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High-Earning Men Are Cutting Back on Their Working Hours

• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• throwaway5959 4y ago
  We’re exhausted and there’s little real upside. Makes sense to me to cut back.
  • ITB 4y ago
    Why do you describe exhaustion as a collective “we”?
    • throwaway5959 4y ago
      I’m saying we as in people working more than 60 hours a week, as referenced in the article.
  • bigcloud1299 4y ago
    Agree. I used to work 60+ hours to make a huge impact on my firm and our revenue. Now I am like fuck it. Down to 30.
    • throwaway5959 4y ago
      What would you say are some of the positives and negatives that have come about from this change?
      • bigcloud1299 4y ago
        Positives - more time with family. We could finally have second child after 7 years of not being able to due to being so busy could even think about it. Domestic / marriage life is much better. Reduced drinking and late night outings. Less stress. Focused high priority work Now instead of needing to play politics i many fronts to form alliances to move up. Time to think retirement and plan for it. More reading and entertainment. Focused on kids education. Picked up trading with good returns. Actually watched sports first time in 10 years.
    • analyst74 4y ago
      Same, earlier in my career I was excited by the impact I make, but then it dawned on me, that impact has almost zero impact to my own bottom line. And I failed to come up with reasons why I should kill myself over making other people rich.
    • osigurdson 4y ago
      You probably feel that way as there was little benefit to you for working 60 hours/week. It is really unfortunate that companies cannot seem to find ways to reward people that enjoy working hard. Sure there are OKRs, etc., but too hard to tie that to the bottom line.
• bodiekane 4y ago
  > Since this group already put in longer hours than the typical U.S. worker—and women at the highest income levels—these high earners had longer work days to trim > Before the pandemic, Eli Albrecht, a lawyer in the Washington, D.C., area, says he worked between 80 to 90 hours a week. Now, he says he puts in 60 to 70 hours each week Key lines from the article, which give important context and invert what many people's expectations about the situation will be.
  • ghaff 4y ago
    Right. This isn't about four day work weeks. It's mostly about people who were working insane hours cutting back to merely long hours.
    • lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I do not believe the 80 to 90 hour work week claims. Might be at the office 80 to 90 hours, but I doubt even 60 hours of work was or is being done regularly.
  • dahart 4y ago
    TBH For me the line about Eli only begs for more context. Having done it for a while in the games industry, I know first hand that 80-90 hours/week is next to unliveable for long stretches, and the difference between 80 and 90 is enormous (working 80 leaves you with almost 50% more waking non-work-time than 90, assuming 8 hours of sleep). Some people really do work that much, and Eli might be, but 80 means you cut more or less all social activity from your life, even family, and 90 probably means you’re cutting into your sleep permanently. The may be mitigating factors for Eli, if he works from home, for example, or if he is measuring his hours via start and stop time but still taking family breaks or social lunches during the day. A normal amount of self-maintenance like a small amount of exercise, grocery shopping, brushing teeth, and reading news or watching a few minutes of tv or youtube, these things alone will add up to all of the time you have left after working 90 hours/week. It took me a decade or two to realize the overtime I worked was actually trading my entire life for a small amount of money, and that it wasn’t nearly enough money. Many people also over-estimate their own work hours. I had an employer who measured and also surveyed employees and compared the two results, and found most people claiming 75 hours/week were actually pulling more like 55-65. Some people who thought they were doing over 50 were actually under 40. A lot of people in the company I was in were (perhaps subconsciously) factoring in their commutes as work time, and a lot of people come in a bit late during crunch time but mentally feel like they’re starting work at 9am on the dot, and estimate work hours that way.
• zdw 4y ago
  A lot of people in the medical field (of both genders) I know cut back their hours once they can control their schedule in private practice - if you're still going to be making 3-5x of what would be considered a good salary working 50-75% of whatever is considered full time (usually in the 30-35 hours a week range), it just makes sense. Then again, this applies less to technology and other knowledge work where it's harder to turn off the background thought tasks.
  • clintonb 4y ago
    Yep. I have found that some folks get too caught up on the salary number, and wait too late to discover their hourly wage is not as high as it could be since they are working far more than the standard 40 hours each week. It’s definitely a trade off—work more hours to advance more quickly and make more money—but working 60 to 80 hours per week is cutting your effective hourly wage by 25 to 50 percent.
  • starkd 4y ago
    Are there any doctors actually in private practice now? I've found most have already sold their practices to hospitals or some kind of provider network, and they are told the patient load they must provide. It's just not economical to stay independent and reduce your workload.
    • zdw 4y ago
      Assuming that this is US-based, but I would wager this is more related to the incredible byzantine health insurance system created to leech profit off the overall system without delivering useful services. Most doctors don't want to engage with a crazy actuarial accounting, hence they outsource it, which can be a reasonable tradeoff. Nuking that system from orbit with universal single payer would solve this, and also have the beneficial side effect of eliminating the coercive practice of employer-linked health care, which would lead to reduced barriers to entrepreneurial activity.
      • starkd 4y ago
        > Nuking that system from orbit with universal single payer would solve this Just when has a government administration led to a less byzantine system? From experience, it can very well make it much worse. For one, there would be no competition for dollars from providers. (Not that there is much of that now.) Plus you would have a cap on doctor's salaries. Early retirements and a severe doctor shortage has become a real problem.
• xendipity 4y ago
  https://archive.ph/ZSnKZ https://archive.ph/ZSnKZ
• mrandish 4y ago
  > "High-earning men in the 25-to-39 age range who could be described as “workaholics” were pulling back, often by choice" This seems like great news. I know several guys who've recently opted to earn less in exchange for more time off at home with their young kids. They are happier and the kids love it.
  • leetrout 4y ago
    I just had this conversation with a potential employer yesterday. I have worked hard at not working so hard (seeing a therapist for life coaching) and I am "guarding my calm" with looking for a job.
    • chiefalchemist 4y ago
      I see job postings with "must be able to multitask" and "high intensity environment" and I think the 80s called and it wants its 8 ball of coke back. It's common knowledge - or should be - multitasking is a productivity loss, not gain. And the last thing the world needs is another headless-chicken culture where working hard and frantic is confused with smart and efficient. Guard your calm...no one else will.
      • starkd 4y ago
        There will always be a need for some multi-taskers. Some are better at it than others. Not everyone is the same. Office secretaries/assistants/receptionists are the heartbeat of any business.
        • flir 4y ago
          My line manager multitasks so I don't have to.
        • chiefalchemist 4y ago
          It's still a productivity killer. Full stop. And unless the work is literally a matter of life or death, then excessive multitasking - to point you list it as a desired skill - is simply a sign of poor planning, poor priority setting, and so on. The job ad might as well say, "Must enjoy working at a shit show, or at least has had a life-long dream of working at a circus."
• Swizec 4y ago
  The article talks about top 10% – $175k+/year https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-income-puts-you-top-1-5-10/ https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-incom... That’s a fun grey area where you’re making a lot but not a lot. And the path to making more is paved with leverage, not with hours. You absolutely cannot get to the top 1% by just grinding away. I can’t find the study right now, but I remember reading that “work for money” tops out at about $400k. The highest average income in USA goes to car wash owners.
  • badcppdev 4y ago
    Agree 100% ... "You absolutely cannot get to the top 1% by just grinding away" And if you are grinding away then you might not have the energy and time to create the real opportunity to help yourself.
  • Phelinofist 4y ago
    > The highest average income in USA goes to car wash owners. Is that an euphemism for money laundering (Breaking Bad) or make car wash owners really that much money?
    • Swizec 4y ago
      Not a euphemism. Yes you have higher variance in other fields (like tech) where you can become a billionaire. Car washes, by comparison, have low variance but reliably make mid 7-figures per year. The market is super fragmented and localized so it doesn’t really matter how many other successful car washes exist. People won’t drive too far out of their way just for a car wash. This puts a ceiling on competition. Starting a car wash is a big but not huge investment. This also puts a ceiling on competition, but remains accessible to fairly regular people. Starting a car wash also doesn’t require any specialized knowledge. And because the business is profitable, but not that profitable, it has (afaik) escaped the clutches of private equity consolidation. This keeps money in the hands of local owners thus improving average/median outcomes and keeping variance low.
      • lupire 4y ago
• sandworm101 4y ago
  Key phrase: The top-earning 10% of men in the U.S. labor market. So nowhere near the top 10% of income earners. The real top earners don't do much traditional "work", instead earning money thorough investment and/or family income streams. I would also quibble with the definition of "work", as many activities of top earners would not be considered work by the majority of people. I've been to my fair share of "conferences" that we attendees considered work but looked very much like vacation time to the people serving us drinks at the bar.
  • bradleyjg 4y ago
    Your quibble is addressed via the word “earning.” Money made via investment or inheritance is unearned.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • sandworm101 4y ago
      >> Money made via investment or inheritance is unearned. I think a great many startup founders might feel that their stock-related income is "earned", especially those who don't pay themselves much of a salary in early years. And every actor/singer/songwriter earning passive income from past artistic works. So too every homeowner or pensioner taking money without actually clocking in on a factory floor. I don't have the numbers, but it may be that the majority of income in the US comes from "investment" or other passive not-earned means.
      • aqme28 4y ago
        > I don't have the numbers, but it may be that the majority of income in the US comes from "investment" or other passive not-earned means. I'm curious to see your numbers, because I can't imagine how this could possibly be the case. I think you may be living in a bubble. I wonder even how many of these top non-income earners get their money from inheritance rather than your examples of startups and artists.
• dmitryminkovsky 4y ago
  > That translates to 1.5 hours less time on the job each workweek, or a 3% reduction in hours. A search for “statistically significant” yielded no results. So why am I not to assume, especially given the source, that this is more of that “Americans are lazier and less productive” thing that plays out daily in right-leaning media?
  • luckylion 4y ago
    Yeah, those right-leaning media companies and their constant bashing of the checks notes top 10% earners.
    • dmitryminkovsky 4y ago
      Anything to stoke the “culture war”
      • sangnoir 4y ago
        All the while decrying "identity politics"
    • pessimizer 4y ago
      There's nothing that the right likes more than bashing lazy elites.
      • luckylion 4y ago
        The lazy elites working 70+ hours per week? I must've missed all those smear campaigns against upper management, investment bankers, corporate lawyers etc.
  • kodah 4y ago
    Marc Benioff is a progressive and has been quoted many times saying the same thing about his own workers.
    • 4y ago
• pcurve 4y ago
  I’m over 40 and cut my hours to zero. I quit four months ago. I’m sure I’ll Need to find another job and I don’t know if can find another job that pays what old job paid with one month PTO but oh well. My sanity was too important.
  • marcus0x62 4y ago
    Same. Last day is Tuesday. Life is too short, friend.
  • jacquesm 4y ago
    Good for you. Better to yank the ripcord too early than too late, the after effects of a burn-out can take many years to heal (if ever). I wished more people had your level of courage.
  • leetrout 4y ago
    There are dozens of us, friend. I think 4 weeks including company holidays is doable. When I was 27 my I had 5 weeks PTO and I have never had that much since. All these unlimited PTO places barely get you 3 in most cases. And unlimited is just a scam to not have to pay out when you leave.
• jacquesm 4y ago
  In the 80's the place where I worked incentivized employees to start working fewer hours. In the IT department we looked at the request in bafflement: "How many hours would you like to work?". We put in '40' and somewhere between HR and our bosses it was straightened out.
  • lupire 4y ago
    What are you saying? IT department didn't like working fewer hours?
    • jacquesm 4y ago
      No, that the IT department was structurally overworked, as opposed to the rest of the bank where people that arrived late regularly met people that were leaving early at the main entrance. Bankers hours...
• greatpostman 4y ago
  Controversial opinion: Men are concluding that women don’t care about money as much as they used to, and having an amazing career to snag a great woman is no longer the best (or even a good) strategy. In some ways, being a dedicated corporate employee makes you unattractive as a person. I know a lot of guys in their late 20s that think this. And I know a lot of broke bar tenders dating great women. Unless you are making huge money (> 600k), corporate careers steal from your life and the development of your personality Incentive structures in society have changed, we are witnessing it in real time
  • bilsbie 4y ago
    What do women care about instead?
    • greatpostman 4y ago
      Confidence, a large social circle, fun hobbies, dynamic/carefree attitude towards life, low stress psychological states, opinionated, makes money on your own instead of sucking up to some corporate master
    • sillysaurusx 4y ago
      Height, intelligence, and a sense of humor. You can often get by with just two. Beyond a certain threshold, throwing money at women doesn't really yield more results. Or at least not the kind of results you'd want.
      • lupire 4y ago
        If you are tall, smart, and funny, but can't pull in good money, you probably aren't so smart. Unless maybe you are ugly? But then does tall still help?
        • bradlys 4y ago
          Tall always helps. Imagine you were short and ugly - tall and ugly is a big improvement. Cosmetic surgery can improve ugly a little bit too. If you have all that money then you’re able to afford it as well. Even with little money - you can fly to Turkey and get operations for significantly less.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• Xeoncross 4y ago
  Yeah, turns out I don't like money as much as I thought I did when I don't have time to use it.
• tsunamifury 4y ago
  Many men discovered over the course of the pandemic how much they actually loved spending time with their family and how unrewarding office life is. Unfortunately the powers that be have decided that this realization is incompatible with how the economy is set up to work, commuting office space work lunches and dinners etc. and so back to the office we will be forced to go.
  • collyw 4y ago
    I kind of miss the office. Got a dog now, so it's not all bad.
  • sillysaurusx 4y ago
    So don't go! We have the power. I know it's easier said than done, but anyone who has the means to do it should try.
    • bradlys 4y ago
      Individual actions won’t really lead to any societal change though. Your change won’t change your future jobs. You need worker solidarity at a large class level.
      • sillysaurusx 4y ago
        Maybe. But (at least in the short term) we can make them pay for our obedience. You want me to come into the office? Fine, but you'd better be willing to double my salary, or I'm going to one of the other dozens of opportunities that don't require a commute. Out of all the different types of workers, devs have the most power. But we often don't exercise it. It's so tempting to just go along with whatever your work decides is best, because you've started to think of them as "your group." Once you identify as a part of a group, you're subjected to lots of peer pressure -- from yourself, no less.
        • ryandrake 4y ago
          Single devs acting in isolation don’t have any power over their $N billion employer with M hundreds of lawyers. unless they’re really specialized or brilliant like John Carmack or something. It doesn’t matter if you think of devs as “your group”. If you don’t act as a group, you get picked off. Devs as a coordinated bloc have a shot at power, working together.
• ed25519FUUU 4y ago
  I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to move to a 4-day, or 80% (or even part time) position for a few years now. Most companies have no real support for it, or want to do it in a backwards or messy way (“we’ll negotiation more vacation time”). You’d figure I’d be able to capitalize on a FANG resume but so far no real luck. I don’t want to earn more in my career. I’m already rich. I want to work less and do my own thing more. I would think companies would see this in engineers like me and make it a forefront to a recruiting effort.
  • prewett 4y ago
    Try contracting / consulting. I feel like contracting has a different set of expectations, there's more of an expectation that contractors kind of do their own thing. There's also an expectation that contractors are a bit flaky, so a reliable contractor at 80% time is still a solid asset, whereas an employee at 80% time is communicating "I'm not 100% invested". I guess the difference is that with contractors the relationship is clearly understood by both sides to be "we're exchanging money for services" whereas employees are expected to be "resources that we rent". You don't expect your apartment to disappear 80% of the time, but in exchange there's a soft guarantee that the rent is sort of semi-permanent. (Hence why everyone is so upset about layoffs, it reveals that the deal is actually "I expect you to be there 100% of the time, and I'm going to pretend that this is permanent, but I may terminate the deal at any time". The contractor approach is just clearer for everyone.)
    • ryandrake 4y ago
      Contracting sounds nice but you have to be making a LOT more than W2 for it to be worth it. Health insurance, HSA, your portion of self-employment tax, 401(k) matching are things you no longer get. Also you have to start doing things over and above that you didn’t have to as an employee, like finding clients, billing, accounting, fighting clients for payment. You need to charge enough to make it worthwhile.
      • coffeebeqn 4y ago
        This is very true. On the money side just note that your employer is also not paying any of those extras so you need to roll them into your rate. You’ll still cost about the same to them at the end of the day
• mkl95 4y ago
  I was an absolute workaholic at my previous gig. Now I'm making the same money adjusted to inflation + ~10%, which puts me in the 96th percentile or so. However I'm working way less these days, something like 10 hours less a week. My employer cannot really pressure engineers into working overtime, since the engineer / employee ratio is very low, and every resignation has been a big blow to our roadmap.
• zapdrive 4y ago
  Now there will be no "wage gap".
• synergy20 4y ago
  I don't know how to define 'high earning men' in real, but mathematically, earning up to 170K paying 24% tax is a fine spot, after that the tax becomes 32~35%, stretching yourself for decreasing return is not very exciting, why not taking a step back and enjoying life more instead.
  • lupire 4y ago
    That means nothing by itself. "Stretching yourself" might pay +10K, +50K, +300K, or even negative. I care about take home, not tax rate.
  • TheCoelacanth 4y ago
    I don't think you have actually done the math on taxes if you think that. First off, the 32% bracket kicks in at 170k of taxable income, which is going to be at least 183k of actual income because of the standard deduction (probably higher because of itemized deductions). Second, the 6.2% social security tax stops at 160k of income, so your income in the 32% bracket is really only taxed at 1.8% more than most of your income in the 24% bracket.
    • coffeebeqn 4y ago
      Minus 401k contributions and bad investments which could be another 25k off your income. And like too many people seem to not understand, your whole salary won’t be taxed at that rate - only the amount that goes over the limit
• kaydub 4y ago
  I can work harder and take on more responsibility for a $20k-$40k increase in salary. Or I can take it easy, let some of the team take on some of the load, and make sure I do enough. Working harder and working for someone doesn't make you rich or wealthy. It can make you comfortable. I'm already comfortable. The real money is in ownership. So I'll put less hours in working for someone else and keep my mind fresher and more open to opportunities of ownership that may arise.
  • _cenw 4y ago
    Also, it't not even a bad deal for employers. Binding time spent to money taken home like everyone is a blue collar worker where output is approximately linear (or, an a moving assembly line, actually ideally linear) doesn't work for knowledge based jobs, especially if they involve creativity. Productivity goes down the longer you work. I switched to a 32 hour week and I don't feel like my productivity is impacted beyond not being able to attend some meetings, most of which were superfluous anyway. If it's really important I will make the time elsewhere, but that has happened once or twice in ~8 months.
• cbeach 4y ago
  > The average male worker put in 2,006 hours last year, while the average female worker logged 1,758 hours. Is this ever factored in when we look into the gender pay gap?
  • patrick451 4y ago
    There is no wage gap. It's an illusion arising from myriad differences in life choices such as this.
  • collyw 4y ago
    Of course not.
• recycledmatt 4y ago
  They went from working 51.5 hours to 50 hours a week… could this be driven by less commuting more work from home? Same amount of work done in less time?
• aqme28 4y ago
  The math makes sense for top earners. If I can get my salary for time off that's usually worth it. Example: If I can get paid 80% as much money for a 4-day workweek, then I will take home 20% less money but I get 50% more days off. It's a good deal.
  • lupire 4y ago
    That argument makes no sense. The units don't match. Why not get paid 40% less for +100% days off? 60% less for +150%? -100% for +250%?
    • aqme28 4y ago
      If you can get paid 40% off for 100% days off then take it. I chose 80% for a four day week because you’re working 80% as many days. Your hourly rate hasn’t changed in this hypothetical.
• VLM 4y ago
  The linked article works hard to provide only meaningless personal anecdotes and promote speculation to avoid any actual answers while pushing pre-selected agendas. AKA, journalism in a nutshell. Sadly typical. Which is why almost no one reads that stuff anymore and no one takes it seriously anymore. As a member of the group in question, I find the data easy to believe. Its less than two weeks work on average. If I get a new job its "normal" for me to take a week or three off, its all voluntary, I could see how in a court of law or as a weapon of propaganda my experience could get spun into being a part of the story.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • Retric 4y ago
    The article was mostly quoting statistics from a linked study in the beginning, only quoting a few people to get a feel for why this may have changed. Anyway, people taking time off between jobs only applies to people who actually swapped jobs. Unless job hoppers started taking a month off it’s not going to result in these numbers: The top-earning 10% of men in the U.S. labor market logged 77 fewer work hours in 2022, on average, than those in the same earnings group in 2019, according to a new study of federal data by the economics department at Washington University in St. Louis. That translates to 1.5 hours less time on the job each workweek, or a 3% reduction in hours.
    • zug_zug 4y ago
      So top 10% is $173,176 So basically this is just saying layoffs exist in tech.
      • Retric 4y ago
        10% of the US workforce is 16 million people, tech layoffs are nowhere close to that scale. Also, being unemployed for a significant timeframe tends to lower earnings and pull people out of the top 10%.
  • SideQuark 4y ago
• black_13 4y ago
  [dead]
• ernestipark 4y ago
  While I’ve never been a workaholic (was pretty good at keeping 40hr boundaries), this article describes me. Remote work, despite its flexibility, burned me out for the lack of in person interaction. I left a good job to consult and work part-time. Anecdotally, I know I’m not alone and I have a lot of friends and contacts, both women and men, who are doing the same. When you consider how much wealth has been created in tech over this 10 year bull run, it makes sense a lot of people are pulling back and finding more balance in their lives.
• aikiplayer 4y ago
  A couple of years ago I moved from a more structured (not exactly slower paced in the job I was in) employer to a FAANG-like employer. I was making more money (base salary wasn't that different, stock and bonuses were). As I got more integrated and started wanting to make more of a difference, I started having to work longer and longer hours. It became obvious to me that I was on a path to essentially only working and sleeping. It was also physically wearing me out as I'm NOT in my 20's anymore. So essentially, I'd be making more money, but wouldn't have the time or energy to do anything but work. AND ... I'd have to start paying other people to do things for me that I normally would do myself - which then eats into that financial difference. I don't have young kids anymore so technically had the free time, but came to realize that I really didn't want to be forced to spend it solely on work. So I made a change to (again, a bit lower paying) but more structured environment.
• grecy 4y ago
  Women too. My partner With her masters just accepted a 4 day a week position, and is stoked to work less and live more. Down the road she will shift to 3 days a week
• kerkeslager 4y ago
  Good. It has become clear that the rich aren't going to give the rest of us any of the profits gained as automation makes things more efficient. The only way normal people gain from improvements is if we collectively refuse to work more than we're paid for. This also smooths the transition to a future in which all work is automated and no one needs to work. That future it far away but it is coming. As less and less human labor is necessary to provide for our survival needs, people should be working fewer and fewer hours and still being able to survive. The alternative is more and more unemployment, with the unemployed being unable to survive, and a ruling class that doesn't work yet touts the need for work because they benefit from labor.
  • welshwelsh 4y ago
    Automation isn't going to take anyone's job. People using automation will push out people who lack the skills to use automation. The people who fall behind won't benefit because they don't contribute. The future where people can work very little to survive is already here, but it's only for those who can produce great value with very little effort.
    • kerkeslager 4y ago
      > People using automation will push out people who lack the skills to use automation. This is an understandable sentiment because it's been true for all of the history of automation, but I really don't think you're grokking the implications of truly pervasive automation. The using of automation can and will be automated, so the skills to use automation will eventually not be useful skills. > The people who fall behind won't benefit because they don't contribute. People don't accumulate resources by "contributing" them. The people who benefit the most from automation are those who use automation to accumulate more resources (including more automation). The people who accumulate the most resources generally have some projects which create the impression of being prosocial, but the mental illness which causes one to amass huge amounts of wealth, makes one unsuitable to be in charge of prosocial projects. For example, I fully support space exploration, but I really don't think the guy who thinks we should put slaves on Mars is the guy who is best suited to be in charge of that. The future I fear is one in which the same sociopaths who have been sucking all the resources out of society for themselves no longer need to even pretend to care about the rest of us, because they no longer need workers, since workers are automated.
• nobodyandproud 4y ago
  Yeah, nah. I hired an engineer that I can best describe as lazy, and not in the good way. Thanks to drinking the agile kool aid, it’s easy for engineers to coast and I have to remind the engineers individually that when someone else coasts they all suffer. Context: 8 hour days and correct estimates are all I ask for.
  • polio 4y ago
    Can you fire them?
• amelius 4y ago
  So will the people taking their place also be high-earning?
• amelius 4y ago
  ... which gives them more time to think about rent seeking strategies and how to make their money work against the rest of us.
• tristor 4y ago
  Great. I count myself amongst this group. I used to regularly do a bit of work across weekends, and stay late or start early to always be the one willing to adjust for the timezone differences of other people. I no longer do this, I work my set hours, with an hour buffer in the morning and afternoon (8AM-6PM local time) and I don't work weekends. My weekends are now sacrosanct and used for social hobbies, spending time with my family, and relaxing. I can very well see a 3-5% reduction in my work hours vs 2019, and probably a 30% reduction compared to 2016, when I had a burn out episode and changed career paths. It turns out it's not sustainable to spend every waking hour working or thinking about work and that people need to have lives outside work. This is even more important for /men/ in particular, because we have now learned about the harm caused by absentee fathers, and it is no longer acceptable for conscientious men to neglect their families in favor of work, as was the way things were done for the last 60+ years. Sounds like companies should suck up the "loss of money" from not being able to overwork people and hire more. There's plenty of people who would like these high-earning jobs, and our society cannot continue to chew up and spit out people, leaving broken homes and mental health crises in its wake so some investor can make an extra 20 cents in dividends a quarter.
  • godzillabrennus 4y ago
    Hiring people in this current climate hurts shareholder value. It’ll be a long winter before that changes. Be prepared for employers to start blaming everyone internally when metrics aren’t met.
    • hirako2000 4y ago
      It will hurt even more if they don't hire and see those wages and demands for sustainable work loads as inconveniences to get rid of.
  • tomp 4y ago
    > we have now learned about the harm caused by absentee fathers Can you expand on this, references etc? Up until now, I've only heard about the (substantial) harm caused by fatherless homes / single mothers (maybe single parents? not sure, it might be too small sample for single fathers).
• philip1209 4y ago
  That's because the 40 hour work week is for factories, not knowledge work. If you're interested in fractional work, I'm building a community for it called FRCTNL: https://frctnl.xyz https://frctnl.xyz
• mbgerring 4y ago
  When I started work at my current company, I used the salary negotiation process to secure a 4-day work week for 80% of the offered salary, and I think more people should do this. Gives me enough time to seriously pursue an avocation and keeps me more engaged with my work overall.
• qntmfred 4y ago
  From 2012-2018 I worked a corporate job that I really loved, getting several promotions and increasing my compensation significantly. Worked a lot of hours bc I enjoyed the work so much but still what I considered reasonable, and I promoted healthy work life balance for all my teams. I had 3 young kids at home and was still able to do what I thought was my fair share of housework and raising the kids. Then I went through a divorce, 2 six-month stints at startups that were a mess, unemployed for another 6 months while volunteering for a political campaign then another 6 months of 80 hour weeks working for that campaign. when the campaign ended I was ready to find the next stage of my career, but covid had just arrived in the US and I had to scramble to find a job bc I was basically broke from earning 1/5 of my typical salary over the previous year. I ended up taking a job running DevOps for a small SaaS business. not really what I had in mind and the comp was decent but still a good 30% less than what I had been making previously. but the expectations were low, I got great reviews and made important impact in the areas that they needed from me. Probably only required 10-20 hours/week, and I didn't mind coasting, and my kids were growing up fast and I liked the flexibility to prioritize them over career. This week I'll have been coasting here for 1000 days. But recently I've been itching to get back into the kind of job I had before, where I could really sink my teeth into interesting problems, nurture high performing teams and build great products. I do wonder if I can find that environment again, or will everywhere I look be filled with people who have also gotten used to coasting and not really striving for excellence.
  • asjkaehauisa 4y ago
    Why can't you just apply for your previous job?
    • qntmfred 4y ago
      my old boss reached out to me last year to see if I wanted to apply for a senior opening, but the finances of the company haven't been trending great, cost cutting culture (including engineering/product) has set in, and most of the team that I built have accordingly since moved on.
• 1MachineElf 4y ago
  My income just went up a tax bracket. This new job is 9-5, but my mental stamina is only half of that. I'd reduce my working hours too, if I could.
• bushbaba 4y ago
  I wonder if remote work is attributed to it. HCOL puts a lot of financial stress on you, leading to a need to work hard to keep the standard of living. Mortgage + daycare + food is easily near 10k/month for many. With remote work you can about half that expense and there’s simply less financial pressure.
• borroka 4y ago
  When I was a researcher in academia, I worked practically all day, every day, including at least one of the two weekend days. It became normal to think about research all the time--"it is so much fun", academics tell themselves and others--and being mostly self-directed, the work is endless: there is always a new model or parameter value to try, a new angle from which to look at the results. After a few years of grueling intellectual work, I had an episode of semi-burnout; I use semi- and not full- because it was 50 percent psychophysiological and 50 percent wondering, "What am I doing with my life?" I then left academia and at this point have been working in the technology sector for a few years as a salaried employee, which in some companies means working 9-to-5, in others 9-9 including weekends, and in some means working at most a couple of hours per day. I am not ashamed to admit that I work as little as possible and take on new assignments as reluctantly as possible as well. Saving as much time and energy for myself as I can, while keeping an eye on my career progression and not negatively affecting my colleagues with my rather lackadaisical approach to work, is the guiding principle of my professional life. I am a cynic, or a successful pragmatist, as I like to call myself. I now have time to read, write, think, exercise, hang out with friends and enjoy life. Self-recommended.
• mbar84 4y ago
  Who is John Galt?
• musicale 4y ago
  Surprising that the WSJ would openly admit this, but I guess people have kind of figured it out by now.
• snapplebobapple 4y ago
  I cut back way more than that. I got tired of having such a large percentage of my earnings taxed at 50%. So when my passive earnings from years of saving and investing responsibly started pushing most of my employment income into the 40% + range, i said screw it and cut work way back to the equivalent of one day a week. If income tax ever gets set back to a level that more closely approximates the value ( sub 40% max for my estimate) i will work more again. In the mean time i am enjoying raising my family and employing less people.
• Han-Jones 4y ago
  It's better way off to see what has been hidden from someone in a relationship, no one would want if he or she is been cheated on, for this reason taking a few extra steps in getting what would serve as a proof for leaving a toxic relationship isn't a bad idea, yes that's me justifying myself. This is because sometimes ago I was searching for an app that would serve me the purpose of monitoring and spying on my spouse's phone, unfortunately the apps I laid my hands on wasn't giving me much of what I needed, but a review about a person who could help me out changed the scenario. After I read that I could send a mail to Expertwisehacker@gmail.com com, where I could use the help of an expert who will help in getting me information and track my spouse's real-time location, I did in a good faith and fortunately it was what I wanted, I had to explain how I want to see all information that has been deleted, access to the real time location and calls from my spouse's phone, it was within hours when I got a mail back from the expert, giving me access links and how to make use of them in getting all I requested. I decided to share this because information is power, if I had not read someone's review about the way out, I could have been in the dark for God knows when, but I'm glad that's not the case.