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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

#221

Post by coffeebeqn »

starkd wrote: post #57
chiefalchemist wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women have done the same. The dirty little secret of the current "labor shortage" is that the worker bees are no longer willing to over do it, for the same pay. The commitment to work is still there, but now more and more have reasonable boundaries.

That's the optimistic take. But there is also another grim reality in that some have simply given up (to some degree) and simply stopped caring as much. Less diligence.

Is that so grim? I didn’t set up society so that I’m required to expend most of my energy and a large chunk of my day to work for some random corporation I don’t care about. After 15 years of this it is very clear to me that this is a trade of my time for money. Nothing else. I’ll do everything I can to make that trade more in my favor.

I also have many other uses for that time. My kids won’t be small for long, I have many hobbies I like to do, etc

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

#222

Post by tbrownaw »

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 keep hearing that online dating had elevated the importance of outward appearance - which would include height - even higher than what it used to be.

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

#223

Post by lotsofpulp »

CloudRecondite wrote: post #195
Swizec wrote: post #11

The article talks about top 10% – $175k+/year https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-incom... That’s a fun grey area where you’re making a lot but not a lot . And the path to making more is paved with leverage, not with hours. You absolutely cannot get to the top 1% by just grinding away. I can’t find the study right now, but I remember reading that “work for money” tops out at about $400k. The highes…

Clearly some people make more than 400k and work a normal W-2 job. I’m well into 7 figures and slave away. I struggle daily on whether it’s worth it.

Make a list of goals (including things like protecting one’s self from health risks, legal risks, etc), pencil out how much it your annual expenses are, and project your cash flow until age 100.

If your investments can afford your goals, then quit or scale back. Head over to Bogleheads forums where this situation is frequently addressed.

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

#224

Post by tomp »

nixgeek wrote: post #135
xyzelement wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it a huge problem?

Why is it normal or acceptable that men earn more than women? It’s been studied for a long time and there’s evidence [1] of some closure across recent censuses, but we’re far from done. [1] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/03/what-is-the-g...

Woke people like you see discrimination even where there is none.

Even in situations where people are paid by algorithms (i.e. only based on the work they perform, regardless of their sex), men earn more than women because they simply try to earn more (i.e. they optimise for earnings).

"Study of Uber drivers finds men earn more than women — for three key reasons"

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-uber-gender-pay-20180...

The article above doesn't discuss it, but another reason is that men work more; so for the same hourly wage ("equal pay for equal work"), men would still earn more.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/06/30/new-repo...

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

#225

Post by bradleyjg »

zozbot234 wrote: post #137
aqme28 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/0dee8dce-en/index.html?i... Looks like about 60% of wealth in the US is inherited, and the proportion has been climbing.

Do we have to constantly remind people here that wealth != income? Inheritances are wealth . They might have grown in income terms simply because interest rates are on a secular decline (recent short-term raises notwithstanding) and low interest rates boost the value of assets. Comparing wealth stocks and income flows makes little sense in general.

I would say were on a secular decline rather than are. Pre-Covid some yields were nominally negative and approaching real zero. There was very little left for them to fall before hitting the carrying cost of cash.

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

#226

Post by mshake2 »

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…

i'm tired of creating a disproportionate amount of value and reaping the same rewards and allowances as everyone else because anything more would be seen as unfair. no thanks. if the value i'm creating isn't directly correlated with my earnings, i'll go do something else.

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

#227

Post by hirako2000 »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #193
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…

Hiring people in this current climate hurts shareholder value. It’ll be a long winter before that changes. Be prepared for employers to start blaming everyone internally when metrics aren’t met.

It will hurt even more if they don't hire and see those wages and demands for sustainable work loads as inconveniences to get rid of.

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

#228

Post by coffeebeqn »

ryandrake wrote: post #200
prewett wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try contracting / consulting. I feel like contracting has a different set of expectations, there's more of an expectation that contractors kind of do their own thing. There's also an expectation that contractors are a bit flaky, so a reliable contractor at 80% time is still a solid asset, whereas an employee at 80% time is communicating "I'm not 100% invested". I guess the difference is that with contractors the rela…

Contracting sounds nice but you have to be making a LOT more than W2 for it to be worth it. Health insurance, HSA, your portion of self-employment tax, 401(k) matching are things you no longer get. Also you have to start doing things over and above that you didn’t have to as an employee, like finding clients, billing, accounting, fighting clients for payment. You need to charge enough to make it worthwhile.

This is very true. On the money side just note that your employer is also not paying any of those extras so you need to roll them into your rate. You’ll still cost about the same to them at the end of the day

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

#229

Post by dmoy »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #192
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how you cannot imagine a world where the women is the high earned, pretty insanely conservative to me.

Typically women don't like to marry down in income and earning potential. When they do, it's done reluctantly because the clock is ticking or they're tired of being forever alone and have lowered their standards. Anecdotally, I've yet to see a marriage in my peer group where the woman marries down to last more than a handful of years. Men almost always have no problem marrying down in terms of income & earning potent…

Among our friends I can think of at least three immediately - partnered accountant (f) + teacher (m), some senior executive at a f500 (f) + professor (m), senior auditor (f) + line chef (m). The former two going for 5-10+ years with multiple kids, etc.

Probably could think of more if I asked my wife, because I don't keep track of who works where.

I think you were correct up until somewhere around 2015-ish, when there was an inflection point on who marries down more often (now it's women marrying down more often than men).

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