his isn’t your standard LinkedIn post. It doesn’t promise kombucha on tap or unlimited vacation days. It promises pain. And suffering. And a journey so grueling it would drive the HR department mad.

Legend has it this pitch worked for Ernest Shackleton, an explorer who dreamed of becoming the first person to walk across Antarctica by land. And he needed a crew — men as tough and unrelenting as the ice he was about to walk on.

The pitch was brutally short, brutally honest, and brutally effective — 5,000 people applied.

What made it so impactful? Most job descriptions seek to attract people. They lure people in with benefits, flexibility, and sometimes even ping-pong tables. Shackleton did the opposite. Instead of promising glossy amenities, he spoke to the deepest longings of the human spirit — the desire for honor and glory, even if it meant risking your life.

His description repelled the wrong people as much as it attracted the right ones. It filtered out the weak and the soft, and what remained were the rare few: men with the tenacity to sail across the Atlantic Ocean and traverse the coldest, harshest, and most unforgiving land on Earth for no reason other than the chance to be first.

People debate whether this ad is fabricated, but even if it is, the lesson stands: There will always be people who are willing to sacrifice comfort and convenience for a shot at immortalizing their names in the record of history.