I'm salaried, and I had several weeks earlier this year where I struggled to put in more than 5-10 hours a week of actual work because business was slow. I still got paid the same amount, though, and was still "on the clock". So it looks like I have less free time than my hourly friends because I'm still at work while they're at home playing video games.
The protection of 'on call' (in any type) equated to a type of work. Maybe not paid at full rate, but still compensated for as personal activities must be interrupt-able and other work cannot be sought.
Also the protection of a regular and predictable schedule with long lead times.
If the answer is yes, I politely say "thanks, but no thanks."
Salaried positions are not supposed to be 40 hours minimum. They should be measuring your output, not your hours worked. That's the entire point of not being an hourly worker.
I've mentioned that I'm exempt and still have to track time and most people just respond "you're not exempt, you don't know what it means".
I've never worked a job where I didn't have to track my time, though. Four different companies, employed as full time staff, I've always had to justify where my time went each week.
To be fair, from her point of view your hours playing Civilization might not balance out her having dinner alone.
All joking aside, it is certainly a downside to the job I do, but she understands. "Upset" is kind of a hyperbolic word to use, she fully supports the work I do as it affords us a lot of freedoms we might not have otherwise. I can't say how often we've turned a business trip into a vacation just by switching the credit card on file with the hotel to my personal card, or left for vacation in the middle of the work day as long as I bring my phone and take my calls from the passenger seat. Not to mention she doesn't have to work full time, so she can pursue her own dreams and hobbies.
Not that any of that matters to you, I just didn't want anyone thinking I was being selfish or insensitive to my wife's feelings.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_bending_supply_curve_...
If rich people have more say in what they do, why are they working instead of things that might be more "fun"? If rich people have far more leverage in their hourly earnings, why not work far fewer hours?
I'm not sure the article really solved it, either. It's a curiosity to me as someone who has determined the quality of life I desire and want to "work" the bare minimum to achieve that.
I run my own business, and as a result I have a very highly correlated effort-to-earnings relationship. The more I work, the more I make.
I could spend my time doing "leisurely" activities away from work and I'd still make more than enough to live on, but instead I spend the better part of my work days (and oftentimes weekends) grinding away, trying to make this my highest earning September yet.
I don't do this in the pursuit of some end goal. I have fairly modest tastes, and 90% of the money I earn goes into a bank account or brokerage where it sits forever.
All I can say is that earning money gives me the most concrete measure of achievement I've found. When I was a kid I played World of Warcraft relentlessly, and gaining another level in that game gave me the same sense of forward progress. Money feels like the grown-up version of that.
I'd been brought up with a strong influence from my father who believed the pursuit of wealth for wealthy sake was pointless. It mattered what you did as a person than what you earned. My ideal job would be to become a scientist.
My friend told me that he wanted to earn money, not because he wanted to be rich, but because he liked seeing that number go up. He knew that it was a straight up numeric increment for him.
Now that's a relatively deep insight for a teen, which applies to everything from gaming to work. It's obvious and direct behavioral reinforcement.
Oddly it doesn't explain why he grew up to be a scientist (bio-analytics/genomics) and I ended up wading into finance and business.
Maybe self awareness is the pre requisite to being more comfortable with less than comfortable choices.
You make money when you generate value for someone. It's OK to tie it to a sense of achievement, but at the end of the day you also have to remember to generate value for yourself.
The money is part of the feedback loop of motivating you, you get your level ding in WOW, you get a cold beverage after mowing the lawn, you get your paycheck after expressing yourself for two weeks. A CEO isn't going to be a good CEO if he has the same amount of job satisfaction as a germaphobe janitor who has a graduate degree in Literature no matter who much you pay the CEO.
Not making simply money. It's working on something that satisfies you.
Many successful people are less happey in retirement because that don't get a social circle playing up the importance of what they are doing. Sitting on a beach is simply less rewarding than landing a major contract. Thus, these people are not checking email on vacation because of dedication they are chasing a reward cycle.
There's probably a correlation between being rich and being more inclined to spend time on activities which return money.
In that, ceteris paribus, having less of that inclination will reduce your probability of becoming rich.
a poor or lower middle class person would probably disagree if they saw my income and business bank accounts, but hey, everything is relative.
anyway. here are some reasons that may or may not apply to myself and my group of peers (all business owners end up hanging out with a bunch of other business owners or sales-type people, it just happens).
1. they like working. they may deny it, but they do. they like making things happen, making things in general, etc.
2. they feel like if they stop working, the money will disappear, or be taken somehow. this may or may not be rational.
3. they are compelled to do it, it is simply an inner drive they can't overcome. i.e. that's how the money was made to begin with.
4. they like having a high level of disposable income to spend on nice things/experiences/influence. this is the polar opposite of how a lot of people on HN think, who seem to constantly trying to humble-brag about their rankings in the frugality olympics.
i definitely fall into #4, the others maybe, maybe not. i like nice shit, so i work hard. if i wanted to not spend money, i'd just be poor and not work much. i did it for 4 years in college, i could do it for the rest of my life if i wanted to. it's not hard to do nothing and spend nothing. it's literally the easiest thing in the world, you just don't do anything, all day long.
sorry for being snarky.
I get paid a lot => I'm an important part of the world => if I stop then the world will fail (in some [tiny] way).
You see a corollary of this in retirees, their occupation defined them. Pre-retirement they say "hi, I'm Joe, I'm a professor" - a professor isn't a professor when they're relaxing and enjoying themselves (the thought process goes) so in order to be a professor I must work long hours at teaching students.
1. Because the mindset of work > leisure is rewarded in the U.S., so wealthier people aren't choosing work because they're wealthier, they're wealthier because they choose work.
2. Because they have more leverage not only in how much they work, but in what work they do. If you draw a stark line between your job and what you enjoy, naturally you'll want to minimize that work and maximize your leisure. But if you actually enjoy your job...
It's not so much doing the work, it's having to do the work, and not having control over my time, that gets under my collar.
1) Once you become rich you also have a fair bit of say in what it is that you do. If you are an hourly worker stocking shelves at Walmart your autonomy is limited and the chance that boredom sets in is much higher than it might be for most white collar employees. Where white collar employee's is a proxy for rich.
2) An hourly worker can only grow their income linearly with the number of hours that they work. The rich often have huge leverage with the time they put in vs the amount of money they get out. Sales is one example of this, a hedge fund employee might be another case. This tends to favour the "you eat what you kill" type of compensation.
3) The people I know who become rich often do so not by diversification but typically from concentrating on one endeavor, typically a company. In this case the company tends to become a very large part of their life. They aren't always at their desk but they are always thinking about their company. Maybe this is just an offshoot of point 2).