Exactly. The thing is, people who make say $120k/year but work 80h weeks, are at exactly the same level of compensation / status / respect as people who work 40h but make $60k/year.

This applies to salaried or consulting professionals of course; if you're working your ass off to build your own business and maybe hit big rewards in the future, it's a sensible choice. Otherwise, you're just busting your health and personal life for somebody else's benefit. Which is only acceptable if you have no choice (really need the money, and don't have the market value to earn the same in a job with more normal dedication).

They're the same per hour, but the absolute amount of money is still different. If you value 40 extra hours less than 60k, and you can somehow stay productive, there's no reason not to take the job that pays more money.

There are plenty of jobs that ask for 40 hours and pay 120k, and they don't have that much more status. (I'm not saying they're common, but they're not that rare either.) If you're talking 300k+ for that 80/week, then it might be worth it at that point, if you can get the job.

Who the hell works 80 hours a week to make a measly $120k? You should be making 300k+ for that kind of productivity. Otherwise, you are only cheating yourself. There are tons of 120-160k jobs at 40 hours/week

> Who the hell works 80 hours a week to make a measly $120k? You should be making 300k+ for that kind of productivity. Otherwise, you are only cheating yourself. There are tons of 120-160k jobs at 40 hours/week

Many video game developers work 80+hr weeks for well under 100k.

The (perceived?) prestige of being a video game developer makes up the difference.

in most countries there are different taxation tiers, at that point working more to earn the same salary per hour become even less efficient

The art of working though is to earn as much money as possible whilst doing the least amount of work.

60 hour a week people haven't got that idea yet.

Some of us do. I was semi retired at 40. At 47 I'm working again, at roughly 60 hours a week, because I love what I am doing and the money is stupidly great. I'll stop again right around 50 to 52, assuming the work keeps paying this well and I keep having fun.

I always find these types of discussions interesting. It's never about things like work ethic, efficiency, or even skill, it seems to devolve in to what everyone thinks is the ideal work schedule for someone else. I have friends that think I am crazy for working like I am now. I don't really care, I am happy, the clients are happy, and my bank account is most certainly happy. But I would never tell someone else they should work as much as I do, or that they should only work 30 hours, or some other random number of hours.

The exempt employees working for 50% more hours than they are compensated for really miss the boat. If you want to work 80 hours a week, god bless you. Just don't make it a charitable contribution.

I had to work a 90 hour week a few weeks ago to address a operational crisis. That netted me a bunch of overtime and a week off.

Who says that's the "art of working" though? Why not "make as much money as possible while enjoying what you do" or "enjoy what you work on while making as much money as possible" or just "make as much money as possible no matter what" or "just enjoy my work as much as possible no matter how much money I make"?

I think the "art of working" is deciding what kind of work you want to do, how big a part of your life you want it to be, and then doing that.

Shhh ... Stop that you're poking holes with all your "reality." We have this facade that we would like very much for you stop uncovering ... Now repeat after me: we are disrupters. We are "bettering the world." We are "empowering our species." We are "transforming human organisms into something amazing." Or, fill with whatever oddly worded scifi-esque hyperbole you can think of. And remember, we're doing this with fancy CSS and crud, oh and lots of JavaScript projects that re-implement stuff we could do 40 years ago. :)

OK, I don't want to be overly cynical here ... but come on, if you read some of the stuff in our echo chamber ... just don't take yourself so seriously. I mean I know there ideologues are only in startups so they can one day build some utopia in which there is no such thing as money ... but come on. :)

Only if working more hours means making more money. In my experience that simply isn't true. Your output at 80 hours isn't double. After a couple of weeks of that it's probably actually worse.