8 ms·

This mirrors a lot of what I've suspected. Executives have a survivorship bias of a very work-focused life. It's hard for them to understand why anyone else wou

This mirrors a lot of what I've suspected. Executives have a survivorship bias of a very work-focused life. It's hard for them to understand why anyone else would choose differently. This applies to both work location and number of hours per week. It's gotta be hard to understand and accept that lower-level workers have a different view and priorities from your own, especially when all your fellow execs share your own view. And, as the tweet says, at a certain level you can afford to offset all the negatives of work location / work hours. No commute. Personal chef. All household chores covered. Full time individual childcare. It's a lot easier to come into the office for 50-60 hours per week when you don't have to also spend your time outside the office trying to balance sleep and survival. But, again, that's not what life looks like for an average employee.

jajko 2y ago
You are being too generous to that bunch of sociopaths (not snarky, just think for a second what kind of personality gets and thrives up there for decades). They care about their own profits, which are mostly bonus-based, and prestige. If they think they get any extra by appearing doing first and last thing that could drive up share price (or win some extra points in some meaningless internal battles), they will go for it. They are mostly pretty bad absent parents with laser focus on themselves and their careers only, and then it shows on kids. But in their mind nobody under them should be granted more.
- bigyabai 2y ago
  Sadly, I agree. There is probably an element of "hard worker" survivorship bias at play, but there's also an undeniable profit motive that overrides a lot of those instincts too. After a certain number of years, handing your kids off to the babysitters so you can work an extra 10 hours a week becomes outright sociopathic neglect. Using your wealth to separate you from the things that actually matter is arguably the peak of corporate disillusionment.
  - rexpop 2y ago
    s/disillusionment/alienation
    - bigyabai 2y ago
      It's only alienation if you refuse to fight back.
SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
I agree. Despite the the statement's pithiness, the reality is we don't all have the same 24 hours in a day.
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  Yeah, I think it’s worth reflecting that most people with families work 80-hour weeks. Richer people can pay others to take on part of that workload so they can do 50 or 60 hours of work for a company and still actually be working less. Which is fine, I guess, until they’re all like “why are you poors always so sluggish and tired and wanting to clock out right at 5 on the dot?”
  - grandempire 2y ago
    Nah. This kind of person tends to do more family stuff, and participate in more community events, and do more work. It’s ok to not be a busy body. I’m not one because it makes me miserable . But these imaginary tradeoffs we invent in our heads are often just justifications.
    - alabastervlog 2y ago
      I'm not following your point. I've got a solid 30 hours of unpaid work a week, and it'd be closer to 40 if I had to commute, and when my kids were younger and I still had a commute it was around 50 hours, all on top of my actual job. I could and, if it weren't wildly financially irresponsible, absolutely would pay to make about 20 hours of that vanish at no harm whatsoever (benefit, actually) to my personal relationships & family, and then I'd have a lot more time and energy for other things. That's just... how clocks work, IDK. This is overwhelmingly the norm for people who can't afford to pay others to do lots of stuff for them.
      - grandempire 2y ago
        My point is busy people do even more of the things that you think make you busy. You think kids are taking up all your time? They have more kids and volunteer at the school, and run a church group, etc. The clock is secondary because using time efficiently, planning, and classifying which hours you are awake and available are all skills. Similar patterns happen all throughout life. People have non linear capacities and performance.
Jcampuzano2 2y ago
No, from my point of view this post is just another executive grift trying to make people feel better about why they do the things they do. Yes they live different lives, but they know they are different from their average worker, they just don't care about them. Making money and their success come above all. When they make these decisions it is not because they're out of touch. It is because they actively opposed people below them taking an inch. They know it fucks with them, they know they don't like it. They do it anyway. As an executive this person is excellent albeit trained at corporate speak. They're trying to gather sympathy for execs and it is all bullshit.
- timewizard 2y ago
  > Making money and their success come above all. How else would you want to motivate them? This is a for profit company after all. > It is because they actively opposed people below them taking an inch. In a functioning labor market with high mobility for workers they would just quit and find a better place to work. > They're trying to gather sympathy for execs and it is all bullshit. They're trying to hide the fact they've monopolized the labor market and they want you to assume this is all normal. It's a much higher level problem.
  - bmicraft 2y ago
    > In a functioning labor market with high mobility for workers they would just quit and find a better place to work. > They're trying to hide the fact they've monopolized the labor market and they want you to assume this is all normal. It's a much higher level problem. Your labor market isn't all that special. The truth is that "a functioning market with high mobility" is just a myth. The market is functioning as intended: The ones with power under capitalism are the ones with capital - and they don't wish for things to change. You can try to level the playing field with laws, but that's incompatible with the "small government" folks.
    - timewizard 2y ago
      > Your labor market isn't all that special. It's the primary market underpinning capitalism. Otherwise it's just feudalism or slavery. So, I'd hope you believe it's special. > The truth is that "a functioning market with high mobility" is just a myth. There is absolutely no truth in what you just said. I'd have to ask what set of evidence did you examine to arrive at this conclusion? > The ones with power under capitalism are the ones with capital Yes. Wealth and capital give you an _advantage_. However it's not exclusive. It's why we recognize things like intellectual property and performance rights. It turns out there's /tons/ of sources of advantage in competition. > You can try to level the playing field with laws, but that's incompatible with the "small government" folks. The size of the government seems to have zero impact on it's willingness to enforce laws that are already on the books. Your thesis is thin and based on inherited cynicism. I cannot take it seriously.
mlinhares 2y ago
Oh come on, not a single one of these people is working anything anywhere close to 40 hours per week, let alone 60.
- Ancapistani 2y ago
  They definitely are, although that doesn’t justify actions. Not all, but most. Family members of mine at the VP/EVP level in “enterprise” type companies regularly work 12+ hours on weekdays and ~8 per day on weekends. It’s brutal and their families suffer for it, but it pays exceedingly well. As another poster put it, it’s survivorship bias. Most people who work that long and consistently end up with a destroyed family life and eventually the collapse of their professional life as well. Those who “make” it by and large keep their family intact because they can afford to make it difficult to leave - or because they’re married to someone of similar lifestyle.
  - zusammen 2y ago
    Family members of mine at the VP/EVP level in “enterprise” type companies regularly work 12+ hours on weekdays and ~8 per day on weekends. At that level, they’re in the club and guaranteed to advance as long as they don’t make enemies and get kicked out of the club (which is rare, but happens, and usually means they spend a year or so finding another club.) So while some of them do work long hours, they don’t have to. They’ve already been judged to be in the in-crowd and could work 10 hours per week from wherever they want, and they’d still make every promotion. So why do they work so much, and why do they go to the office? Because most of those guys (a) mutually dislike their families, (b) have psychological disorders, and (c) have office affairs. To psychopaths, 70 hours per week sunk into high-stakes office politics is fun.
    - luckylion 2y ago
      > So while some of them do work long hours, they don’t have to. Or so you say. But it sounds like a rationalization of why that doesn't matter/makes them morally bad people. First it's "they don't actually do any work, lol", then it's "but they totally don't have to, they could skate by on 2 hours a day, they are already pre-selected for success". But really, it's perfectly fine if you don't care that much and won't go to that length. You don't have to justify that by coming up with narratives that others who do are evil, mentally ill, or hate their families. You can just say "that's not for me".
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
I don't have different priorities but I can't afford to offload my obligations to others.
kcplate 2y ago
> I did exactly what this exec advocated - using hard data and statistics to paint a picture of what these mandates look like from a worker perspective - and was roundly shot down. Of course they did. If you want to convince a company doing RTO why it’s bad, you need to show the negative impacts to the organization. Everybody seems to approach this from their individual perspective.
- mystifyingpoi 2y ago
  Exactly. You must play by their rules.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > If you want to convince a company doing RTO why it’s bad, you need to show the negative impacts to the organization. There is a reason these are the same thing that should already be obvious: If you want people to take a job that costs them ~$30,000 more in expenses, you'll have to pay them more. If you split the difference, you both come out $15,000 ahead. This before you even consider the costs to the company directly. If employees work from home you need less office space etc. That's not just rent but heat, power, security, insurance, internet, furniture, taxes, cleaning, lawyers and permits. That's a ton of money.
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    > If you want people to take a job that costs them ~$30,000 more in expenses, you'll have to pay them more. If you split the difference, you both come out $15,000 ahead. I'm not following. How much is the difference? The difference to them is $30,000. But you forgot to specify what the difference to the company is.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      The difference to the company is that if you don't force people to take on $30,000 in expenses, you'll be able to find people willing to work for up to $30,000 less in compensation. In addition to the other benefits of expanding the talent pool beyond the local geographic area, which might let you get better people, e.g. because you can hire someone in Boston who wants to stay in Boston, without opening an office there.
Vaslo 2y ago
Totally supportive of remote work before I make my comment to be clear. Calling this “survivorship bias” though is like calling anything in evolution “survivorship bias”. A person with a seriously work focused life is naturally going to excel and I have no problem with this. Someone that makes sacrifices in their personal life (paying to live in the city, not having children or too many etc) so they can be more available and work more hours may do better than me, even at the same level of skill and intelligence. This only seems fair.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Aeolun 2y ago
What I don’t understand is, why have children if you are not going to raise them?
- blitzar 2y ago
  Looks good on the CV.
consteval 2y ago
Money can offset a lot of things, but money is still inferior to exactly one good - time. You can use money to move around time, but you can never buy it. Every second that passes is gone forever, never to be seen again. The recognition of this reality is the difference between those work-focused executives and laypeople.

jajko 2y ago

You are being too generous to that bunch of sociopaths (not snarky, just think for a second what kind of personality gets and thrives up there for decades). They care about their own profits, which are mostly bonus-based, and prestige. If they think they get any extra by appearing doing first and last thing that could drive up share price (or win some extra points in some meaningless internal battles), they will go for it. They are mostly pretty bad absent parents with laser focus on themselves and their careers only, and then it shows on kids. But in their mind nobody under them should be granted more.

bigyabai 2y ago
Sadly, I agree. There is probably an element of "hard worker" survivorship bias at play, but there's also an undeniable profit motive that overrides a lot of those instincts too. After a certain number of years, handing your kids off to the babysitters so you can work an extra 10 hours a week becomes outright sociopathic neglect. Using your wealth to separate you from the things that actually matter is arguably the peak of corporate disillusionment.
- rexpop 2y ago
  s/disillusionment/alienation
  - bigyabai 2y ago
    It's only alienation if you refuse to fight back.

SketchySeaBeast 2y ago

I agree. Despite the the statement's pithiness, the reality is we don't all have the same 24 hours in a day.

alabastervlog 2y ago
Yeah, I think it’s worth reflecting that most people with families work 80-hour weeks. Richer people can pay others to take on part of that workload so they can do 50 or 60 hours of work for a company and still actually be working less. Which is fine, I guess, until they’re all like “why are you poors always so sluggish and tired and wanting to clock out right at 5 on the dot?”
- grandempire 2y ago
  Nah. This kind of person tends to do more family stuff, and participate in more community events, and do more work. It’s ok to not be a busy body. I’m not one because it makes me miserable . But these imaginary tradeoffs we invent in our heads are often just justifications.
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    I'm not following your point. I've got a solid 30 hours of unpaid work a week, and it'd be closer to 40 if I had to commute, and when my kids were younger and I still had a commute it was around 50 hours, all on top of my actual job. I could and, if it weren't wildly financially irresponsible, absolutely would pay to make about 20 hours of that vanish at no harm whatsoever (benefit, actually) to my personal relationships & family, and then I'd have a lot more time and energy for other things. That's just... how clocks work, IDK. This is overwhelmingly the norm for people who can't afford to pay others to do lots of stuff for them.
    - grandempire 2y ago
      My point is busy people do even more of the things that you think make you busy. You think kids are taking up all your time? They have more kids and volunteer at the school, and run a church group, etc. The clock is secondary because using time efficiently, planning, and classifying which hours you are awake and available are all skills. Similar patterns happen all throughout life. People have non linear capacities and performance.

Jcampuzano2 2y ago

No, from my point of view this post is just another executive grift trying to make people feel better about why they do the things they do. Yes they live different lives, but they know they are different from their average worker, they just don't care about them. Making money and their success come above all. When they make these decisions it is not because they're out of touch. It is because they actively opposed people below them taking an inch. They know it fucks with them, they know they don't like it. They do it anyway. As an executive this person is excellent albeit trained at corporate speak. They're trying to gather sympathy for execs and it is all bullshit.

timewizard 2y ago
> Making money and their success come above all. How else would you want to motivate them? This is a for profit company after all. > It is because they actively opposed people below them taking an inch. In a functioning labor market with high mobility for workers they would just quit and find a better place to work. > They're trying to gather sympathy for execs and it is all bullshit. They're trying to hide the fact they've monopolized the labor market and they want you to assume this is all normal. It's a much higher level problem.
- bmicraft 2y ago
  > In a functioning labor market with high mobility for workers they would just quit and find a better place to work. > They're trying to hide the fact they've monopolized the labor market and they want you to assume this is all normal. It's a much higher level problem. Your labor market isn't all that special. The truth is that "a functioning market with high mobility" is just a myth. The market is functioning as intended: The ones with power under capitalism are the ones with capital - and they don't wish for things to change. You can try to level the playing field with laws, but that's incompatible with the "small government" folks.
  - timewizard 2y ago
    > Your labor market isn't all that special. It's the primary market underpinning capitalism. Otherwise it's just feudalism or slavery. So, I'd hope you believe it's special. > The truth is that "a functioning market with high mobility" is just a myth. There is absolutely no truth in what you just said. I'd have to ask what set of evidence did you examine to arrive at this conclusion? > The ones with power under capitalism are the ones with capital Yes. Wealth and capital give you an _advantage_. However it's not exclusive. It's why we recognize things like intellectual property and performance rights. It turns out there's /tons/ of sources of advantage in competition. > You can try to level the playing field with laws, but that's incompatible with the "small government" folks. The size of the government seems to have zero impact on it's willingness to enforce laws that are already on the books. Your thesis is thin and based on inherited cynicism. I cannot take it seriously.

mlinhares 2y ago

Oh come on, not a single one of these people is working anything anywhere close to 40 hours per week, let alone 60.

Ancapistani 2y ago
They definitely are, although that doesn’t justify actions. Not all, but most. Family members of mine at the VP/EVP level in “enterprise” type companies regularly work 12+ hours on weekdays and ~8 per day on weekends. It’s brutal and their families suffer for it, but it pays exceedingly well. As another poster put it, it’s survivorship bias. Most people who work that long and consistently end up with a destroyed family life and eventually the collapse of their professional life as well. Those who “make” it by and large keep their family intact because they can afford to make it difficult to leave - or because they’re married to someone of similar lifestyle.
- zusammen 2y ago
  Family members of mine at the VP/EVP level in “enterprise” type companies regularly work 12+ hours on weekdays and ~8 per day on weekends. At that level, they’re in the club and guaranteed to advance as long as they don’t make enemies and get kicked out of the club (which is rare, but happens, and usually means they spend a year or so finding another club.) So while some of them do work long hours, they don’t have to. They’ve already been judged to be in the in-crowd and could work 10 hours per week from wherever they want, and they’d still make every promotion. So why do they work so much, and why do they go to the office? Because most of those guys (a) mutually dislike their families, (b) have psychological disorders, and (c) have office affairs. To psychopaths, 70 hours per week sunk into high-stakes office politics is fun.
  - luckylion 2y ago
    > So while some of them do work long hours, they don’t have to. Or so you say. But it sounds like a rationalization of why that doesn't matter/makes them morally bad people. First it's "they don't actually do any work, lol", then it's "but they totally don't have to, they could skate by on 2 hours a day, they are already pre-selected for success". But really, it's perfectly fine if you don't care that much and won't go to that length. You don't have to justify that by coming up with narratives that others who do are evil, mentally ill, or hate their families. You can just say "that's not for me".

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

I don't have different priorities but I can't afford to offload my obligations to others.

kcplate 2y ago

> I did exactly what this exec advocated - using hard data and statistics to paint a picture of what these mandates look like from a worker perspective - and was roundly shot down. Of course they did. If you want to convince a company doing RTO why it’s bad, you need to show the negative impacts to the organization. Everybody seems to approach this from their individual perspective.

mystifyingpoi 2y ago
Exactly. You must play by their rules.
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> If you want to convince a company doing RTO why it’s bad, you need to show the negative impacts to the organization. There is a reason these are the same thing that should already be obvious: If you want people to take a job that costs them ~$30,000 more in expenses, you'll have to pay them more. If you split the difference, you both come out $15,000 ahead. This before you even consider the costs to the company directly. If employees work from home you need less office space etc. That's not just rent but heat, power, security, insurance, internet, furniture, taxes, cleaning, lawyers and permits. That's a ton of money.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  > If you want people to take a job that costs them ~$30,000 more in expenses, you'll have to pay them more. If you split the difference, you both come out $15,000 ahead. I'm not following. How much is the difference? The difference to them is $30,000. But you forgot to specify what the difference to the company is.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    The difference to the company is that if you don't force people to take on $30,000 in expenses, you'll be able to find people willing to work for up to $30,000 less in compensation. In addition to the other benefits of expanding the talent pool beyond the local geographic area, which might let you get better people, e.g. because you can hire someone in Boston who wants to stay in Boston, without opening an office there.

Vaslo 2y ago

Totally supportive of remote work before I make my comment to be clear. Calling this “survivorship bias” though is like calling anything in evolution “survivorship bias”. A person with a seriously work focused life is naturally going to excel and I have no problem with this. Someone that makes sacrifices in their personal life (paying to live in the city, not having children or too many etc) so they can be more available and work more hours may do better than me, even at the same level of skill and intelligence. This only seems fair.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Aeolun 2y ago

What I don’t understand is, why have children if you are not going to raise them?

blitzar 2y ago
Looks good on the CV.

consteval 2y ago

Money can offset a lot of things, but money is still inferior to exactly one good - time. You can use money to move around time, but you can never buy it. Every second that passes is gone forever, never to be seen again. The recognition of this reality is the difference between those work-focused executives and laypeople.