However, his advice is also peppered with dozens of red flags that show the uglier side of motivating staff. The most glaring of these is Donaldson’s elevation of work as being the most important, and sometimes only, aspect of his employee’s lives.
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“If you’re ambitious and want to dedicate your life to work, you picked the best company in America to do it at,” he wrote. “Those of you that help build this will be rewarded. I want nothing more than for you to go all in, obsessive all day every day, and become so goddam valuable this company can’t operate without you.”
His company, MrBeast Productions, has been the subject of several allegations of bullying and promoting a toxic workplace. A fortnight ago, an external review found the lack of “policies and practices essential in a mature company” allowed for some “inappropriate conduct”.
As a consequence, the company is now hiring a new chief executive, chief financial officer, general counsel and chief people officer, among other reactive actions.
Donaldson’s advice to new staff members veers from encouraging openness and obsessing over results to the need to give up everything for him. The former has some positives, but the latter needs to be seriously addressed.
In 2019, US writer Derek Thomson coined the term “workism” to describe treating our jobs as a kind of religion. He said it’s “the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centrepiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose”.
While there are some things we can learn from Donaldson’s intense approach to work, his obsession with sacrificing everything for a job should not be one of them.
Tim Duggan is the author of Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better. He writes a regular newsletter at timduggan.substack.com
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