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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

#211

Post by kaispowergoo »

sandworm101 wrote: post #124
ren_engineer wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the last sentence of the article hints at the real reason it was written in the first place: >But as staff cut back their hours, it costs medical organizations money it's just companies screeching that they are making less money because salaried employees are doing less unpaid work. I think the pandemic had a large effect on people in terms of 1. Having to face potential mortality much earlier than expected and thus…

>> it's just companies screeching that they are making less money because salaried employees are doing less unpaid work. That depends on how many of these jobs are positional and therefore cannot be easily supplemented. In my kneck of the woods we are having an issue with judges. There are only so many jobs for judges. But in recent years more than half of them switched to reduced hours. That lost time cannot be just…

Is this artificial scarcity created by licensing associations?

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

#212

Post by kaispowergoo »

dragonwriter wrote: post #178
sandworm101 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A judgeship is often a specific job. They are paid good money and, like tenured professors, cannot have their salary easily reduced. It's like being the mayor of a town. If a mayor wants to reduce their worked hours, you cannot just hire another one to make up the difference. Their income is protected. There can be only one.

> If a mayor wants to reduce their worked hours, you cannot just hire another one to make up the difference. You can vote them out; judges can be imoeached for nonperformance. You can increase the number of positions for judges (mayors are obviously different) to account for trends in capacity, to the extent that the reduced hours are appropriate and nonabusive. Etc.

… or the Mayor could hire a more capable city manager.

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

#213

Post by drdec »

sandworm101 wrote: post #47
bradleyjg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your quibble is addressed via the word “earning.” Money made via investment or inheritance is unearned.

>> 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 think a great many startup founders might feel that their stock-related income is "earned"

Perhaps you know this, but just in case and for others, in the US there is a legal distinction between earned and unearned income in relation to taxes. The post you quoted was using the terms in this sense.

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

#214

Post by patrick451 »

greatpostman wrote: post #121
bradlys wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Men are concluding that women don’t care about money as much as they used to, and having an amazing career to snag a great woman is no longer the best (or even a good) strategy I disagree. It’s not that women don’t care about money as much as they used to. They actually still care! It’s that other factors are more important now than they used to be. Your looks is very important because women aren’t gonna die withou…

I don’t think this is true. I’ve seen a lot of investment bankers in nyc struggling with women

Necessary and sufficient conditions are not the same thing.

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

#215

Post by tomp »

tristor wrote: post #172

Great. I count myself amongst this group. I used to regularly do a bit of work across weekends, and stay late or start early to always be the one willing to adjust for the timezone differences of other people. I no longer do this, I work my set hours, with an hour buffer in the morning and afternoon (8AM-6PM local time) and I don't work weekends. My weekends are now sacrosanct and used for social hobbies, spending ti…

> we have now learned about the harm caused by absentee fathers

Can you expand on this, references etc? Up until now, I've only heard about the (substantial) harm caused by fatherless homes / single mothers (maybe single parents? not sure, it might be too small sample for single fathers).

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

#216

Post by nebula8804 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #210
nebula8804 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like it is biased towards people who haven't lost their parents by age 40. For people (like me) who have lost a parent before hitting the age of 40 it becomes more real sooner.

I assume clarge1120 meant that people feel immortal until 40 because their body generally does not stop them from doing things until one’s 40s.

Hmm it seemed unclear. I guess I am totally unlucky as im 35 and my body is already acting that way.

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

#217

Post by lotsofpulp »

koonsolo wrote: post #196
bluefirebrand wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. When I met my girlfriend she was really clear that she didn't want to date someone who didn't have a similar level of accomplishment to her. It wasn't about money entirely, but money was a part of it. She has a master's degree and manages a department of people at a fairly big company. I only have a bachelor, and I don't manage people, but I earn more than her. So I guess it balances out? She would never date a…

It's just different preferences. Men select on beauty and women select on success.

All of my higher earning men friends are married to similar higher earning (or accomplished) women, or they are single.

Maybe at the very high earning end, some are okay with an extremely attractive woman for the sake of being attractive, but from what I can tell in the engineer/lawyer/doctor/business owner demographic, people generally want someone at a similar achievement level (or at least that can pretend to be).

In my immigrant diaspora, I can see the change between older cousins married off in 90s and early 2000s, and younger ones married in the last decade. The older ones frequently have stay at home moms that never had a career. Almost all the younger couples are dual working professionals, with even men eschewing a partner completely if they cannot land a similar working partner.

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

#218

Post by zozbot234 »

koonsolo wrote: post #205
greatpostman wrote: post #21

Controversial opinion: Men are concluding that women don’t care about money as much as they used to, and having an amazing career to snag a great woman is no longer the best (or even a good) strategy. In some ways, being a dedicated corporate employee makes you unattractive as a person. I know a lot of guys in their late 20s that think this. And I know a lot of broke bar tenders dating great women. Unless you are mak…

Women select on success. With success probably comes money, and a lot of people confuse the two when they think about how women select their partner. But it's clearly "success" or the potential of success. How are you considered successful? When you're winning at some kind of game. Let's just say a successful soccer player. Or an actor. Or a musician. Or you have success in business. With that comes money, I agree. B…

Self-actualization in general gives you a confident, care-free attitude to life and social relationships that's often quite attractive to others. Plausibly, when women look for "successful" guys that's what they care about for the most part. If you pick your playing field carefully, it's often not hard to look "successful" in some way - couple that with a genuinely likeable, fun, confident attitude and you should do OK. Working 90 hour work weeks to "win" at some silly corporate career game is neither here nor there.

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

#219

Post by qntmfred »

From 2012-2018 I worked a corporate job that I really loved, getting several promotions and increasing my compensation significantly. Worked a lot of hours bc I enjoyed the work so much but still what I considered reasonable, and I promoted healthy work life balance for all my teams. I had 3 young kids at home and was still able to do what I thought was my fair share of housework and raising the kids. Then I went through a divorce, 2 six-month stints at startups that were a mess, unemployed for another 6 months while volunteering for a political campaign then another 6 months of 80 hour weeks working for that campaign. when the campaign ended I was ready to find the next stage of my career, but covid had just arrived in the US and I had to scramble to find a job bc I was basically broke from earning 1/5 of my typical salary over the previous year. I ended up taking a job running DevOps for a small SaaS business. not really what I had in mind and the comp was decent but still a good 30% less than what I had been making previously. but the expectations were low, I got great reviews and made important impact in the areas that they needed from me. Probably only required 10-20 hours/week, and I didn't mind coasting, and my kids were growing up fast and I liked the flexibility to prioritize them over career. This week I'll have been coasting here for 1000 days. But recently I've been itching to get back into the kind of job I had before, where I could really sink my teeth into interesting problems, nurture high performing teams and build great products. I do wonder if I can find that environment again, or will everywhere I look be filled with people who have also gotten used to coasting and not really striving for excellence.

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

#220

Post by dmoy »

kaispowergoo wrote: post #211
sandworm101 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> it's just companies screeching that they are making less money because salaried employees are doing less unpaid work. That depends on how many of these jobs are positional and therefore cannot be easily supplemented. In my kneck of the woods we are having an issue with judges. There are only so many jobs for judges. But in recent years more than half of them switched to reduced hours. That lost time cannot be just…

Is this artificial scarcity created by licensing associations?

For doctors, yes. For lawyers (the primary source of judges), not really.

There is a scarcity of judges created by (lack of) funding for courts. Which effectively erodes people's sixth amendment rights too.

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