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I Took a Pay Cut for a More Meaningful Job

174 points by oumua_don17 7y ago

heyiforgotmypwd 7y ago
Life is short. You can't take money with you. Do what you want to be doing now, not later. Scrimp and live cheaply > hating a stressful life of luxury/debt/peonage/agony.
camillomiller 7y ago
Honestly, there’s so many variables you can’t assess about a new job, that unless you are 100% sure about it (or driven mad by your current job) you shouldn’t make the jump for less money. You wanna be happier? Then make the jump for a job that pays less because it requires you to WORK less. Try working 4 days instead of five or 6 hours instead of 8. Now that’s a change.
- travislane 7y ago
  You make a very good point. I think the biggest factors that can determine happiness at work are the immediate boss and the immediate teammates, two things that are very hard to assess until you have already joined the new place. But the money is easy to assess and guaranteed because it is written on paper and it is legally binding. A boss with a good attitude, however, isn't guaranteed, no matter how rosy things look during the interviews. So it makes sense to never take a pay cut unless there are other compensating factors that are also guaranteed. Working 4 days instead of 5, or 6 instead of 8, seem like those things that can be guaranteed by the contract and would be worth taking a pay cut for. This reminds me of a personal story when I interviewed for a very popular startup in the valley. They boasted of working 12 hours every day. I had a competing offer from a non-startup which required me to work about 7 hours every day. The CTO of the startup agreed to pay me 20% more than the non-startup. I politely explained the CTO that I could work for 12 hours every day, however, I would need a 70% more pay than the non-startup's offer, so that I feel I am being compensated commensurate to the time and effort I spend on the company. The CTO, now visibly upset, said, "If you like working 7 hours every day, please do join that other company!" while completing missing the point that I am okay to work for 7 hours or 12 hours as long as the pay is commensurate. Needless to say, I joined the other company for lesser pay and lesser working hours, and I am quite happy about the decision because it leaves with me a lot of time in the evenings to pursue my hobbies and also pick up new fun technologies to learn.
  - chrisjshull 7y ago
    I think it was pretty nice of you to use a linear scale. If a company wanted that much more of my time I would have quoted them a premium (just as an hourly employee might make overtime in such a situation).
    - tschmi2 7y ago
      Exactly. The utility of income is not linear. The first 10,000 dollars are much more useful than going from 190,000 to 200,000 a year. That's why the tax system has a progressive structure. If you want me to work 10% more then you need to pay me more than 10% more. And that does not even consider that my free time is very limited. If I have say 2h of completely free time everyday (24 hours minus work, commute, chores, gym, household crap, etc) and I need to work just 1 hour per day longer, then that cuts my free time per day in half. That is HUGE. You better pay me a lot for that.
      - tfha 7y ago
        There utility of disposable income is perhaps not linear. But I can tell you I enjoyed my second raise a lot more than my first. My first raise gave me just enough to start saving money over time, no room for quality of life improvements. My second raise is what allowed me to start spending money to enjoy myself.
      - waqf 7y ago
        What the tax system doesn't respect is that my life might be better and more productive if I spent a year earning 200,000 and then took a year off, then if I worked a 100,000/year job the entire time.
        rory 7y ago
        You can get around this by taking the year off from July through June (I've done September through March it worked well for me and my taxes) :)
- deadlyllama 7y ago
  I joined a startup back in 2009 and negotiated a 4 day work week for a 20% reduction in pay. Spent my day off doing community ministry work in a poor neighbourhood. It was great. The day off provided fulfilment that the job never would have. It helped that we were in the middle of the GFC and the idea of 9 day fortnights were in the news as a way for employers to cut costs. Later I managed to keep that job and work remotely, living in a smaller town with low living costs. Even better! The small town also had fibre in our street so for a while I had faster internet than head office :-)
  - jrib 7y ago
    That sounds like a great arrangement. What were your for workdays like, did you work 8ish hours or did you have to work longer days?
    - deadlyllama 7y ago
      Ha! In my interview they asked that. 8 hour days.
twblalock 7y ago
Looks like some of the people interviewed in the article are unhappy with their job change, and some are satisfied. The bottom line is it's a big risk to take, and such a choice may mean having a more fulfilling career but also having a lot less money in retirement. It would be interesting to see how many of the happy people in the article will still be happy when they are retired.
- jawns 7y ago
  ... and how many of them died before retirement and never got the enjoy the fruits of their hard work. ... and how many of them find themselves with lots of money in retirement, but discover that they have missed their window to spend quality time with the people they love. Spouse has died, children have grown and moved away, etc. So there are risks in the other direction as well.
  - jquery 7y ago
    My father retired "early" (at age 59) and was diagnosed with a brain tumor the same year and passed away. It's so true that "waiting to retire" is a huge risk if you're banking on indulging your hobbies then.
- mtbcoder 7y ago
  I think the lede is buried here, since it doesn't sound like any of them regretted their decision of seeking more meaningful work. The take-away seems to be that it may not happen right away with the first job you take and it may take some time to get adjusted (from a high-earning lifestyle).
sha_r_roh 7y ago
I can add some perspective. One and a half years back I took a 80 percent pay cut to join a 10 member startup. My salary now has improved to almost 60 percent of my previous company. I don't really regret that decision though and here are few things I clearly thought about before making the decision. 1. Learning and growth opportunities at the new place 2. Autonomy around my work 3. People I think people derive meaning when they see that their ideas are appreciated and users care about the product. I liked the people at my previous job, however the first two items were somehow missing. It also helped that one of the co-founders at the startup was a friend from undergrad.
hliyan 7y ago
I did this in 2013. Went from working in a lucrative, stressful high frequency trading systems development environment, into developing systems for humanitarian organizations. Loved the work, the next two years were the happiest and the most chilled out in my life. The negatives: burnt through a lot of my savings. I'm back in a different industry now, and the return was a bit painful, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Advice: 1. Have at least two years worth of savings, or an alternative source of income that can cover all your basic expenses, or don't do it. 2. Don't take a job that requires you to work harder than you did in your old job. In the beginning, the change will be invigorating, but soon it'll start to wear you down. During my "sabbatical", I worked only six hours a day at most, saving plenty of time for family and personal pursuits.
- einpoklum 7y ago
  But in your case there is also a moral dimension, not just self-fulfillment: Financial speculation is parasitic and socially harmful without actually providing anything of actual real value. So, IMHO that's a switch worth making for essentially any decent job. Also, about working harder - that depends on how hard your old job was; and some of that hardship is sometimes due to working on something you would rather not be doing.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    Financial speculation is parasitic and socially harmful without actually providing anything of actual real value. Is it? Farmers hedging against crop failure are getting a useful service, it's allowing them to invest in a crop without the risk of bankruptcy. The same goes for airlines who hedge the price of fuel, not many people would run a business that risked collapse if the price of oil goes up by 10%.
    - jnwatson 7y ago
      The futures market ran fine before the massive high frequency trading vampires running around. Liquidity isn’t a moral good.
2sk21 7y ago
This is what the FIRE movement (Financial Independence and Retire Early) is all about. I would highly recommend the book "Your money or your life" by Vicki Robin. The best approach to switching to more meaningful work is to start by getting your financial life in order. I speak with personal experience: I realized earlier this year that I did not need to feel stuck in a dead-end job and this gave me the courage to quit.
- fouc 7y ago
  I also highly recommend "Early Retirement Extreme: A Philosophical and Practical Guide to Financial Independence" by Jacob Lund Fisker.
  - sifar 7y ago
    I also recommend ERE too. It is really a distillation of the FI philosophy. Very good to have in your mental toolbox. The discussion about increasing the savings rate was really illuminating.Some might be put off by the "Extreme" part and the occasional tendency to go to great lengths to save costs, but that should taken as being tailored to oneself. The forum is also a nice place for lot of interesting discussion with good people.
- hos234 7y ago
  The Fire movement is pretty harmful imho. I think it benefits the authors and podcasters much more than it helps actual people. It probably works for very specific personality types. And really shouldn't be sold to anyone and everyone. I have friends in their 40s who retired early. And most of them are loosing their minds. It's sad and frustrating to watch. They have nothing much to focus on daily, and after a few years of it, you can see the cognitive decline compared to the rest of the peer group. Their people skills keep degenerating, from lack of constant challenges that the middle aged adult deals with at work or home. And that mounts over time, making lot of things harder and harder. I get all the frustrations people (rightly) have with institutions, govt and corporate robot wonderland, but I have done more interesting and personally satisfying things being within those structures, than I have done anything outside them. Financial independence is not just an emergency eject button when faced with difficult choices. It a big asset in the corporate world while competing with a cohort that is deep in debt (alimony/kids college/health expense/mortgages/golf club membership etc etc). Sooner or later everyone in any org knows who can be bought and who can't. Both kind of people have value to the org and impact on the org. People who misunderstand that, end up pushing the eject button prematurely.
deleted 7y ago
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lazyjones 7y ago
This confirms my belief that one should find a job they're good at and retire early instead of attempting to improve work-life-balance by trying out "feel-good" jobs. Success at what you're cut out to do makes you happier than chasing the current mainstream moral agenda, saving the world and so on.
- marble-drink 7y ago
  Absolutely. There's this popular sentiment today that says anyone can do/be anything. It's certainly popular in tech, but I have limited knowledge of other areas. Talent is becoming a bad word. But I'm convinced that one of the keys to happiness is to live a life that plays to your strengths. If you have a natural aptitude to problem solving etc then you could become a really good engineer, or you could become a mediocre violinist. Which is going to lead to a more fulfilling life? People are born with natural talents. We should be encouraging people to do what they're good at, not telling them they can do whatever they want to.
  - projektir 7y ago
    What if most people are not good at what society currently appears to value? I don't think most people are against doing what they are good at (or even, what they like), it's just that discoverability is poor and in a lot of cases the most important thing ends up being a certain brand of social or political skill, and not the other secondary skill you might posses. For people to play to their strengths, we need a society that can detect and nurture those strengths, and I don't think we have that right now.
  - john_moscow 7y ago
    I think this comes from the fact that we have automated/formalized most of the meaningful work. If you spend 10% of the time solving problems and 90% playing petty office politics, it doesn't really matter how good of a problem-solver you are. Especially if most of the problem-solving part comes down to following clearly defined procedures. The flip side is that the economic contribution of a single employee becomes vanishingly small, affecting the salaries, or rather what you can buy from them. I agree with you that building your life on top of your natural strengths is the most fulfilling way of spending it (having done so myself), but I think these days it is extremely hard and is only possible if you manage to start your own business and grow it to the point where it can pay your bills.
JDiculous 7y ago
I'm also now kind of doing the same thing. I left a high-paying job in NYC/SF and am now applying for remote jobs. The compensation for remote work looks like it'll technically be a paycut from my NYC/SF salary, but I think the freedom of being able to live where I want, work my own hours, and not have to deal with office bullshit will made it worth it - not to mention the cost savings from not giving away an extra #1-2k/month of your paycheck to NYC/SF landlords.
JSavageReal 7y ago
The problem with trying to find meaningful work is that 1. the pay is generally terrible, and hours will likely be long 2. if someone is paying you, it's still a "job", with all the implications, responsibilities, and power dynamics that go with that. You still take orders from a boss all day. And if it were so damn fun, then they probably wouldn't be paying you for it. The most fun internships/jobs I've ever had were all unpaid, because I could come and go as I please, and literally work on whatever I wanted. The second you're getting paid, your personal interests are thrown out the window, and your job is now to take orders from your boss. Of course there are exceptions. I'd imagine that being a tenured professor would be pretty sweet (though getting a job like that these days is extremely difficult and competitive), or if you're a doctor then helping save lives in Africa or something would probably be extremely fulfilling. Being a politician seems like it would feel meaningful, and they get paid solid six figure salaries. But overall, the search for a meaningful job that also pays decently and doesn't require crazy hours is like searching for a unicorn, so for most people with the talent/luck/opportunity of working high paying jobs, achieving financial independence first before seeking meaningful work is probably the smartest move.
- yodsanklai 7y ago
  > being a tenured professor would be pretty sweet The grass is always greener. I was a tenured professor (the European equivalent). Overall it was a very good position but not necessarily meaningful, and certainly not lucrative. Besides, being somewhat a second-class researcher, I was kind of stuck in my university. I thought for a long time this was the Graal job, until I realized that there were so many cool things to do. I eventually switched job, and I regret that I hadn't done it before. Simply changing job is very refreshing.
  - jaynetics 7y ago
    What was your next job?
  - gyuserbti 7y ago
    Also tenured professor who left. I don't think of myself as second rate but academics, at least in many fields of the US, is becoming full of bullshit-chasing fads. Universities see your role as to bring in money from the federal gov, which means constant pressure to join bandwagons even when you vehemently disagree. I never felt as little intellectual freedom as I did in my tenured position. Mix it with dysfunctional top-heavy administration and it's a toxic mix. It probably varies by institution too, but then you run into the bizarre stochastic kobuki of academic hiring in a Ponzi scheme environment with excess graduates.
yboris 7y ago
Any discussion about a meaningful job will benefit from a look at 80,000 Hours -- https://80000hours.org https://80000hours.org Making a positive difference in the world is a great thing to do.
spodek 7y ago
Nothing creates more meaning for you than to create the opportunities based on knowing what you love. Since we're all different, different things create meaning for us differently. Rarely will a job someone else creates push our buttons best. I created my course at NYU and wrote the book Initiative https://www.amazon.com/Initiative-Proven-Method-Bring-Passions/dp/1733039902 https://www.amazon.com/Initiative-Proven-Method-Bring-Passio... to create a step-by-step process to unearth each person's passions. I find that reflection alone or taking online quizzes doesn't reveal passions like action does -- that is, taking initiative (thoughtfully, with a process that works). Recently, one person started blogging his results doing the exercises. As of August 25, here's his latest: https://anthemoftheadventurer.com/2019/08/23/exercise-6-10-people-closer-to-my-field https://anthemoftheadventurer.com/2019/08/23/exercise-6-10-p....
- DSingularity 7y ago
  Thanks. I hope I can find ways to extract the essence of your method and subtly incorporate it into CS education.
  - spodek 7y ago
    Let me know if I can help. I'm easy to find online.
- ggg3 7y ago
  who were the 10 people you asked for advice while becoming a self help professor at NYU?
- ggg3 7y ago
  i meant my question without malice. in case it is not answered in the book. (cant edit it now)
negamax 7y ago
I will chime in here as I did something along these lines. It's not worth it. If you/anyone wants to do meaningful work. Make lots of money, use the extra money for things that matter to you. It's a hard learned lesson. But everything improves when you are getting paid more. Your colleagues, the opportunities, literally everything
- navigatesol 7y ago
  >Make lots of money, use the extra money for things that matter to you. "I'll fix it later." I suppose this is how the people building our surveillance state justify the work they're doing?
  - negamax 7y ago
    I don't know how you reached to that conjecture. This whole "state is evil" idea is very mass market now. And I hear even people just entering the workforce holding such views. I personally think it's just mass consumption gone crazy. Where people are completely detached to reality. They don't really think how governments work and why they take some decisions. It's some netflix series, movie, some article that has slowly turned entertainment into their reality.
- sbergot 7y ago
  This is incorrect. I took a 10% pay cut to join another shop with a better work culture. In this case it was not that the new domain was more meaningful but rather the way everyone worked. When you can feel the impact of your work on your clients a lot of things also improve.
  - negamax 7y ago
    I am glad it worked out for you. But give it time. Everything compounds. The firm that's paying you more is signalling that it's financially healthy and taking right business decisions. Of course pay cut for a startup adventure that's compensated by possible rewards using stock grants, is not comparable
dandigangi 7y ago
I feel this on some level but at the same time, I've personally never had an issue finding money to go along with meaningful work in our industry. Maybe I'm just lucky though! A few of my friends work in public sectors, love the work, and don't make much but they are definitely happy. Just can't see myself not making good money over something I'm passionate and reasonably good at. Especially for the level of effort and impact I'm making.
kazinator 7y ago
> Most Americans say they would give up a more lucrative job for a more meaningful job that pays less in a heartbeat. {citation-needed} Obviously, someone struggling to make ends meet and having little retirement savings is hardy in that position. Oh wait, we're only talking about what people say! Well, sure, people say such things --- in an idle moment when thinking ramifications through is temporarily off the table. "Gee, I wish I had a more meaningful job, even if it paid less (just as long as I could somehow maintain my current lifestyle). Also, I won't get into numbers about how much less. Maybe just a few hundred dollars a year less, that type of thing." The key metric would be, how many people act on this impulse. How many Americans are actually switching to lower paid jobs that are more meaningful? And are actually meaningful, that is, and where that is a choice: not being forced to switch to a lower-paying job and then rationalizing it afterward as being more meaningful. I suspect plenty of people would also take a less meaningful job for more pay. What could be less meaningful then getting money for doing nothing? Yet, that's what a lot of people want, such as anyone who buys a lottery ticket.
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  Sure people in prison SAY they want to leave, but how many of them ACT on it? That’s the REAL question.
  - kazinator 7y ago
    Surely getting a lower paying job is easier than breaking out of prison. Not to mention that they aren't going to send dogs after you in the woods to get you back behind your old desk.
- cissou 7y ago
  The citation is provided, with a link to the study: > Nine out of 10 Americans say they would give up a significant portion of their paycheck–up to 23% of their lifetime earnings–if they could swap their day job for more meaningful work, according to the Harvard Business Review.
- ben509 7y ago
  > Also, I won't get into numbers about how much less. They get into numbers in the second paragraph; up to 23% of lifetime earnings. > The key metric would be, how many people act on this impulse. We can get a rough tally of how many are acting on it from labor stats[1]. And I'm assuming all of these are what people view as "meaningful" work; I work in finance and find it plenty meaningful but I imagine that's a minority view. Quoth the BLS: Total employment: 144,733,270 Community and social service: 2,171,820 Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations: 1,951,170 Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations: 8,646,730 Healthcare Support Occupations: 4,117,450 Education, Training, and Library Occupations: 8,779,780 So if those broad areas hit the "meaningful" buttons, you're looking at about 17% of the workforce. > What could be less meaningful then getting money for doing nothing? Totally had that doing government contracting. The trouble is you realize it's a trap: if you ever need a real job your lack of doing anything means you're fucked. > Yet, that's what a lot of people want, such as anyone who buys a lottery ticket. More realistically, anyone who is investing passively. But that's not a job or your profession, and when people talk about "meaning" they're asking "who am I?" If you're a carpenter, your identity is wrapped up in the houses you build, for instance. What the article is missing is the classic dichotomy of work to live vs. live to work. If your profession is who you are, meaningful work is more important in shaping your identity. But if it's not, the "work to live" paradigm, you're making money to support something else. If you're working to take care of your family, you're a father or a mother first. If you're working to support your art or projects, you're an artist or an engineer regardless of your paid job title. [1]: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm
Dumblydorr 7y ago
Meaning is just a story that people tell themselves about their job. Its as much about personality and framing as it is about the actual tasks and duties performed.
marcinzm 7y ago
Personally I disagree with both the article and most of the comments. I don't particularly care about meaningful work, I enjoy solving problems that matter and I'm good at it so I want to do that. Retirement, however, doesn't interest me since most interesting impact-full problems are in industry. I actually like having a boss who does all the boring things regarding running a company so I don't have to. At the same time I will trade money for a less stressful job (ie: less politics, better boss, less boring work, etc.).
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  Can you say more about the difference between impact and meaning? What would be an example of meaningless impact that has value to you?
  - marcinzm 7y ago
    To me, meaningful would mean something like helping the poor or working for a decent non-profit. On the other hand, working for an ad-tech company and increasing revenue by 40% through some machine learning would have impact (on the company, clients, users, etc.) but not be particularly meaningful.
    - bigwavedave 7y ago
      I don't see "meaningful" as referring to something like helping the poor, I see it as referring to feeling fulfilled. If that involves helping the poor, more power to you. Me, I took a $20k paycut to switch from writing node js all day to pen testing at another firm and I could not be happier. It's been two years since switching and I still look forward to waking up and going to work each day instead of groaning and dying a little on the inside. Paying $20k/year to be happy and feel fulfilled is a complete steal in my book. Just my own anecdata though.
    - ljm 7y ago
      It feels like you’re talking about fulfilment, at which point we’re not really talking about the work itself, but the stuff that gets you out of bed in the morning.
xwdv 7y ago
Can’t see how encouraging people to take more “meaningful” jobs isn’t just another form a vicious ladder kicking disguised as feel-good advice that will stunt their financial growth for several years, and possibly make them unable to ever catch up to their peers. People who already have a fair amount of wealth independence are the ones who can afford to take “meaningful” jobs. If that’s not you, there’s no shame in being in service to a corporation and getting paid good money for it. Our values of what is meaningful changes over time, and it’s not worth taking paycuts to chase such mercurial ideals.
- astrid88 7y ago
  I agree, sometimes you have wait and work for a guy you do not like in a job you do not particularly enjoy. If you can stand it and it pays your bills it's ok. I guess, the real problem is when people have the opportunity to change their jobs for the one of their dreams but they are simply too scared to get out of their comfort zone.
tempsy 7y ago
I think the reality is, if we're talking about tech, that many companies market their "mission-driven" culture to make it seem like what they do somehow has more meaning than working at Google or Amazon but it's mostly just a ploy to get people to do exactly this e.g. take a pay cut and feel OK about it when, in reality, what they do is probably not any more "good" for the world than what a big co is doing. I recently went to a talk on "effective altruism" and came away feeling like that was a better model for impact e.g. make a lot of money and give a lot of it away to organizations and causes where the measurable ROI is the highest.
replyguy912 7y ago
I think the question around performing meaningful work is largely rhetorical; the challenge is where do you find meaningful work? We tend to love the romantic notion of throwing away the high paying meaningless (to us) job to follow your dream, but in reality it tends to be more of a dream than the way things work. I wish more people would put some deep thought into (1) defining what meaningful work in their context would look like, and (2) building a strategy for moving from their current state to the desire one that doesn't involve essentially throwing away what they have to start over. As far as trading money for meaning, I see this as an alternative view on the well known limits of extrinsic motivators; you'll trade any money beyond your personal level for deeper purpose. The key then is figuring out what this amount is, then evolving into meaningfulness.
mlthoughts2018 7y ago
What part of the employment agreement guarantees you “meaningfulness”? I know the parts that guarantee my pay & benefits.
werber 7y ago
I would be happy to take a pay cut to help people again, but I'm not willing to take a big enough pay cut to be a realistic candidate in the non profit world. The conflict between my real and ideal values tears me apart daily
coldtea 7y ago
>“I was eight months pregnant,” she says. “They escorted me to my desk with a box to collect my personal belongings, and that was it.” In many a European country the company would be illegal in doing this. Employers only recently got the ability to fire pregnant/breastfeeding women in the EU, and only as part of mass lay-offs.
- throwawayjava 7y ago
  It's illegal in the US to fire someone for being pregnant (FMLA).
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Yes, but you can mask it as not being for it.
  - asdff 7y ago
    unless you work at will
    - throwawayjava 7y ago
      AFAIK FMLA covers at-will employment (which is the vast majority of employment in the US)
alexbanks 7y ago
I took a pay cut to go to my last company. Every employee of the original company was getting abused so badly by the founder that I really would've taken anything. It just so happened that the company I was taking a pay cut to go to had tremendous opportunity for growth, and what started as a medium sized paycut turned into a huge pay increase. I'm glad it worked out that way, but I'm certain that pattern is in no way common. Now, I would probably take a small cut to do something I was excited about. I've been working with my therapist to try and figure out specifically what that would be, but I haven't had a ton of luck.
coldtea 7y ago
>Katy Rey was running a large call center in Florida and working long hours when she heard about opportunities at Tesla’s solar panel division. Rey jumped at the chance to work for a company where she felt she could do something more meaningful, even though her salary would be slashed in half. “Everyone was taking pay cuts in the room,” she says of an early training in Vegas. “And the people they recruited were outstanding.” They could deal with the pay cut, Rey says, because they felt like they were “saving the world.” Well, Musk himself did not take any pay cut, so that should have been a pointer... >Rey felt like the company found intelligent people and convinced them to push their limits. (...) Six months into the job, Rey was abruptly laid off over the phone When "changing the world", companies should start with how the treat their own employees...
exabrial 7y ago
I did this once. Great life experience. I left two years later, but that was after traveling the world on the company dime.
dzonga 7y ago
as a developer, and software builder this is relevant. would you make more writing in a code / framework you don't like. or take a small paycut but be remote and write code in a language / framework you like ?
camgunz 7y ago
I took a $40k pay cut to work in social good, and I can't recommend it enough. I have an advantage in that I don't have a family or dependents though. Just putting this out there in case any one's thinking about it but thinks it's too crazy: it's a lot more crazy to spend the most productive hours of your life on something you at best don't care about, and at worst actively despise.

174 points by oumua_don17 7y ago

Life is short. You can't take money with you. Do what you want to be doing now, not later. Scrimp and live cheaply > hating a stressful life of luxury/debt/peonage/agony.

camillomiller 7y ago

Honestly, there’s so many variables you can’t assess about a new job, that unless you are 100% sure about it (or driven mad by your current job) you shouldn’t make the jump for less money. You wanna be happier? Then make the jump for a job that pays less because it requires you to WORK less. Try working 4 days instead of five or 6 hours instead of 8. Now that’s a change.

travislane 7y ago
You make a very good point. I think the biggest factors that can determine happiness at work are the immediate boss and the immediate teammates, two things that are very hard to assess until you have already joined the new place. But the money is easy to assess and guaranteed because it is written on paper and it is legally binding. A boss with a good attitude, however, isn't guaranteed, no matter how rosy things look during the interviews. So it makes sense to never take a pay cut unless there are other compensating factors that are also guaranteed. Working 4 days instead of 5, or 6 instead of 8, seem like those things that can be guaranteed by the contract and would be worth taking a pay cut for. This reminds me of a personal story when I interviewed for a very popular startup in the valley. They boasted of working 12 hours every day. I had a competing offer from a non-startup which required me to work about 7 hours every day. The CTO of the startup agreed to pay me 20% more than the non-startup. I politely explained the CTO that I could work for 12 hours every day, however, I would need a 70% more pay than the non-startup's offer, so that I feel I am being compensated commensurate to the time and effort I spend on the company. The CTO, now visibly upset, said, "If you like working 7 hours every day, please do join that other company!" while completing missing the point that I am okay to work for 7 hours or 12 hours as long as the pay is commensurate. Needless to say, I joined the other company for lesser pay and lesser working hours, and I am quite happy about the decision because it leaves with me a lot of time in the evenings to pursue my hobbies and also pick up new fun technologies to learn.
- chrisjshull 7y ago
  I think it was pretty nice of you to use a linear scale. If a company wanted that much more of my time I would have quoted them a premium (just as an hourly employee might make overtime in such a situation).
  - tschmi2 7y ago
    Exactly. The utility of income is not linear. The first 10,000 dollars are much more useful than going from 190,000 to 200,000 a year. That's why the tax system has a progressive structure. If you want me to work 10% more then you need to pay me more than 10% more. And that does not even consider that my free time is very limited. If I have say 2h of completely free time everyday (24 hours minus work, commute, chores, gym, household crap, etc) and I need to work just 1 hour per day longer, then that cuts my free time per day in half. That is HUGE. You better pay me a lot for that.
    - tfha 7y ago
      There utility of disposable income is perhaps not linear. But I can tell you I enjoyed my second raise a lot more than my first. My first raise gave me just enough to start saving money over time, no room for quality of life improvements. My second raise is what allowed me to start spending money to enjoy myself.
    - waqf 7y ago
      What the tax system doesn't respect is that my life might be better and more productive if I spent a year earning 200,000 and then took a year off, then if I worked a 100,000/year job the entire time.
      - rory 7y ago
        You can get around this by taking the year off from July through June (I've done September through March it worked well for me and my taxes) :)
deadlyllama 7y ago
I joined a startup back in 2009 and negotiated a 4 day work week for a 20% reduction in pay. Spent my day off doing community ministry work in a poor neighbourhood. It was great. The day off provided fulfilment that the job never would have. It helped that we were in the middle of the GFC and the idea of 9 day fortnights were in the news as a way for employers to cut costs. Later I managed to keep that job and work remotely, living in a smaller town with low living costs. Even better! The small town also had fibre in our street so for a while I had faster internet than head office :-)
- jrib 7y ago
  That sounds like a great arrangement. What were your for workdays like, did you work 8ish hours or did you have to work longer days?
  - deadlyllama 7y ago
    Ha! In my interview they asked that. 8 hour days.

twblalock 7y ago

Looks like some of the people interviewed in the article are unhappy with their job change, and some are satisfied. The bottom line is it's a big risk to take, and such a choice may mean having a more fulfilling career but also having a lot less money in retirement. It would be interesting to see how many of the happy people in the article will still be happy when they are retired.

jawns 7y ago
... and how many of them died before retirement and never got the enjoy the fruits of their hard work. ... and how many of them find themselves with lots of money in retirement, but discover that they have missed their window to spend quality time with the people they love. Spouse has died, children have grown and moved away, etc. So there are risks in the other direction as well.
- jquery 7y ago
  My father retired "early" (at age 59) and was diagnosed with a brain tumor the same year and passed away. It's so true that "waiting to retire" is a huge risk if you're banking on indulging your hobbies then.
mtbcoder 7y ago
I think the lede is buried here, since it doesn't sound like any of them regretted their decision of seeking more meaningful work. The take-away seems to be that it may not happen right away with the first job you take and it may take some time to get adjusted (from a high-earning lifestyle).

sha_r_roh 7y ago

I can add some perspective. One and a half years back I took a 80 percent pay cut to join a 10 member startup. My salary now has improved to almost 60 percent of my previous company. I don't really regret that decision though and here are few things I clearly thought about before making the decision. 1. Learning and growth opportunities at the new place 2. Autonomy around my work 3. People I think people derive meaning when they see that their ideas are appreciated and users care about the product. I liked the people at my previous job, however the first two items were somehow missing. It also helped that one of the co-founders at the startup was a friend from undergrad.

hliyan 7y ago

I did this in 2013. Went from working in a lucrative, stressful high frequency trading systems development environment, into developing systems for humanitarian organizations. Loved the work, the next two years were the happiest and the most chilled out in my life. The negatives: burnt through a lot of my savings. I'm back in a different industry now, and the return was a bit painful, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Advice: 1. Have at least two years worth of savings, or an alternative source of income that can cover all your basic expenses, or don't do it. 2. Don't take a job that requires you to work harder than you did in your old job. In the beginning, the change will be invigorating, but soon it'll start to wear you down. During my "sabbatical", I worked only six hours a day at most, saving plenty of time for family and personal pursuits.

einpoklum 7y ago
But in your case there is also a moral dimension, not just self-fulfillment: Financial speculation is parasitic and socially harmful without actually providing anything of actual real value. So, IMHO that's a switch worth making for essentially any decent job. Also, about working harder - that depends on how hard your old job was; and some of that hardship is sometimes due to working on something you would rather not be doing.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  Financial speculation is parasitic and socially harmful without actually providing anything of actual real value. Is it? Farmers hedging against crop failure are getting a useful service, it's allowing them to invest in a crop without the risk of bankruptcy. The same goes for airlines who hedge the price of fuel, not many people would run a business that risked collapse if the price of oil goes up by 10%.
  - jnwatson 7y ago
    The futures market ran fine before the massive high frequency trading vampires running around. Liquidity isn’t a moral good.

2sk21 7y ago

This is what the FIRE movement (Financial Independence and Retire Early) is all about. I would highly recommend the book "Your money or your life" by Vicki Robin. The best approach to switching to more meaningful work is to start by getting your financial life in order. I speak with personal experience: I realized earlier this year that I did not need to feel stuck in a dead-end job and this gave me the courage to quit.

fouc 7y ago
I also highly recommend "Early Retirement Extreme: A Philosophical and Practical Guide to Financial Independence" by Jacob Lund Fisker.
- sifar 7y ago
  I also recommend ERE too. It is really a distillation of the FI philosophy. Very good to have in your mental toolbox. The discussion about increasing the savings rate was really illuminating.Some might be put off by the "Extreme" part and the occasional tendency to go to great lengths to save costs, but that should taken as being tailored to oneself. The forum is also a nice place for lot of interesting discussion with good people.
hos234 7y ago
The Fire movement is pretty harmful imho. I think it benefits the authors and podcasters much more than it helps actual people. It probably works for very specific personality types. And really shouldn't be sold to anyone and everyone. I have friends in their 40s who retired early. And most of them are loosing their minds. It's sad and frustrating to watch. They have nothing much to focus on daily, and after a few years of it, you can see the cognitive decline compared to the rest of the peer group. Their people skills keep degenerating, from lack of constant challenges that the middle aged adult deals with at work or home. And that mounts over time, making lot of things harder and harder. I get all the frustrations people (rightly) have with institutions, govt and corporate robot wonderland, but I have done more interesting and personally satisfying things being within those structures, than I have done anything outside them. Financial independence is not just an emergency eject button when faced with difficult choices. It a big asset in the corporate world while competing with a cohort that is deep in debt (alimony/kids college/health expense/mortgages/golf club membership etc etc). Sooner or later everyone in any org knows who can be bought and who can't. Both kind of people have value to the org and impact on the org. People who misunderstand that, end up pushing the eject button prematurely.

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lazyjones 7y ago

This confirms my belief that one should find a job they're good at and retire early instead of attempting to improve work-life-balance by trying out "feel-good" jobs. Success at what you're cut out to do makes you happier than chasing the current mainstream moral agenda, saving the world and so on.

marble-drink 7y ago
Absolutely. There's this popular sentiment today that says anyone can do/be anything. It's certainly popular in tech, but I have limited knowledge of other areas. Talent is becoming a bad word. But I'm convinced that one of the keys to happiness is to live a life that plays to your strengths. If you have a natural aptitude to problem solving etc then you could become a really good engineer, or you could become a mediocre violinist. Which is going to lead to a more fulfilling life? People are born with natural talents. We should be encouraging people to do what they're good at, not telling them they can do whatever they want to.
- projektir 7y ago
  What if most people are not good at what society currently appears to value? I don't think most people are against doing what they are good at (or even, what they like), it's just that discoverability is poor and in a lot of cases the most important thing ends up being a certain brand of social or political skill, and not the other secondary skill you might posses. For people to play to their strengths, we need a society that can detect and nurture those strengths, and I don't think we have that right now.
- john_moscow 7y ago
  I think this comes from the fact that we have automated/formalized most of the meaningful work. If you spend 10% of the time solving problems and 90% playing petty office politics, it doesn't really matter how good of a problem-solver you are. Especially if most of the problem-solving part comes down to following clearly defined procedures. The flip side is that the economic contribution of a single employee becomes vanishingly small, affecting the salaries, or rather what you can buy from them. I agree with you that building your life on top of your natural strengths is the most fulfilling way of spending it (having done so myself), but I think these days it is extremely hard and is only possible if you manage to start your own business and grow it to the point where it can pay your bills.

JDiculous 7y ago

I'm also now kind of doing the same thing. I left a high-paying job in NYC/SF and am now applying for remote jobs. The compensation for remote work looks like it'll technically be a paycut from my NYC/SF salary, but I think the freedom of being able to live where I want, work my own hours, and not have to deal with office bullshit will made it worth it - not to mention the cost savings from not giving away an extra #1-2k/month of your paycheck to NYC/SF landlords.

JSavageReal 7y ago

The problem with trying to find meaningful work is that 1. the pay is generally terrible, and hours will likely be long 2. if someone is paying you, it's still a "job", with all the implications, responsibilities, and power dynamics that go with that. You still take orders from a boss all day. And if it were so damn fun, then they probably wouldn't be paying you for it. The most fun internships/jobs I've ever had were all unpaid, because I could come and go as I please, and literally work on whatever I wanted. The second you're getting paid, your personal interests are thrown out the window, and your job is now to take orders from your boss. Of course there are exceptions. I'd imagine that being a tenured professor would be pretty sweet (though getting a job like that these days is extremely difficult and competitive), or if you're a doctor then helping save lives in Africa or something would probably be extremely fulfilling. Being a politician seems like it would feel meaningful, and they get paid solid six figure salaries. But overall, the search for a meaningful job that also pays decently and doesn't require crazy hours is like searching for a unicorn, so for most people with the talent/luck/opportunity of working high paying jobs, achieving financial independence first before seeking meaningful work is probably the smartest move.

yodsanklai 7y ago
> being a tenured professor would be pretty sweet The grass is always greener. I was a tenured professor (the European equivalent). Overall it was a very good position but not necessarily meaningful, and certainly not lucrative. Besides, being somewhat a second-class researcher, I was kind of stuck in my university. I thought for a long time this was the Graal job, until I realized that there were so many cool things to do. I eventually switched job, and I regret that I hadn't done it before. Simply changing job is very refreshing.
- jaynetics 7y ago
  What was your next job?
- gyuserbti 7y ago
  Also tenured professor who left. I don't think of myself as second rate but academics, at least in many fields of the US, is becoming full of bullshit-chasing fads. Universities see your role as to bring in money from the federal gov, which means constant pressure to join bandwagons even when you vehemently disagree. I never felt as little intellectual freedom as I did in my tenured position. Mix it with dysfunctional top-heavy administration and it's a toxic mix. It probably varies by institution too, but then you run into the bizarre stochastic kobuki of academic hiring in a Ponzi scheme environment with excess graduates.

yboris 7y ago

Any discussion about a meaningful job will benefit from a look at 80,000 Hours -- https://80000hours.org https://80000hours.org Making a positive difference in the world is a great thing to do.

spodek 7y ago

Nothing creates more meaning for you than to create the opportunities based on knowing what you love. Since we're all different, different things create meaning for us differently. Rarely will a job someone else creates push our buttons best. I created my course at NYU and wrote the book Initiative https://www.amazon.com/Initiative-Proven-Method-Bring-Passions/dp/1733039902 https://www.amazon.com/Initiative-Proven-Method-Bring-Passio... to create a step-by-step process to unearth each person's passions. I find that reflection alone or taking online quizzes doesn't reveal passions like action does -- that is, taking initiative (thoughtfully, with a process that works). Recently, one person started blogging his results doing the exercises. As of August 25, here's his latest: https://anthemoftheadventurer.com/2019/08/23/exercise-6-10-people-closer-to-my-field https://anthemoftheadventurer.com/2019/08/23/exercise-6-10-p....

DSingularity 7y ago
Thanks. I hope I can find ways to extract the essence of your method and subtly incorporate it into CS education.
- spodek 7y ago
  Let me know if I can help. I'm easy to find online.
ggg3 7y ago
who were the 10 people you asked for advice while becoming a self help professor at NYU?
ggg3 7y ago
i meant my question without malice. in case it is not answered in the book. (cant edit it now)

negamax 7y ago

I will chime in here as I did something along these lines. It's not worth it. If you/anyone wants to do meaningful work. Make lots of money, use the extra money for things that matter to you. It's a hard learned lesson. But everything improves when you are getting paid more. Your colleagues, the opportunities, literally everything

navigatesol 7y ago
>Make lots of money, use the extra money for things that matter to you. "I'll fix it later." I suppose this is how the people building our surveillance state justify the work they're doing?
- negamax 7y ago
  I don't know how you reached to that conjecture. This whole "state is evil" idea is very mass market now. And I hear even people just entering the workforce holding such views. I personally think it's just mass consumption gone crazy. Where people are completely detached to reality. They don't really think how governments work and why they take some decisions. It's some netflix series, movie, some article that has slowly turned entertainment into their reality.
sbergot 7y ago
This is incorrect. I took a 10% pay cut to join another shop with a better work culture. In this case it was not that the new domain was more meaningful but rather the way everyone worked. When you can feel the impact of your work on your clients a lot of things also improve.
- negamax 7y ago
  I am glad it worked out for you. But give it time. Everything compounds. The firm that's paying you more is signalling that it's financially healthy and taking right business decisions. Of course pay cut for a startup adventure that's compensated by possible rewards using stock grants, is not comparable

dandigangi 7y ago

I feel this on some level but at the same time, I've personally never had an issue finding money to go along with meaningful work in our industry. Maybe I'm just lucky though! A few of my friends work in public sectors, love the work, and don't make much but they are definitely happy. Just can't see myself not making good money over something I'm passionate and reasonably good at. Especially for the level of effort and impact I'm making.

kazinator 7y ago

> Most Americans say they would give up a more lucrative job for a more meaningful job that pays less in a heartbeat. {citation-needed} Obviously, someone struggling to make ends meet and having little retirement savings is hardy in that position. Oh wait, we're only talking about what people say! Well, sure, people say such things --- in an idle moment when thinking ramifications through is temporarily off the table. "Gee, I wish I had a more meaningful job, even if it paid less (just as long as I could somehow maintain my current lifestyle). Also, I won't get into numbers about how much less. Maybe just a few hundred dollars a year less, that type of thing." The key metric would be, how many people act on this impulse. How many Americans are actually switching to lower paid jobs that are more meaningful? And are actually meaningful, that is, and where that is a choice: not being forced to switch to a lower-paying job and then rationalizing it afterward as being more meaningful. I suspect plenty of people would also take a less meaningful job for more pay. What could be less meaningful then getting money for doing nothing? Yet, that's what a lot of people want, such as anyone who buys a lottery ticket.

erikpukinskis 7y ago
Sure people in prison SAY they want to leave, but how many of them ACT on it? That’s the REAL question.
- kazinator 7y ago
  Surely getting a lower paying job is easier than breaking out of prison. Not to mention that they aren't going to send dogs after you in the woods to get you back behind your old desk.
cissou 7y ago
The citation is provided, with a link to the study: > Nine out of 10 Americans say they would give up a significant portion of their paycheck–up to 23% of their lifetime earnings–if they could swap their day job for more meaningful work, according to the Harvard Business Review.
ben509 7y ago
> Also, I won't get into numbers about how much less. They get into numbers in the second paragraph; up to 23% of lifetime earnings. > The key metric would be, how many people act on this impulse. We can get a rough tally of how many are acting on it from labor stats[1]. And I'm assuming all of these are what people view as "meaningful" work; I work in finance and find it plenty meaningful but I imagine that's a minority view. Quoth the BLS: Total employment: 144,733,270 Community and social service: 2,171,820 Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations: 1,951,170 Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations: 8,646,730 Healthcare Support Occupations: 4,117,450 Education, Training, and Library Occupations: 8,779,780 So if those broad areas hit the "meaningful" buttons, you're looking at about 17% of the workforce. > What could be less meaningful then getting money for doing nothing? Totally had that doing government contracting. The trouble is you realize it's a trap: if you ever need a real job your lack of doing anything means you're fucked. > Yet, that's what a lot of people want, such as anyone who buys a lottery ticket. More realistically, anyone who is investing passively. But that's not a job or your profession, and when people talk about "meaning" they're asking "who am I?" If you're a carpenter, your identity is wrapped up in the houses you build, for instance. What the article is missing is the classic dichotomy of work to live vs. live to work. If your profession is who you are, meaningful work is more important in shaping your identity. But if it's not, the "work to live" paradigm, you're making money to support something else. If you're working to take care of your family, you're a father or a mother first. If you're working to support your art or projects, you're an artist or an engineer regardless of your paid job title. [1]: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm

Dumblydorr 7y ago

Meaning is just a story that people tell themselves about their job. Its as much about personality and framing as it is about the actual tasks and duties performed.

marcinzm 7y ago

Personally I disagree with both the article and most of the comments. I don't particularly care about meaningful work, I enjoy solving problems that matter and I'm good at it so I want to do that. Retirement, however, doesn't interest me since most interesting impact-full problems are in industry. I actually like having a boss who does all the boring things regarding running a company so I don't have to. At the same time I will trade money for a less stressful job (ie: less politics, better boss, less boring work, etc.).

erikpukinskis 7y ago
Can you say more about the difference between impact and meaning? What would be an example of meaningless impact that has value to you?
- marcinzm 7y ago
  To me, meaningful would mean something like helping the poor or working for a decent non-profit. On the other hand, working for an ad-tech company and increasing revenue by 40% through some machine learning would have impact (on the company, clients, users, etc.) but not be particularly meaningful.
  - bigwavedave 7y ago
    I don't see "meaningful" as referring to something like helping the poor, I see it as referring to feeling fulfilled. If that involves helping the poor, more power to you. Me, I took a $20k paycut to switch from writing node js all day to pen testing at another firm and I could not be happier. It's been two years since switching and I still look forward to waking up and going to work each day instead of groaning and dying a little on the inside. Paying $20k/year to be happy and feel fulfilled is a complete steal in my book. Just my own anecdata though.
  - ljm 7y ago
    It feels like you’re talking about fulfilment, at which point we’re not really talking about the work itself, but the stuff that gets you out of bed in the morning.

xwdv 7y ago

Can’t see how encouraging people to take more “meaningful” jobs isn’t just another form a vicious ladder kicking disguised as feel-good advice that will stunt their financial growth for several years, and possibly make them unable to ever catch up to their peers. People who already have a fair amount of wealth independence are the ones who can afford to take “meaningful” jobs. If that’s not you, there’s no shame in being in service to a corporation and getting paid good money for it. Our values of what is meaningful changes over time, and it’s not worth taking paycuts to chase such mercurial ideals.

astrid88 7y ago
I agree, sometimes you have wait and work for a guy you do not like in a job you do not particularly enjoy. If you can stand it and it pays your bills it's ok. I guess, the real problem is when people have the opportunity to change their jobs for the one of their dreams but they are simply too scared to get out of their comfort zone.

tempsy 7y ago

I think the reality is, if we're talking about tech, that many companies market their "mission-driven" culture to make it seem like what they do somehow has more meaning than working at Google or Amazon but it's mostly just a ploy to get people to do exactly this e.g. take a pay cut and feel OK about it when, in reality, what they do is probably not any more "good" for the world than what a big co is doing. I recently went to a talk on "effective altruism" and came away feeling like that was a better model for impact e.g. make a lot of money and give a lot of it away to organizations and causes where the measurable ROI is the highest.

replyguy912 7y ago

I think the question around performing meaningful work is largely rhetorical; the challenge is where do you find meaningful work? We tend to love the romantic notion of throwing away the high paying meaningless (to us) job to follow your dream, but in reality it tends to be more of a dream than the way things work. I wish more people would put some deep thought into (1) defining what meaningful work in their context would look like, and (2) building a strategy for moving from their current state to the desire one that doesn't involve essentially throwing away what they have to start over. As far as trading money for meaning, I see this as an alternative view on the well known limits of extrinsic motivators; you'll trade any money beyond your personal level for deeper purpose. The key then is figuring out what this amount is, then evolving into meaningfulness.

mlthoughts2018 7y ago

What part of the employment agreement guarantees you “meaningfulness”? I know the parts that guarantee my pay & benefits.

werber 7y ago

I would be happy to take a pay cut to help people again, but I'm not willing to take a big enough pay cut to be a realistic candidate in the non profit world. The conflict between my real and ideal values tears me apart daily

coldtea 7y ago

>“I was eight months pregnant,” she says. “They escorted me to my desk with a box to collect my personal belongings, and that was it.” In many a European country the company would be illegal in doing this. Employers only recently got the ability to fire pregnant/breastfeeding women in the EU, and only as part of mass lay-offs.

throwawayjava 7y ago
It's illegal in the US to fire someone for being pregnant (FMLA).
- coldtea 7y ago
  Yes, but you can mask it as not being for it.
- asdff 7y ago
  unless you work at will
  - throwawayjava 7y ago
    AFAIK FMLA covers at-will employment (which is the vast majority of employment in the US)

alexbanks 7y ago

I took a pay cut to go to my last company. Every employee of the original company was getting abused so badly by the founder that I really would've taken anything. It just so happened that the company I was taking a pay cut to go to had tremendous opportunity for growth, and what started as a medium sized paycut turned into a huge pay increase. I'm glad it worked out that way, but I'm certain that pattern is in no way common. Now, I would probably take a small cut to do something I was excited about. I've been working with my therapist to try and figure out specifically what that would be, but I haven't had a ton of luck.

coldtea 7y ago

>Katy Rey was running a large call center in Florida and working long hours when she heard about opportunities at Tesla’s solar panel division. Rey jumped at the chance to work for a company where she felt she could do something more meaningful, even though her salary would be slashed in half. “Everyone was taking pay cuts in the room,” she says of an early training in Vegas. “And the people they recruited were outstanding.” They could deal with the pay cut, Rey says, because they felt like they were “saving the world.” Well, Musk himself did not take any pay cut, so that should have been a pointer... >Rey felt like the company found intelligent people and convinced them to push their limits. (...) Six months into the job, Rey was abruptly laid off over the phone When "changing the world", companies should start with how the treat their own employees...

exabrial 7y ago

I did this once. Great life experience. I left two years later, but that was after traveling the world on the company dime.

dzonga 7y ago

as a developer, and software builder this is relevant. would you make more writing in a code / framework you don't like. or take a small paycut but be remote and write code in a language / framework you like ?

camgunz 7y ago

I took a $40k pay cut to work in social good, and I can't recommend it enough. I have an advantage in that I don't have a family or dependents though. Just putting this out there in case any one's thinking about it but thinks it's too crazy: it's a lot more crazy to spend the most productive hours of your life on something you at best don't care about, and at worst actively despise.