"Hard work" is worth exactly nothing if it doesn't provide value to someone else. I can assure you that walking out into my side yard and digging holes all day in the summer is much harder work than sitting in my air-conditioned home office writing code for the company I work for, but they receive no value for all that "hard work" and do value the time I spent in-chair in my office.

Work-for-pay is only as valuable as someone else willing to pay for it. No one cares how hard you worked, they care about how much value you delivered to them.