6 ms·

If you are making €200,000 per year, your time is worth around €100 per hour. Thus if this is going to take more than 10 hours, it is not worth your time.

jen20 5y ago
This is, of course, only true if you can bill someone for those ten hours.
- pengaru 5y ago
  And even if you could, you should be billing them at a substantially higher rate than your normal salary already consuming your full-time bandwidth. These extra hours are precious and increasingly scarce bandwidth for self, and fast overlap into exceedingly inconvenient territory.
driverdan 5y ago
This doesn't make sense. You don't work 24h a day. I highly doubt they went a day without pay to get the phone back. Even then it would still be more than a full day's worth of pay at €200,000 per year.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  It makes sense on average, assuming 1) that the activity is at least as unpleasant as going to work, and 2) that you negotiated your job hours to your satisfaction. If I spend enough days on annoying wastes of time, I don't want to lose all my free time, so I'm going to need to reduce how many days I go to work. And since that means doing less work, I can only push that so far before I have to start taking those days unpaid. ("It's more important to get the money than to have those days off" would mean I should have just negotiated more pay and less vacation from the start, so that's incompatible with the premise.) Maybe I could have taken this one day in stride and ignored it. But maybe I was already on the edge of needing a break, and this pushes me to take a multi-week sabbatical. On average, in a situation like this, 1 day wasted on annoying tasks gets traded for about 1 day of labor. And this idea doesn't require you to be able to control your hours as much as you want, just a few percent is enough to make the logic work.
pengaru 5y ago
That's very flawed and naive method for measuring value of one's time.
- laumars 5y ago
  Why? I’m not saying you’re wrong per se but you offer a stern dismissal without any reason nor alternative. For what it’s worth, I think the GP makes a pretty common opinion. For example people on lower incomes will do more household jobs themselves because it saves them money, whereas people on higher incomes will pay people to do things because it saves them time. The opinion might be dressed up differently when I state that but it’s still the simple act of a person putting a value on their free time. It’s why we have house cleaners, windows cleaners, gardeners, car washers, and so on and so forth. The only different is people don’t usually casually post precise numeric values against their time. But it’s still a sentiment shared by many.
  - ubercow13 5y ago
    Putting a valuation on one’s time is not unreasonable but assuming every hour of your life is worth the same as the equivalent hourly rate of your salaried job kind of is? Or at least it’s overly simplistic. Not every hour of your life is fungible like that.
    - laumars 5y ago
      It is overly simplistic. But equally if you’re paid less then a car wash you’d probably want to wash the car yourself. There is going to be a line drawn somewhere that equates to “yes this is worthwhile expense” and “no, I’m better off doing that myself”. While I acknowledge that line is going to be variable depending on how much one likes or loaves a particular activity, equating the cost of outsourcing to your own rate of pay isn’t an unreasonable approximation for where that line should reside.
irrational 5y ago
That might make some sense if you get paid by the hour and can get overtime. But if you are salaried that is crazy talk.
hutzlibu 5y ago
Is going to the toilet worth your time? Or would you pay someone to do it for you?
- SturgeonsLaw 5y ago
  Going to the toilet is inefficient, that's why I only eat precisely the calories and nutritional content that my body needs without anything left over to produce waste
  - plank_time 5y ago
    Unfortunately that’s not how the body works. Waste isn’t produced because of excess intake. That’s what causes far buildup. Anything you eat and drink will create waste.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    "Going to the toilet is inefficient" By what meassure? To me it is by definition part of every living metabolism.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  Oh god yes. Imagine being able to go to a concert and instead of having to go to the port-a-potty you could just deduct a couple dollars from your bank account. That sounds amazing. Also over half? of people wake up to pee at least once. That'd be nice to make unnecessary.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    "Also over half? of people wake up to pee at least once. That'd be nice to make unnecessary" And then there is the hazzle of breathing. And walking. And moving around! Oh boy, if only someone could do living for me.
    - IanCal 5y ago
      You've got some weird comparisons here. Aside from not seeming relevant, of the three two are ones we definitely pay other people to do sometimes (ever got on a bus?). The last, breathing - you mean I could pay someone to breathe instead of me doing it? And go diving with no tank? Sounds incredible.

jen20 5y ago

This is, of course, only true if you can bill someone for those ten hours.

pengaru 5y ago
And even if you could, you should be billing them at a substantially higher rate than your normal salary already consuming your full-time bandwidth. These extra hours are precious and increasingly scarce bandwidth for self, and fast overlap into exceedingly inconvenient territory.

driverdan 5y ago

This doesn't make sense. You don't work 24h a day. I highly doubt they went a day without pay to get the phone back. Even then it would still be more than a full day's worth of pay at €200,000 per year.

Dylan16807 5y ago
It makes sense on average, assuming 1) that the activity is at least as unpleasant as going to work, and 2) that you negotiated your job hours to your satisfaction. If I spend enough days on annoying wastes of time, I don't want to lose all my free time, so I'm going to need to reduce how many days I go to work. And since that means doing less work, I can only push that so far before I have to start taking those days unpaid. ("It's more important to get the money than to have those days off" would mean I should have just negotiated more pay and less vacation from the start, so that's incompatible with the premise.) Maybe I could have taken this one day in stride and ignored it. But maybe I was already on the edge of needing a break, and this pushes me to take a multi-week sabbatical. On average, in a situation like this, 1 day wasted on annoying tasks gets traded for about 1 day of labor. And this idea doesn't require you to be able to control your hours as much as you want, just a few percent is enough to make the logic work.

pengaru 5y ago

That's very flawed and naive method for measuring value of one's time.

laumars 5y ago
Why? I’m not saying you’re wrong per se but you offer a stern dismissal without any reason nor alternative. For what it’s worth, I think the GP makes a pretty common opinion. For example people on lower incomes will do more household jobs themselves because it saves them money, whereas people on higher incomes will pay people to do things because it saves them time. The opinion might be dressed up differently when I state that but it’s still the simple act of a person putting a value on their free time. It’s why we have house cleaners, windows cleaners, gardeners, car washers, and so on and so forth. The only different is people don’t usually casually post precise numeric values against their time. But it’s still a sentiment shared by many.
- ubercow13 5y ago
  Putting a valuation on one’s time is not unreasonable but assuming every hour of your life is worth the same as the equivalent hourly rate of your salaried job kind of is? Or at least it’s overly simplistic. Not every hour of your life is fungible like that.
  - laumars 5y ago
    It is overly simplistic. But equally if you’re paid less then a car wash you’d probably want to wash the car yourself. There is going to be a line drawn somewhere that equates to “yes this is worthwhile expense” and “no, I’m better off doing that myself”. While I acknowledge that line is going to be variable depending on how much one likes or loaves a particular activity, equating the cost of outsourcing to your own rate of pay isn’t an unreasonable approximation for where that line should reside.

irrational 5y ago

That might make some sense if you get paid by the hour and can get overtime. But if you are salaried that is crazy talk.

hutzlibu 5y ago

Is going to the toilet worth your time? Or would you pay someone to do it for you?

SturgeonsLaw 5y ago
Going to the toilet is inefficient, that's why I only eat precisely the calories and nutritional content that my body needs without anything left over to produce waste
- plank_time 5y ago
  Unfortunately that’s not how the body works. Waste isn’t produced because of excess intake. That’s what causes far buildup. Anything you eat and drink will create waste.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "Going to the toilet is inefficient" By what meassure? To me it is by definition part of every living metabolism.
Dylan16807 5y ago
Oh god yes. Imagine being able to go to a concert and instead of having to go to the port-a-potty you could just deduct a couple dollars from your bank account. That sounds amazing. Also over half? of people wake up to pee at least once. That'd be nice to make unnecessary.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "Also over half? of people wake up to pee at least once. That'd be nice to make unnecessary" And then there is the hazzle of breathing. And walking. And moving around! Oh boy, if only someone could do living for me.
  - IanCal 5y ago
    You've got some weird comparisons here. Aside from not seeming relevant, of the three two are ones we definitely pay other people to do sometimes (ever got on a bus?). The last, breathing - you mean I could pay someone to breathe instead of me doing it? And go diving with no tank? Sounds incredible.