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Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

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Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

#61

Post by dang »

ulfw wrote: post #22
ProxCoques wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. My father told me a story of when he was stuck in traffic with somebody who was then about the 10th richest person in the world. To make conversation, my father asked him what his plans for the coming year were. The guy listed all sorts of business goals. My father asked if he had anything personally that he was planning. The guy basically replied that those were his personal plans. He made no distinction be…

There is a HUMONGOUS difference between owner of a business and employed by a business. Makes sense for the "10th richest person in the world" to work long hours. It's his call. He is working basically for himself. Totally different when you're making say 50K and the "10th richest person in the world" wants YOU to work all day every day too.

It isn't binary. I like my work, work long hours, don't own the company, and am treated well. I'm lucky, of course. But not every such situation is exploitative.

I watched a talk recently where Ivan Sutherland approvingly quotes Fred Brooks as saying "I don't plan to retire, I plan not to retire."

p.s. Please don't use allcaps for empahsis on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

#62

Post by dang »

irundebian wrote: post #10
ProxCoques wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. My father told me a story of when he was stuck in traffic with somebody who was then about the 10th richest person in the world. To make conversation, my father asked him what his plans for the coming year were. The guy listed all sorts of business goals. My father asked if he had anything personally that he was planning. The guy basically replied that those were his personal plans. He made no distinction be…

That's sad.

Could you please not post unsubstantive comments here?

Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

#63

Post by irundebian »

dang wrote: post #62
irundebian wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's sad.

Could you please not post unsubstantive comments here?

It's not unsubstantive in my opinion. It's just an expression of my opinion, which is questioning the thought of making no difference of personal and business goals combined with an emotional component (sadness).

Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

#64

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #61
ulfw wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a HUMONGOUS difference between owner of a business and employed by a business. Makes sense for the "10th richest person in the world" to work long hours. It's his call. He is working basically for himself. Totally different when you're making say 50K and the "10th richest person in the world" wants YOU to work all day every day too.

It isn't binary. I like my work, work long hours, don't own the company, and am treated well. I'm lucky, of course. But not every such situation is exploitative. I watched a talk recently where Ivan Sutherland approvingly quotes Fred Brooks as saying "I don't plan to retire, I plan not to retire." p.s. Please don't use allcaps for empahsis on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[deleted]

Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

#65

Post by dang »

irundebian wrote: post #63
dang wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please not post unsubstantive comments here?

It's not unsubstantive in my opinion. It's just an expression of my opinion, which is questioning the thought of making no difference of personal and business goals combined with an emotional component (sadness).

This reply is already more substantive than a mere "That's sad", which may or may not have any thought behind it. If you fleshed it out a bit more into a thoughtful point, you'd have a good HN comment.

Merely stating an opinion doesn't count as substantive. There needs to be something to interest the reader.

Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

#66

Post by currymj »

montrose wrote: post #7

Because I like to work. People who don't like to work often misunderstand this when looking at the stories of successful people. They think successful people force themselves to work hard in order to be successful. In fact successful people often like their work so much that there's nothing else they'd rather do. I doubt for example that there's anything Jeff Bezos would rather do than run Amazon. I bet it seems to h…

you're lucky to have a life where you get to do that. but do you have subordinates?

people with a lot of autonomy are harmed less by long hours and stress. i mean quite literally, if everybody is working 70-100 hours under intense pressure, the boss will experience fewer mental and physical health problems.

keep this in mind if there are people lower on the pyramid than you. what you yourself are willing to do might be quite harmful to them, not to mention the reward they get might be far less.

Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

#68

Post by gaius »

sidlls wrote: post #41
bluedino wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with being passionate about your job

Wanting to work all the time and being passionate aren't the same thing.

True, but that’s what people mean in an interview when they ask if you are passionate about I dunno, doing payrolls in COBOL or something

Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

#69

Post by fastbeef »

indemnity wrote: post #59
fastbeef wrote: post #55

For the most of my career, I was certain that there was something wrong with me. After the first few months at a new job, a sense of meaninglessness grew in me. Is this it? Am I really babysitting this ASP.Net app from here on out? I tried to find meaning in my work but always came up short. Cue a miserable year followed by a job hunt. Rinse and repeat every 2-4 years. After 12 years of this, it suddendly struck me -…

Thanks. As someone who struggles mightily with the same, I’ve always thought that path is one I should follow, but I’m not great at networking / hustling for the next contract, which you kind of have to do, right?

The local market here in Sweden is super-hot so I can pick and choose. Usually, I go through a broker who takes 10% of everything I invoice but does all the selling for me.

Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?

#70

Post by zaptheimpaler »

jondubois wrote: post #47
ulfw wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a HUMONGOUS difference between owner of a business and employed by a business. Makes sense for the "10th richest person in the world" to work long hours. It's his call. He is working basically for himself. Totally different when you're making say 50K and the "10th richest person in the world" wants YOU to work all day every day too.

This hits the nail on the head. Most of the value that you're creating is captured by someone else. So why should you be expected to spend all your life to benefit someone else's interests? It's quite strange that today slavery is a completely taboo subject (rightfully so) and yet workplace slavery is not only tolerated but encouraged. It's essentailly the same; someone else uses their coercive power over you to esse…

Speaking as an outsider to Western/American culture, this is one of the worst parts of America. There are millions of people peddling the bullshit dream of "success" (whatever that means) and the implied message of "work harder" in every corner of the media and workplace. Which is great if you reap 100% of the rewards, but for most its only a way to make them compliant worker-bees competing with each other for scraps that the higher-ups dose out at their leisure.
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