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America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

nytimes.com

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Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#131

Post by madrox »

QualityReboot wrote: post #64

I just don't understand this at all. If you can earn a million a year, do it for 3-5 years, never have to work again, and pursue your passions in life. I think the problem for most workers is the lifetime of toil, not the meaninglessness of the work. I'd happily dig ditches for 8-12 hours a day for 3 years if I knew I was completely financially independent with millions in the bank that. Actually, I'd rather do that…

I’ve thought about this...especially among the very wealthy. Why continue to be a high pressure CEO when you basically never have to work again?

My hypothesis is that most very high paying roles are incentive-based, and incentives can be addicting: meet a goal, get a million dollar dopamine hit. I don’t think these people hate their jobs as much as they might say they do.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#132

Post by reb »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #105
toasterlovin wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this dovetails with what I think is the most fascinating topic in evolution: the demographic transition in humans. If you're not familiar, demographic transition is the term used to describe what has happened to the demography of nations as they become developed. Which is that, rather than producing more children with their material abundance, people in rich nations have less children. This is not, at all, what bi…

> and because advertising constantly shows us higher levels of consumption to aspire to, even people who are, in an absolute sense, raking in obscene amounts of money are surrounded by a peer group that are roughly at their level. Animals evolved using competition as a mechanism to select the best mates. Advertising is not the cause, it's the nature of all animals to project power. There might be some people here and…

This is a fair nit, but still: it's self-evident that modern advertising high-jacks natural competition and amplifies it in order to drive an unnatural level of spending (else companies could just skip advertising and see no change in revenue).

tl;dr Not a root cause, but a powerful multiplier.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#133

Post by jgust »

Murdoch wrote: post #17

The rich are depressed, the middle-class is shrinking and fearful, the poor are hopeless. I'm gonna take a leap here and say maybe people need some religion in their lives to give direction and meaning. I found it interesting that a person in the article who made $1.2M a year was still depressed in thinking they were wasting their lives and it was all meaningless. I ask myself, does this person have children? a famil…

I agree with your point, but not necessarily the execution. We deserve a better religion, one that skips the hand-wavey-guy-in-the-sky implausibility but can still serve as a mental shortcut for whatever society agrees morality is ~currently~.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#134

Post by ttoinou »

joshuakcockrell wrote: post #41

> We want to feel that we’re making the world better, even if it’s as small a matter as helping a shopper find the right product at the grocery store. My question for HN is do you feel that the content you are working on makes a difference in your career satisfaction? Or do you just need to know that _someone_ out there is being benefited? Is it just as fulfilling to work on a video game that flops (but maybe a few p…

Personally it's satisfying when customers thank you for your product. If you're looking to make a difference only by thinking, then you need to study the industry you are in and its purpose in society. Is high frequency trading really about the allocation of resources in the economy ? Who wins, who loses, and why ?

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#135

Post by jedberg »

ip26 wrote: post #111
QualityReboot wrote: post #64

I just don't understand this at all. If you can earn a million a year, do it for 3-5 years, never have to work again, and pursue your passions in life. I think the problem for most workers is the lifetime of toil, not the meaninglessness of the work. I'd happily dig ditches for 8-12 hours a day for 3 years if I knew I was completely financially independent with millions in the bank that. Actually, I'd rather do that…

Have you actually dug ditches for a few weeks? It's a popular rhetorical device but I wonder how many engineers have actually done stints of hard labor.

I used to dig ditches on weekends as a way of relaxing. It's not bad when you get to do it on your own time. But yeah, I'd probably not appreciate doing it for eight hours a day five days a week.

I'd still do it for a million a year though.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#136

Post by nimonian »

Murdoch wrote: post #17

The rich are depressed, the middle-class is shrinking and fearful, the poor are hopeless. I'm gonna take a leap here and say maybe people need some religion in their lives to give direction and meaning. I found it interesting that a person in the article who made $1.2M a year was still depressed in thinking they were wasting their lives and it was all meaningless. I ask myself, does this person have children? a famil…

> maybe people need some religion in their lives to give direction and meaning

I can't just accept dogma because I'm miserable. I can't just say 2+2=5 even if it would make me feel better. Religion isn't something you can just pick up like pilates. If life is inherently without meaning or direction, I'd rather go with that and be true to myself than refract the universe through some doctrine I understand to be false.

Self-knowledge, mindfulness, wisdom, spirituality, reflectiveness - I can make my peace with these. But I think it is bordering on unfair to proffer a deity as a solution to depression and anxiety.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#137

Post by JohnFen »

nightski wrote: post #117
JohnFen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find I am at my best when things are not going perfectly and I am backed against a corner. I would suggest that such a situation makes you happy. Happiness does not imply the lack of struggle or difficulty. In fact, I think most people need struggle and difficulty in the mix in order to be happy.

That's fair and I do not disagree. But put another way - there is a large set of emotions out there of which happy is just a single member. But for some reason it is put on this pedestal as the holy grail. Maybe it's not? But I am getting pretty OT from the article so I apologize.

I agree. I think that generally when people are using the term "happy", they really mean "lack of misery".

I think a better term in the context of this discussion is "satisfaction" over "happiness".

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#138

Post by JackFr »

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #6

- He had received an offer at a start-up, and he would have loved to take it, but it paid half as much, and he felt locked into a lifestyle that made this pay cut impossible. “My wife laughed when I told her about it,” he said. Sounds like a good wife to me, and this "pay cut" is making 500k-600k instead of 1.2 million, what world are these people living in that you can't give up a job that you hate because you can't…

Let's say you've got three kids and you're living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Your mortgage and maintenance for a 3 bedroom apartment at $3.5MM are going to be ~15000 a month or 180K a year. Three private school tuitions are 150K. Living in NYC you're paying NYC, NYS and Federal income taxes for probably the highest tax rate in the country. So basically it's easy to be paycheck to paycheck on 500K in NYC.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#139

Post by adamredwoods »

maps wrote: post #84
naravara wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>what world are these people living in that you can't give up a job that you hate because you can't afford to live on 500-600k. The one where you lock into a mortgage and a car that assumes a $1.2M salary to keep ahead of. It's really easy to let your lifestyle expenses balloon, especially in a high-COL city where minor increases in living space/amenities can end up costing large amounts of money.

To consume $100k a month we need a $10-20 million dollar mortgage (50-100k/mo depending on years and rate). I have to assume a few cars, dining, etc would probably end up being $10-20k/mo so the mortgage is probably around $15 mil. So in NY or SF you are looking at something like a 1-2k sq/ft 2 bed 1 bathroom shithole apartment. Not so luxurious after all really.

Putting kids through school, paying for parent's mortgage, vacation properties, country club dues.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#140

Post by dclusin »

kurthr wrote: post #99
naravara wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>what world are these people living in that you can't give up a job that you hate because you can't afford to live on 500-600k. The one where you lock into a mortgage and a car that assumes a $1.2M salary to keep ahead of. It's really easy to let your lifestyle expenses balloon, especially in a high-COL city where minor increases in living space/amenities can end up costing large amounts of money.

Yeah... I literally don't buy it. High Cost of Living city has nothing to do with needing $500k/yr in earnings (post tax). What kind of mortgage and car do you have that? Simple answer... that's a $10M house or a $2M car or half of each of those. Besides the fact that if you're earning $1.2M salary, you're taking home other bonus/stock that are comparable. Getting locked into this sort of lifestyle is a choice not dr…

The median annual earnings of palo altans is about $400k/year. That's probably workable for cheaper areas like south palo alto where a house built in the 80s will run you $2.5 mil. Move closer to downtown and you could easily double or triple your necessary annual take.
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