Why are people obsessed with work ethic?

[PrudentGuy]

OMG! "Work ethics"! You weak-minded has fallen to Jedi mind-tricks.

Come to the Dark Side and understand this:

1) if it's a "dot com", then it's all about $$$. That's all.

This means, reward older workers with a medal that costs $5 and put his name on the "worker of the month" with $50 reward and he'll work harder to generate $500 more for the Jedi Temple.

And when there's a more talented, younger, possible prettier one who can deliver and only cost half the salary, start the Exchange process.

2) train yourself to refuse control by mind-tricks. https://www.youtube.com/embed/vAvGKfaO3osYes, "only money". Stop concerned about ethics. Start thinking how to get the most money while you're there. By the time you're asked to leave, there is no regrets like this one.

To conclude, wake up dude. It's a material world. If you're not a girl, then your only hope is to get more $$$. Forget ethics. Just pretend that your morally upright will do.

[Effably]

That's a funny sentiment. My high school class had two verified geniuses. None of them graduated. The most diligent students however made it to ivy league universities. I myself entered a similar uni after a complementary period. Most successful students? The ones who studied more. Who had better work ethics. Sure, we had a few who seemed to get by with minimal effort. They do make others jealous.

I wrote a lot of things which came off as me bragging. So removed them and here goes the bullet points;
Intelligence, memory, spatial, deductive etc abilities are all something you can train and improve. They are not fixed. Indeed there's proven evidence that even just acknowledging that intelligence is a learned trait results in higher average intelligence.

Outside of a few extreme outliers diligence, work ethic, matters much more. So what if someone can learn the same material in half the time if they do not bother learning it? Ee frequently had a few to several thousands of pages per month in uni. We can't manage that. So what do we do? We practice speed reading techniques. Memory techniques. We gather together to create more effective versions. That is how the vast majority of academically successful people do it. And even the most gifted people at our Uni still had to do it.

Yes. Starting off at a higher intelligence (which us likely a nurture not nature bit) helps. It ultimately does a lot less than work ethic. Hence work ethic is praised so much. It feeling unfair doesn't make it any less important.

[ArrowheadSW]

I think the key is to find something that *you* are gifted in. I can definitely understand your example in your post. Like if someone really likes playing a musical instrument, that person probably won't make it to the pro level unless he is gifted (genetically) in music.

[DrunkAss]

I think a decent part of that formula is figuring out what people are actually good at like a tone-deaf person will probably never become the next pop idol no matter how hard they work... but at the same time, someone naturally gifted at singing might not either if they squander their potential by goofing around.

[InfobotLives]

The gifted still require a work ethic. Being the smartest person doing nothing in your bedroom is of no merit and will achieve very little.

[Hispanic-Cool-Guy]

Work ethics truly works wonders if you work hard. Working hard for long hours is for fools though.