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High-Earning Men Are Cutting Back on Their Working Hours

wsj.com

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Re: High-Earning Men Are Cutting Back on Their Working Hours

#101

Post by dahart »

bodiekane wrote: post #5

> Since this group already put in longer hours than the typical U.S. worker—and women at the highest income levels—these high earners had longer work days to trim > Before the pandemic, Eli Albrecht, a lawyer in the Washington, D.C., area, says he worked between 80 to 90 hours a week. Now, he says he puts in 60 to 70 hours each week Key lines from the article, which give important context and invert what many people'…

TBH For me the line about Eli only begs for more context. Having done it for a while in the games industry, I know first hand that 80-90 hours/week is next to unliveable for long stretches, and the difference between 80 and 90 is enormous (working 80 leaves you with almost 50% more waking non-work-time than 90, assuming 8 hours of sleep). Some people really do work that much, and Eli might be, but 80 means you cut more or less all social activity from your life, even family, and 90 probably means you’re cutting into your sleep permanently. The may be mitigating factors for Eli, if he works from home, for example, or if he is measuring his hours via start and stop time but still taking family breaks or social lunches during the day. A normal amount of self-maintenance like a small amount of exercise, grocery shopping, brushing teeth, and reading news or watching a few minutes of tv or youtube, these things alone will add up to all of the time you have left after working 90 hours/week. It took me a decade or two to realize the overtime I worked was actually trading my entire life for a small amount of money, and that it wasn’t nearly enough money.

Many people also over-estimate their own work hours. I had an employer who measured and also surveyed employees and compared the two results, and found most people claiming 75 hours/week were actually pulling more like 55-65. Some people who thought they were doing over 50 were actually under 40. A lot of people in the company I was in were (perhaps subconsciously) factoring in their commutes as work time, and a lot of people come in a bit late during crunch time but mentally feel like they’re starting work at 9am on the dot, and estimate work hours that way.

Re: High-Earning Men Are Cutting Back on Their Working Hours

#102

Post by lotsofpulp »

bilsbie wrote: post #97
sillysaurusx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Height, intelligence, and a sense of humor. You can often get by with just two. Beyond a certain threshold, throwing money at women doesn't really yield more results. Or at least not the kind of results you'd want.

Is height a bigger deal than 10-20 years ago? I feel like I keep hearing about it.

I am guessing it is more explicitly stated as a preference than in previous decades. And globally, proportionally, a lot more people are taller due to drastic decreases in malnutrition, so there are wider variations in height.

Re: High-Earning Men Are Cutting Back on Their Working Hours

#103

Post by Swizec »

lupire wrote: post #91
Swizec wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a euphemism. Yes you have higher variance in other fields (like tech) where you can become a billionaire. Car washes, by comparison, have low variance but reliably make mid 7-figures per year. The market is super fragmented and localized so it doesn’t really matter how many other successful car washes exist. People won’t drive too far out of their way just for a car wash. This puts a ceiling on competition. Start…

Can you provide a citation? All I find are generic SEO ad sites. $1M+/year? $4M+/yr? In profit? On average? And no big company has bought them all out?

It’s from an early People I Mostly Admire episode but I can’t remember which one and their archive is difficult to search.

I can’t remember the incantation to find the underlying paper they were talking about either. And as you noted, Google has become bad at this sort of thing because most people don’t want those sorts of results.

Re: High-Earning Men Are Cutting Back on Their Working Hours

#104

Post by dqpb »

shadowgovt wrote: post #52
tsunamifury wrote: post #25

Many men discovered over the course of the pandemic how much they actually loved spending time with their family and how unrewarding office life is. Unfortunately the powers that be have decided that this realization is incompatible with how the economy is set up to work, commuting office space work lunches and dinners etc. and so back to the office we will be forced to go.

Possibly. The work attire for technical professionals shifted from suits and ties to jeans and t-shirts because the power shifted from Wall Streeters to Silicon Valley hippies as the value added to the economy by computers grew. This smells like another work-cultural element that could shift easily if several startup-types declare four-day work weeks and find themselves enough runway money to get to revenue-positive.…

Arguably, suit and ties aren't clothes, they're costumes. They were bound to phase out eventually.

Re: High-Earning Men Are Cutting Back on Their Working Hours

#105

Post by fullshark »

bilsbie wrote: post #97
sillysaurusx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Height, intelligence, and a sense of humor. You can often get by with just two. Beyond a certain threshold, throwing money at women doesn't really yield more results. Or at least not the kind of results you'd want.

Is height a bigger deal than 10-20 years ago? I feel like I keep hearing about it.

I think it was always a big deal and kind of a key attribute women consider for physical attractiveness, but it was kind of not spoken about in general and in the internet age cat got out of the bag on psuedoanonymous forums and things like that okcupid data analysis got shared.

Re: High-Earning Men Are Cutting Back on Their Working Hours

#106

Post by zozbot234 »

bilsbie wrote: post #97
sillysaurusx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Height, intelligence, and a sense of humor. You can often get by with just two. Beyond a certain threshold, throwing money at women doesn't really yield more results. Or at least not the kind of results you'd want.

Is height a bigger deal than 10-20 years ago? I feel like I keep hearing about it.

It might be perceived as a bigger deal simply because it's a hard, objective factor. In practice though, there's so many other things you can do to improve your chances that there's no point in even thinking about it.

Re: High-Earning Men Are Cutting Back on Their Working Hours

#107

Post by sandworm101 »

aqme28 wrote: post #60
sandworm101 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Money made via investment or inheritance is unearned. I think a great many startup founders might feel that their stock-related income is "earned", especially those who don't pay themselves much of a salary in early years. And every actor/singer/songwriter earning passive income from past artistic works. So too every homeowner or pensioner taking money without actually clocking in on a factory floor. I don't have…

> I don't have the numbers, but it may be that the majority of income in the US comes from "investment" or other passive not-earned means. I'm curious to see your numbers, because I can't imagine how this could possibly be the case. I think you may be living in a bubble. I wonder even how many of these top non-income earners get their money from inheritance rather than your examples of startups and artists.

Earnings from inheritance have almost certainly dropped as a percentage of total income. Inheritance is generational. The huge number of millionaires and billionaires created in the last thirty years haven't had time to die and leave that money to their kids. A few million inherited 40 years ago, mostly in family real estate, is now worth 100s of millions. But that new money probably hasn't yet passed to the next generation. All those tech entrepreneurs (Musk, Gates etc) are also still alive, their money not yet fully inherited by anyone.

Re: High-Earning Men Are Cutting Back on Their Working Hours

#108

Post by [deleted] »

VLM wrote: post #74

The linked article works hard to provide only meaningless personal anecdotes and promote speculation to avoid any actual answers while pushing pre-selected agendas. AKA, journalism in a nutshell. Sadly typical. Which is why almost no one reads that stuff anymore and no one takes it seriously anymore. As a member of the group in question, I find the data easy to believe. Its less than two weeks work on average. If I g…

[deleted]

Re: High-Earning Men Are Cutting Back on Their Working Hours

#109

Post by jacquesm »

lupire wrote: post #82
jacquesm wrote: post #19

In the 80's the place where I worked incentivized employees to start working fewer hours. In the IT department we looked at the request in bafflement: "How many hours would you like to work?". We put in '40' and somewhere between HR and our bosses it was straightened out.

What are you saying? IT department didn't like working fewer hours?

No, that the IT department was structurally overworked, as opposed to the rest of the bank where people that arrived late regularly met people that were leaving early at the main entrance. Bankers hours...

Re: High-Earning Men Are Cutting Back on Their Working Hours

#110

Post by lightbendover »

mrandish wrote: post #8

> "High-earning men in the 25-to-39 age range who could be described as “workaholics” were pulling back, often by choice" This seems like great news. I know several guys who've recently opted to earn less in exchange for more time off at home with their young kids. They are happier and the kids love it.

I have been deeply considering going part time to pursue a passion project that will likely never generate income but will at least leave me creatively satisfied in a way that a big tech gig never could.
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