The Hardcase Attitude

[ZAFCorrection]

Theoretically I discovered a non-political, non-culture war topic to debate. Though, it is culture war-adjacent (snowflakes, kids these days, etc.), so hopefully people can hold it together.

I was watching a video which was an interview of Gordon Ramsay while he trashes some food. He's a notorious pain in the ass, and the first few minutes of the interview was him reminiscing over the other assholes he worked for. If his opinion is anything to go by, verbal and physical abuse makes you a better cook.

I'm sure other fields have their own PITA traditions as well. The question is does all this douchy behavior actually produce better results? Does some douchy behavior work while other kinds are counter-productive? Does this actually matter or is it just an aesthetic difference and everything comes out the same?

[Alphaville]

Short answer:

The other side of hardass culture is depression, addiction, suicide, etc. To focus on Ramsay alone is survivor bias: he’s got a junky brother too, so put them side by side as products of their family system.

Workaholics and alcoholics come up together. Oftentimes both are the same person.

[Ego]

The bootcamp model of breaking a person down in order to build them back up in the form needed by the organization certainly works for some and fails for others.

Does it produce better results? Depends what you mean by results. Better soldier? I would say yes. Better human? Possibly, depending on the human they were before. It kills some too.

Some flee at the first sign of fangs. Some become helpless. Some come to love the venom and search for new sources of toxicity when the original is removed. Some use the toxicity to become stronger than they ever would otherwise, then use that strength to kill the snake.

Is it just aesthetics? I don't believe so.

[bostonimproper]

I don't think enduring abuse automatically turns someone into a better person, and very often does the opposite in causing a perpetuation of the harm endured. Hazing can inspire a sense of mutual camaraderie, but beyond that seems to me a waste of time, talent, and emotional energy. So many people are driven out of PhD programs by shitty advisors (or, as I've heard from some friends, held back from actually graduating by them). I think people mistake the relief they feel and the memory they can reminisce on with colleagues with a trial that was worth having in the first place.

[classical_Liberal]

It's also partially designed as a process of weeding out the "weak". Whatever that may be for the particular group. Learning to deal with horrible circumstances not only weeds out those who can't and who may be a liability, but it also teaches those who can to deal with adversity. Medical field is (in)famous for ridiculous hours during training period, Physicians in particular get their a** kicked in residency. But if I need emergent surgery at 3AM, I don't want it to be the first time the surgeon has done something like this on 2 hours of sleep.

I think, if done properly with some reasoning behind the practice, it can be a good thing. I also tend to think that our (ie wealthy western) society has done away with many rites of passage to our detriment. Survival alone is, mostly for most people, pretty easy now-a-days in the West. Psychologically people need to feel like they have overcome adversity, reached a difficult goal. A doctor who gets through residency has completed a rite of passage. A soldier making it through boot camp the same. It not only provides solidarity to a group, but also confidence, a sense of self worth and purpose. Not to mention actually prepared them for what they may encounter in the world. This is a fine line though, and needs the "right" kinds of people in charge of these processes. Otherwise, those in positions of power during such rites of passage can easily choose to make things difficult for no good reason. IOW, intent really matters.

[jacob]

If boss/trainer/work environment behavior is homeotelic with the work description, it produces better results. If it isn't, it produces worse results. I would therefore consider the goal alignment first. For example, boot camp hazing makes sense because soldiers are trained to receive and deliver damage in shitty conditions, and hell week is a light version of this. Restaurants operate under [time] pressure and perfection, and Gordon Ramsay dials that up a notch, so I suppose it works there too. However, adding time pressure and tearing people's egos down would be a terrible idea in a research/creative school setting where students need big and original egos and the freedom to go wherever their minds are taking them w/o a supervisor telling them to conform or demanding a milestone update every day.

[Dream of Freedom]

In my experience it mostly results in brain drain and belligerence at least in the corporate world. People with the best prospects transfer or leave. And others argue with them and sometimes even try to get them fired often successfully.

[Alphaville]

If boss/trainer/work environment behavior is homeotelic with the work description, it produces better results. If it isn't, it produces worse results. I would therefore consider the goal alignment first. For example, boot camp hazing makes sense because soldiers are trained to receive and deliver damage in shitty conditions, and hell week is a light version of this. Restaurants operate under [time] pressure and perfection, and Gordon Ramsay dials that up a notch, so I suppose it works there too. However, adding time pressure and tearing people's egos down would be a terrible idea in a research/creative school setting where students need big and original egos and the freedom to go wherever their minds are taking them w/o a supervisor telling them to conform or demanding a milestone update every day.

war in itself is traumatic, and preparation for violence is required, sure. but war should be an exception and not the guideline for everyday life.

and restaurants have their demands, sure, but they don’t have to operate under a destructive regime. here’s eric rippert’s take on restaurant culture:

https://www.thedailymeal.com/eat/eric-r ... ons/121217

note also that the restaurant industry has a huge problem with addiction and dysfunction in their ranks, much of it encouraged/brought on by industry practices. it doesn’t have to be that way.

let’s not conflate abuse with the sorting function. abuse is about shaming, and it’s destructive to the person regardless of job performance. you can pick performers and non performers of tasks without having to brand whole persons as “losers.”

further, i’d argue that shaming does not remove people’s egos: it just installs a toxic one, starved for approval and highly dependent on it.

last, this highlights the problem of focusing exclusively on results:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartun ... be01fdbb10

[IlliniDave]

In engineering, education through now 33+ years working, I never encountered any of that sort of hazing. The first two years of undergrad were difficult--designed as a weeding out process maybe. But it was never personal. The closest I ever came were my first few years in the profession. I worked for a company with strong Northeast/East Coast roots that did a substantial amount of manufacturing. The esprit de corps of the engineering ranks was that of a bunch of people with blue collar behavior who happened to be good at math. So there were a lot of f-bombs, often from on high, and sort of an a$$-kicking mentality. But again, very little of it was personal. Took some getting used to for a relatively polite midwestern boy.

My graduate school advisor was not only a great research coach, but somewhat of a life coach as well. Never heard him speak a word in anger, or say anything bad about anyone. To the OP, that sounds like a toxic program that needs an overhaul. Except for endeavors like the military, I wouldn't expect superior results from cultures in which the fledglings are exposed to abusive superiors. Some people may emerge stronger from such an environment, but I think more would emerge even stronger.

[CS]

I think some of the arguments here might be conflating a few things - rigorous standards versus abuse, for one thing.

Now to some, a rigorous standard might be abuse.

I only have my own personal experiences, but I'll tell you, I thrive when expected to live to a high standard, but will pack up my toys and go (in the middle of the night if I have to) if I'm abused.

My high level of work as an undergrad attracted an abusive boss who wanted to make me work three times as hard on his project for my graduation requirement 'because I could', as opposed to the abilities of the other students. Being an unfair dick does not inspire. That was irritating. But the day he yelled at me abusively, that was the end. He also verbally abused one of his graduate students so loudly that every professor down the hall could hear. No one went to defend her or stop him. I hated them all a little after that - and myself as well for not going into his office and telling him to shove off.

Him, I left in the middle of the night. I had keys to the lab and got my shit, never speaking one word to him again.

I did get that astrophysics degree a year after my physics one because I was one of the few who'd ever been published as a undergrad. (Second name, just some data cleaning, but still, I was published. I earned that degree). I just had to wait until the much more reasonable real undergrad advisor returned from his sabbatical.

A more subtle abuse came for the PhD project. Long story short, I left there too, only to come back and get it with someone else - and do an incredibly hard project but paired with two wonderful and supportive advisors.

Being pushed to do great things you never thought possible is a positive transformative experience.
Being abused is not. It can change a person, but not in a good way.

Things get confusing to some when the two things are mixed.

Edit: @alphaville, DoF and Jacob already made some of these points. I wish, not for the first time, I could agree with posts without posting!

[horsewoman]

In Germany this happened a lot in apprenticeship situations. Typically you enter into a 3-year contract with a master of your chosen trade - master being a vocational titel you can carry after having earned it by completing an apprenticeshipplus at least 3 more years of a program with theoretical and practical tests at the end.

So like in olden times young people are apprenticed to a master, and unfortunately a lot of masters abuse their power reminiscent of a Dickens novel (well, maybe not so bad, but if sure felt like it sometimes).

Me and the other apprentice in the tailor shop have been yelled at, called names, have had stuff thrown at us,... We had to clean the shop (no cleaning service necessary if you have apprentices!), and do menial tasks/errands for our master. Nearly everyone learning a trade in a smaller company without a HR department or something like that has such stories to share.

It is a severe stain on your CV to break off such a contract, so you are told to suck it up by your parents and nobody dares to complain or to fight back because the master has most of the power.

There is even a saying regarding this situation "Lehrjahre sind keine Herrenjahre" which more or less says you are almost a slave during your apprenticeship. This is always quoted by parents and friends if one complains about the abuse.

Personally I see no benefit in mistreating young people and I hope that this has gotten better in the last twenty years. I was lucky enough to be well treated in my second apprenticeship and I think back fondly to this time, while I woke up with a gasp and shaking for years after my first - having dreamed that I had to work there again. This was mild PTSD, I suppose. It took me years to enjoy sewing again.

[George the original one]

Hard case without the build up is where most such systems fail.

Hazing is just plain wrong.

[Seppia]

As it often is the case, c_L opinion on the topic nearly mirrors mine.

Same here

But I’ve learned it in a different field: Brazilian jiu jitsu.

I also learned it in sports (waterpolo).

I think I may have written about this in my journal. When I was 10 I started playing waterpolo, we were pretty good, usually winning the regional championship.
My first coach was the perfect coach for kids: he instilled us the love of the game and we learned a lot of fundamentals. We had fun.
When I turned 16, a new coach came in.
Two weeks into training, he organized a game with a certain team we didn't know much about (they would go on to win the national championship that year).
We lost 32-1 (or 32-0, I can't remember), the kind of beating we used to impose on the very worst teams in our region.
After the game, he told us:
"you can continue to have fun like you've had in recent years and then lose with the best, or you can have year from hell and try compete with these guys"

We were stupid enough to pick option 2

At 16 years of age, we were swimming 6km per day 5 days a week with a tshirt on. About twice a week, someone had to come out of the pool because of vomiting spasms due to extreme effort.
Half the team quit that year.
During the pool phase to pick the 6 teams that went to the national finals, we encountered the same team that beat us like a drum just 9 months earlier. We lost to the 11-4. It was the most beautiful loss of my life.
Two years later, we would go on to the national finals, ending 2nd.
Five guys from my team ended up playing pro in the top italian league, one played in the national team.

I thank that coach to this day.
So yes I think it can work but
a) not for everybody and
b) one needs to know how to walk the line between being tough (helpful, formative) and being abusive (destructive)

[Alphaville]

So yes I think it can work but
a) not for everybody and
b) one needs to know how to walk the line between being tough (helpful, formative) and being abusive (destructive)

I think testing your limits can be for everybody, but b) is the key here. Extraordinary performance is often associated with abuse but is not required.

Psychological abuse can actually drive people towards fraud, doping, falfsified experimental results, cooked books, all sorts of criminality, when they’re unable to develop a mature acceptance of human failure and limitation, i.e. their sense of self is compromised by anything less than victory/perfection.

[Loner]

My intuition is that those who succeed within hardass cultures do so despite that culture, not because of it.

In the army, of course it produces better result. You’re filtering for obedience. Army trainers are even quite open about the fact that boot camps are not about actually transmitting skills to the soldiers (shooting, etc.), since you can’t learn most effectively when sleep deprived, etc. But it builds compliance. You want obedient peons who will do things that fly in the face of their own, personal best self-interest. You want soldiers to obey if you need them to go on some nonsensical suicide mission for strategic reasons. For that, boot camp works.

But in other fields? Michael Greger’s book Heart Failure describes this kind of culture in the field of medicine and how counterproductive it is for the quality of care. Recommended reading.

Your question also reminded me of a bit I read in Matthew Walker’s book on sleep. Here’s an excerpt:

All of us know that nurses and doctors work long, consecutive hours, and none more so than doctors during their resident training years. Few people, however, know why. Why did we ever force doctors to learn their profession in this exhausting, sleepless way? The answer originates with the esteemed physician William Stewart Halsted, MD, who was also a helpless drug addict.

Halsted founded the surgical training program at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, in May 1889.

The injurious consequences are well documented. Residents working a thirty-hour-straight shift will commit 36 percent more serious medical errors, such as prescribing the wrong dose of a drug or leaving a surgical implement inside of a patient, compared with those working sixteen hours or less. Additionally, after a thirty-hour shift without sleep, residents make a whopping 460 percent more diagnostic mistakes in the intensive care unit than when well rested after enough sleep. Throughout the course of their residency, one in five medical residents will make a sleepless-related medical error that causes significant, liable harm to a patient. One in twenty residents will kill a patient due to a lack of sleep. Since there are over 100,000 residents currently in training in US medical programs, this means that many hundreds of people—sons, daughters, husbands, wives, grandparents, brothers, sisters—are needlessly losing their lives every year because residents are not allowed to get the sleep they need. As I write this chapter, a new report has discovered that medical errors are the third-leading cause of death among Americans after heart attacks and cancer. Sleeplessness undoubtedly plays a role in those lives lost.

I can't stand the hypocrisy surrounding medical student well-being. No pilot would be forced to work the hours interns do - it's just not safe.

In a recent letter, a doctor asked the readership of The Lancet to consider a study of sleep-deprived versus rested surgeons. Since it would be unethical for a patient to be randomized to a sleep-deprived surgeon, he asserts, no institution that would approve such a trial. "In other words," he concludes, "the current standard of care - sleep-deprived surgeons - is indeed too unethical to be part of a clinical trial!"

Wakefulness for 24 hours is equivalent to a blood alcohol level of 0.10% which is above the legal driving limit.... Surgeons awake all night made 20% more errors and took 14% longer to complete the tasks than those who had had a full night's sleep.

Of course, sleep deprivation is just one aspect of such hardass cultures, but much the same could be said about the other aspects. See Greger's book. As already pointed higher up, a lot of abuse-giving, and even thriving for #1, can come from trying to compensate from some unspoken feelings of inadequacy.

I was offered funding to do a phd, but seeing the rampant abuse, and the absurd demands already made on student at graduate (M.Sc.) level, I said "Nope, thank you". The Internet is filled with stories of how such abuse has ruined perfectly good research.

Good things in live can come through hardship no doubt, but not only nor necessarily.

[kevib]

some 15 years ago I was driving home from hospital after 25 h. work as doctor (resident medical department) without sleep. a week later I got a speeding ticket in the mail, a mobile photo unit had me on record for driving some 10-15 km/h more than allowed - I never noticed; from the photo it was obvious that I was sleeping while driving...

[white belt]

Interesting thread. I'll provide my perspective from 4+ years spent in the US military.

I agree with some others in this thread that abuse can sometimes be conflated with rigorous standards. For the record I don't think I've ever experienced hazing in the Army, with the exception of perhaps my first few years as a cadet (similar stuff to what @ffj discussed). I guess my perspective is that if extreme results are required, then I'm ok with the means being quite extreme.

I think there are a few misconceptions about the hard-ass mentality in the military. First off, many of the actions in iconic bootcamp movie scenes like Full Metal Jacket, are nowadays forbidden. Drill Sergeants cannot physically touch trainees and verbal interactions are closely monitored. Violence between trainees is not tolerated. During most phases, trainees are given weekends off and allowed to travel to shops and restaurants on base. This was not always the case and most of the anti-hazing policies have only emerged in the past 5-10 years. Bootcamp is not that physically demanding if you are in decent shape, and I think most forumites here who exercise regularly would find the requirements laughable.

I agree with Jacob that the hard-ass mentality produces good results in jobs that require it, however it will not work in fields that don't benefit from the traits that it fosters. Additionally with the popularity of Navy SEAL media in recent years, I think some people apply hard-ass military principles to wholly inappropriate situations. For example, many business types love Jocko Willink but I think best practices for combat operations in Ramadi don't translate well into best practices for a drop-shipment lifestyle business.

Now, apart from bootcamp there are still some military courses that are quite extreme. At Ranger School, candidates are deprived food and sleep for weeks at a time while conducting stressful patrols. Candidates eat 2 meals a day and sleep less than 4 hours a night for weeks. This course is designed to simulate the stresses of prolonged ground combat and has proven valuable for the past 50+ years. Another school is SERE, which trains candidates to survive behind enemy lines and withstand a mock POW camp. In that course, many enhanced-interrogation (torture) techniques are permitted to include water-boarding, beating, sleep deprivation, and confinement in small spaces for days at a time. To an outside observer both of these courses may sound like abuse, but every person who completes the course sees the experience and lessons learned as valuable. The perception is that these courses save lives by preparing the individual for extreme wartime situations, so the means are also extreme.

[theanimal]

For example, many business types love Jocko Willink but I think best practices for combat operations in Ramadi don't translate well into best practices for a drop-shipment lifestyle business.

Jocko regularly talks about how business leaders misjudge him by expecting him to come in and be some type of hardass and whip people in line. He recommends the opposite approach for leading people in the military and in business. His approach is the opposite of hardcase attitude. People are people and whether in the military or civilian life, getting yelled at is a pretty bad motivator for putting forward your best effort and getting the job done.

[white belt]

Jocko regularly talks about how business leaders misjudge him by expecting him to come in and be some type of hardass and whip people in line. He recommends the opposite approach for leading people in the military and in business. His approach is the opposite of hardcase attitude. People are people and whether in the military or civilian life, getting yelled at is a pretty bad motivator for putting forward your best effort and getting the job done.

Point taken about Jocko. To be honest I don't follow him closely but much of what he espouses seems like pretty basic leadership/managerial stuff. My negative bias towards SEALs may be showing since the SEALs I've worked with in real life are pompous assholes and I believe they have an institutional culture that fosters this attitude.

I disagree with your sentiment that getting yelled at is a pretty bad motivator. I will say it is entirely dependent on the individual. Some people react well to negative reinforcement and some people react better to positive reinforcement (adaptive leadership has become popular in recent years). Why do sports coaches across every major professional sports organization still yell at players? Because at times it gets results.

One other thing I'd like to mention is that in my experience leadership is much more challenging when you have to lead less-competent individuals. Keep in mind that SEALs and other elite military units go through a months long training and selection crucible/rite of passage experience before they even report to their first day on the job. They have already been through a lengthy filtering process, so you know that those who have made it through are high in motivation, high in IQ and emotional intelligence, and high in mental/physical toughness. No one becomes a SOF Operator only to make money or because they think it is going to be an easy job. This may not be the case at a typical 9-5 job.

[theanimal]

I am not against critiques or feedback just in the manner it is distributed. Yelling can be useful in certain scenarios but as a default use by sports coaches I think it is extremely devalued. If you look at the top sports dynasties of this century (Patriots, Warriors, Spurs to name a few) all have coaches who rarely yell. Some people respond to it sure, but I believe on the whole most are more encouraged by critiques in a more positive manner. As others have said above, I think there is a difference in abuse versus criticism/hard standards and you can get that across in almost all cases without the uproar. Yelling and the "hardcase" attitude take on a whole lot more power when they are doled out on extreme rare occasions rather than the norm. Arguably, if you (theoretical not you whitebelt ) have to yell to get your point across you have already failed as a leader and that's on you for not executing proper training, explaining the reasoning behind actions and so on.