Achievement, depth and intellectual range”, the KV website emphasises, “evidence of these qualities matters more than credentials”. Dare we hope, the halo around Harvard and IIT is beginning to fade? I have often wondered what happens to the millions of kids who get 95 not 99 per cent and fall just short of top engineering institutes. Perhaps, this bizarrely exacting standard is giving way to the appreciation of a more well-rounded person and lo and behold, broadening the definition of success. For some of history’s most revered thinkers, like Einstein, it’s their creative side that led to innovations. Going forward, the only route to (subjective) “success” will be to find something one enjoys and has a natural aptitude for, while making peace with unpredictability. The “objective” version of success will be increasingly rare.