Opinion: The "Side Hustle" Is Bull

November 7, 2025 – This essay was first written in 2017 with an intense buzz about side hustles ringing in my ears. Everyone was talking about it, but the discussion has dwindled. I’m not sure whether the idea has been normalized and is no longer news, or whether it’s died – as it deserved to. Whatever the reason, my central theme of dedication to companies that have earned it remains just as relevant. The side hustle era has given way to ever-larger, more frequent, and more damaging waves of layoffs, even in healthy sectors. The common factor is employers still don’t understand what they lose when they demotivate employees’ singular focus on them.

I’m getting really tired of people talking about the “side hustle” as if it were some great entrepreneurial gold mine instead of what it actually is: having two jobs just to survive.

Employees shouldn’t see a side hustle as part of a good life. And companies should be concerned if employee focus is bleeding away into side hustles. They should be asking themselves, "What are we doing wrong?"

I have no desire for a side hustle. I want one job with one great employer, to which I devote my full attention. They pay me well; in return they get effort and innovation that change their paradigms.

I understand this isn’t the 1950s. None of us will spend our careers with one employer or even two or three. That's fine.

But today’s “wisdom” that we’re all “brands,” never again to “work for” an employer but only “work with” them as short-term contractors (even when on the company payroll) is wrong. It dismisses the employer-employee bond that great companies rely on for sustained success measured in decades, not quarters.

Companies that accept the side hustle as a new norm degrade themselves. Unintentionally perhaps, but they do. They think so little of their purpose, products, and place in the world that they stop believing they deserve, or can even seek, long-term loyalty and commitment from the people who work for them.

Employers cannot demand that employees belong to them exclusively – what people do off-hours is largely their own business. They shouldn’t demand hard work either. But they should expect those things to happen naturally because of the organizations they are. Their people shouldn’t need, want, or consider a side hustle. Employees should consider side hustle as not just a distraction, but as a small betrayal – of the employer, their own potential, and the future they’re helping to build.

Fairy tales from the middle of the last century? Hardly. Jim Collins, who has spent 30 years studying legendary companies, shows otherwise. Read his books like Built to Last, Good to Great, and Great by Choice if you want to understand how enduring greatness is created.

Dedication is one of Collins’s themes: the dedication companies earn and employees offer freely when a shared sense of purpose and recognition of value grows stronger year after year. Side hustles are not part of that picture.

#SideHustle #EmployeeTurnover #JimCollins