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The idea of a “hardcore” work culture isn’t new. Elon Musk made a show of imposing an uncompromising culture at Twitter back in 2022. During the dot-com boom of the 1990s, Silicon Valley was famous for its 24/7 approach to work, though back then the term of choice was “hustle,” not “hardcore.”
The return to office conversations have recently come with a distinct flavor of “playtime’s over.” “We run a dynamic, customer-facing business, tackling large-scale, challenging initiatives," AT&T CEO John Stankey recently told employees in a widely shared memo. “If the requirements dictated by this dynamic do not align to your personal desires, you have every right to find a career opportunity that is suitable to your aspirations and needs.”
A Shortcut to High Turnover
The hardcore work culture, defined by heavy pressure for results and stark performance metrics, has taken root in many organizations. Companies like TikTok are telling managers not to be “too nice” in performance reviews. Cognition.ai CEO Scott Wu wrote on X that his company “has an extreme performance culture, and we’re upfront about this in hiring so there are no surprises later. We routinely are at the office through the weekend and do some of our best work late into the night.”
In some cases, companies are reinforcing the message by very publicly firing so-called “underperformers.” Meta, for example, recently laid off 4,000 workers for sub-standard performance, even though many of them said they’d previously received strong reviews.
But this approach is a shortcut to high turnover, believes Betterworks CEO Doug Dennerline. “We can’t forget that trust, empathy and fairness drive a lot of engagement. It doesn’t have to come down to control,” he told Reworked. “Outdated practices like punitive PIPs, once-a-year reviews and now hardcore work cultures are more likely to damage morale than help it.”
Employers have come under the microscope for imposing a heads-down competitive culture before — and the results haven’t always been good. In 2013, Microsoft ended its stack-ranking system, which was notorious for creating silos and encouraging sometimes-brutal competition between colleagues. Around the same time, Wells Fargo fostered a cutthroat sales environment that encouraged fraud and lapses of ethics until it publicly blew up.
Whatever the history, managers today find themselves trying to keep pressure on employees even as they work to maintain some kind of employee engagement. In effect, they have to balance employee experience with the need for increased productivity at most any cost. That’s not a simple thing to do.
There are ways to strike that balance, however.
Be Clear, Be Specific
To start, be clear. If you use objectives and key results (OKRs) or a similar approach to gauging performance, set goals clearly and transparently. However, clarity alone isn’t enough. The environment in which performance is judged must itself encourage employees to trust the judgement. That requires manager to, among other things, lead by example, communicate regularly and encourage teamwork.
Bear in mind that positive feedback can be of more benefit than relentless criticism. Presented properly, research has shown feedback can motivate employees and increase productivity. Otherwise, it can leave them frustrated and harm productivity.
Think About Culture and Context in Reviews
The best performance frameworks — like 360-degree feedback or Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS) — provide context along with commentary and critiques. Because these methods gather information from coworkers, managers outside your department, internal and external customers, as well as an employee’s direct supervisor, they help managers assess a worker’s skills and behaviors, as well as their outcomes.
Which brings us to culture. Culture in this case is an umbrella term for the context set up by the workplace itself: the shared values, traditions, beliefs and attitudes, as well as how people behave toward one another. In effect, culture sets the ground rules not only for what employees do, but how they do it.
Culture is a two-way street, according to former head of the British supermarket chain Waitrose, Mark Price. Employees are entitled to fair pay, the necessary tools for their job, transparency, respect and opportunity, Price told the Guardian. In turn, employees must commit to doing their best work, being positive, showing up for work on-time and keeping the best interests of their company in mind. Such a relationship, he said, helps spotlight where employees can improve, where they need training or whether they should consider a new position inside or outside the company.
Believe in Employee Growth
Culture should also encourage a growth mindset. Narrow reviews are backward-looking and tends to focus on performance as it is. Employees are praised for maintaining their performance or critiqued if it lags. A growth mindset considers things like learning, adaptability and potential.
Growth mindsets also pay off for the company. A growth mindset is credited with improving productivity and performance by 64% of executives, employee engagement and satisfaction by 58% and increasing profitability by 48% of respondents to a TalentLMS survey.
Traps to Avoid
With all that said, there are some traps to avoid.
First, don’t lose sight of employees’ psychological safety, the feeling of being supported by their employers so they can speak openly, believe they’re being heard, receive clear direction and be given the tools they need to grow, develop and make meaningful contributions.
As Donald Thompson and Bob Batchelor recently wrote, psychological safety “doesn’t undermine accountability. Rather, psychological safety creates a foundation for enhanced innovation, creativity and collaboration, the fundamental traits that help establish workplace excellence.”
Hardcore cultures can also lead to “performance punishment” or “quiet promotion,” where top performers are given additional responsibilities without additional incentives. This effectively penalizes good work. While managers may see additional responsibility as a way to reward employees, in reality, it’s frustrating. Employees see themselves being undervalued and the company as trying to get more work done for the same amount of compensation.
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Navigating the hardcore work culture requires managers to balance objectivity with empathy. While measurement and accountability are essential, so are clarity, support, psychological safety, feedback quality, fairness and an eye on the employee’s growth. Effectively evaluating employees in a hardcore environment is not about choosing between empathy and excellence. It’s about achieving both.
Editor's Note: Read more about workplace trends:
- The New Playbook of Employee Experience — Organizations that treat engagement as an outcome of good design, not a program to fix, will build meaningful employee connections.
- Is Generative AI Actually Freeing Employees From Low-Level Work? — Take AI evangelists' promises with a grain of salt. But that doesn't mean AI success is out of reach, just that you might have to switch goals.
- Better Work or Better Cover? The Double Life of AI in the Workplace —
