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It completely depends on what's happening at the time! And even worse, you can only know in retrospect. Some of my time in this life has been priceless and I wo

It completely depends on what's happening at the time! And even worse, you can only know in retrospect. Some of my time in this life has been priceless and I wouldn't give it up for anything. Much of it turns out to be near useless, on the other hand. I make ~$12/hr right now, but I'm into what I'm doing (that is, I think it'll generate some of those priceless moments eventually). But given that I'd like to have more money (it may even end up saving me some time!) if you have $30/hr for me you can have a bunch of my time. That's probably a more philosophical answer than you were hoping for. But given that I have no money, I'm probably not within your target market anyways, so consider me to have spared you an outlier. edit: grammar

macco 17y ago
It depends on the context, that is clear. There is no universal solution to that question.
mmt 17y ago
Even though I'm someone who "has money," I find this point very relevant. I've wrestled a bit with the OP's question in more than one context for years, though primarily in the case of calculating how much a particular position's total compensation is worth, making sure to consider commute time, for example. It also comes in handy when trying to figure out the value of non-sick time off, such as holidays, which is not convertible to cash. My current attempt is to use a number as a factor of my effective hourly rate, but that has been unsatisfactory. If I'm unemployed, that factor approaches zero. Somewhere around 2000 hours annually, it goes above 1. That is, if the factor is 1.1, I'd consider it worth my while to get paid 10% over my effective "normaly" hourly rate, to sacrifice free time by doing work on the side, assuming cash is the only reward. The reverse is also true, though at an objective rate: vacation is worth a factor of 1 by definition, since it's convertible. I tend to do (read: have Calc) do these computations on pre-tax money, though post-tax money is what's personally real to me. Either way, it doesn't much matter, since, at any given point, the question for me is of marginal, not overall, value. I've been assuming total hours, but that's obviously false, since I'm much less likely to take side gigs if my "day" job is paying enough, raising my free time factor as high as 1.5. I'm also more likely to take vacation (since I'd be making a free time "profit" of .5). In the context of the original question, my salary converted to hourly is a close enough approximation to how I value my time. From an employer's standpoint, I use the rule of thumb of $2/minute (like a 900 number!) as the cost of lost productivity for wasting my (or anyone else's productive) time. This, of course, only scales to a company of moderate size, as I'm sure most readers here are quite aware.

macco 17y ago

It depends on the context, that is clear. There is no universal solution to that question.

mmt 17y ago

Even though I'm someone who "has money," I find this point very relevant. I've wrestled a bit with the OP's question in more than one context for years, though primarily in the case of calculating how much a particular position's total compensation is worth, making sure to consider commute time, for example. It also comes in handy when trying to figure out the value of non-sick time off, such as holidays, which is not convertible to cash. My current attempt is to use a number as a factor of my effective hourly rate, but that has been unsatisfactory. If I'm unemployed, that factor approaches zero. Somewhere around 2000 hours annually, it goes above 1. That is, if the factor is 1.1, I'd consider it worth my while to get paid 10% over my effective "normaly" hourly rate, to sacrifice free time by doing work on the side, assuming cash is the only reward. The reverse is also true, though at an objective rate: vacation is worth a factor of 1 by definition, since it's convertible. I tend to do (read: have Calc) do these computations on pre-tax money, though post-tax money is what's personally real to me. Either way, it doesn't much matter, since, at any given point, the question for me is of marginal, not overall, value. I've been assuming total hours, but that's obviously false, since I'm much less likely to take side gigs if my "day" job is paying enough, raising my free time factor as high as 1.5. I'm also more likely to take vacation (since I'd be making a free time "profit" of .5). In the context of the original question, my salary converted to hourly is a close enough approximation to how I value my time. From an employer's standpoint, I use the rule of thumb of $2/minute (like a 900 number!) as the cost of lost productivity for wasting my (or anyone else's productive) time. This, of course, only scales to a company of moderate size, as I'm sure most readers here are quite aware.