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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

#41

Post by joshuakcockrell »

> 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 people still enjoy it) as it is to work on Fortnite where your code changes are used by millions?

Is it more satisfying to work on consumer facing iPhone apps like Apple Fitness where you are enabling millions of people to be healthier compared to working on a high frequency trading algorithm that makes a few people lots of money?

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

#42

Post by nightski »

I'd just like to add a thought - maybe happiness isn't all it's cracked up to be? I mean sure, we should strive to achieve a certain standard of living for everyone. But once you get to a certain point of "happiness", maybe it's the happiness itself which makes you miserable?

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

#43

Post by eclipxe »

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…

>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.

New York City

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

#45

Post by ForHackernews »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #25
ForHackernews wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life is fundamentally empty. Unless you're religious: you live for a while then you die. Maybe you successfully procreated, and your descendants live until something gets them too. Eventually climate change, or asteroids or supernova gets everyone left.

I don't see how being temporary means that a thing lacks meaning.

How could anything mean anything when pretty soon (in a cosmological sense) there won't be any such thing as a mind in which meaning could exist?

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

#46

Post by chiefalchemist »

akavi wrote: post #19

The article seems to be omitting an important piece of data: Are people who make more money less happy/equally happy/more happy than people who make less? It implies by its framing that they're less happy, but that's not actually supported by any actual data in the piece (though to be fair, on cursory googling I wasn't able to find any evidence one way or another).

Agreed. This is a glorified op-ed piece / human interest story. It's not proper objective journalism.

I mean, given all the complaints and struggles we read of at other class levels the headline could be: The Elite - Miserable and in Fear, Just Like the Rest of Us.

And it's fear that drives greed. I mean, when you can't go from $1M to $500K that's fear of losing what you have; just like the rest of us.

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

#47

Post by kevmo »

Bullshit Jobs, a 2018 book by David Graeber, discusses this phenomenon pretty extensively and calls for more research. His rudimentary theory is that people who aren't contributing to society know that they aren't, and it makes them miserable. People have an inherent desire to change the world around them, and most professional jobs are actually mostly nonsense. This results in professionals being depressed and feeling hopeless.

There was one study the book cited, "Taxation and the Allocation of Talent", which was particularly interesting. As it's abstract says: "Estimates from the literature suggest that high-paying professions have negative externalities, whereas low-paying professions have positive externalities."[1]

As a successful lawyer who quit that profession and became a software engineer, writer, and startup founder, all of this really resonates with me.

The book is an outgrowth of a 2013 essay that got re-printed 100s of times and spurred some polling.[2] I recommend at least reading the essay. It has a lot of implications for economics, business management, and various other fields.

[1]https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/693393

[2] "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant" http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

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

#48

Post by Fnoord »

ForHackernews wrote: post #15
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life isn't fundamentally empty. It's the philosophical underpinnings of profit-worship that make life seem empty.

Life is fundamentally empty. Unless you're religious: you live for a while then you die. Maybe you successfully procreated, and your descendants live until something gets them too. Eventually climate change, or asteroids or supernova gets everyone left.

> Life is fundamentally empty. Unless you're religious

There are more -isms than those.

In Sapiens, Harari argues ideologies such as capitalism and communism and belief systems such as your company serve the very same purpose: to give life a meaning.

To me, it appears akin to fairytales we tell our children.

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

#49

Post by ip26 »

jblow wrote: post #14
minikites wrote: post #3

>“I feel like I’m wasting my life,” he told me. “When I die, is anyone going to care that I earned an extra percentage point of return? My work feels totally meaningless.” Capitalists are realizing the fundamental emptiness of capitalism. It's hard to have a sense of purpose when your entire life is spent making a number on a spreadsheet into a slightly larger number for the benefit of someone even more elite than yo…

If this is your thesis you’ll have to explain how e.g. Communism totally did not have this problem.

To say that capitalism is empty doesn't necessarily mean you are anti-capitalist. E.g. many people find their job fundamentally empty, and they find meaning elsewhere, for example in their family. But they don't quit their job- it enables them to enjoy their family. Similarly, you can view capitalism as a fundamentally empty, but extremely useful system that enables us to find meaning elsewhere.

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

#50

Post by shrimp_emoji »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #25
ForHackernews wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life is fundamentally empty. Unless you're religious: you live for a while then you die. Maybe you successfully procreated, and your descendants live until something gets them too. Eventually climate change, or asteroids or supernova gets everyone left.

I don't see how being temporary means that a thing lacks meaning.

It lacks objective meaning (that we know of or if that can even exist), but that doesn't stop me from assigning it, and operating on, subjective meaning. In fact, I can't even stop myself from doing that. It's almost as if the brain evolved to run on silly fiat meaning for its survival.
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