The Money Mustache Community
Around the Internet => Antimustachian Wall of Shame and Comedy => Topic started by: FireLane on February 24, 2020, 05:49:08 PM
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This story from Harvard Business Review was heartbreaking:
https://hbr.org/2020/03/whats-really-holding-women-back
It's a study about what causes gender imbalance in the workplace, especially at high-level senior positions that require long hours and round-the-clock availability. The common assumption is that women value family over work and don't want to make the extreme sacrifices these jobs demand, but the authors found that's not true. Men suffer from overwork and miss their families just as much as women do. The only difference is that men are culturally expected to suck it up.
Whereas firm members attributed distress over work/family conflict primarily to women, we found that many men were suffering, too. “I was traveling three days a week and seeing my children once or twice a week for 45 minutes before they went to bed,” one told us. He recalled a particularly painful Saturday when he told his son he couldn’t come to his soccer game. “He burst into tears,” the man said. “I wanted to quit then and there.”
or this one:
“When my first child was born, I got to carry her from the delivery room to the nursery. It’s almost like I could feel the chemicals releasing in my brain. I fell so chemically, deeply, in love with my daughter. I couldn’t imagine a world without her. I mean, here it was in [just] the first eight minutes of her life. So I can understand, ‘How can I possibly give this up and go back to work?’”
And what was his takeaway from this emotionally charged experience? A sense that he better understood the difficulties women face in trying to balance work and family! To banish his guilt and sadness about returning to his highly demanding workweeks, he projected his intense emotional experience onto the women at the firm—a move that allowed him to let go of those feelings while still identifying with them.
There's a cruel double standard perpetuated by many companies: they have work-from-home policies, flex time and other family-friendly accommodations, but penalize the employees - mostly women - who make use of them. They get passed over for raises and promotions because they're seen as less committed to the job. On the other hand, hard-working women who don't make use of these accommodations are also penalized, because bosses assume they're neglecting their families and that makes them bad role models!
The culture of insane hours and overwork hurts everyone, both the men who are suffering in silence and the women who are in a no-win situation. What these companies need is a little more Mustachianism, and more employees who are willing to push back and refuse outrageous demands:
If we want to solve this problem, we must reconsider what we’re willing to allow the workplace to demand of all employees. Such a reconsideration is possible. As individual families and employees push back against overwork, they will pave the way for others to follow. And as more research shows the business advantage of reasonable hours, some employers will come to question the wisdom of grueling schedules.
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I retired at 57 years old, after 32 years of work at the same organization, from a job I loved because my doctor told me it was killing me. Unprompted by any mention of stress by me she told me "Every six months you continue at this level of stress is taking five years off your life." I did continue working for two years after she told me this but then the exhaustion of 15 hour days - 12 hours a day working and 3 hours commuting plus texts in the evenings and weekends - caused me to walk away. I still miss parts of my job but I feel better as I can now sleep (the stress would wake me up after a few hours of sleep), exercise regularly and have energy left for my family (husband and three teenage and young adult children). When I was working I would see my family late in the evening but I was so tired and strung out I wasn't really present and engaged. My husband told me if I didn't retire he would divorce me.
I am skeptical change will ever occur regarding the insane hours we are "expected" to work as our culture glorifies working these hours.
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The Millennial Revolution blog has an article about this (warning: profanity): https://www.millennial-revolution.com/freedom/the-fuck-over-ability-index/ (https://www.millennial-revolution.com/freedom/the-fuck-over-ability-index/)
Basically, employers like employees who are deep in debt, have expensive lifestyles, and live paycheque to paycheque, because they have to do whatever their manager tells them to do.
I think there's more to it than that - including technology, corporate downsizing, and a culture that glorifies "busyness" - but companies also do it because they can get away with it because people can't risk losing their jobs. I've heard partners at my firm say "we like people with big mortgages", and have been pressured to buy property in this VHCOL city.
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I remember our first meeting with a high-level female executive at my company. One of the things she said that struck me as insanity on so many levels was "I know that if I have a question at 2:30am I can just call x and he'll have an answer for me!".
I don't care how much the job pays if A: I'm going to be awake at 2:30AM worrying about it, or B: If I'm the poor sucker getting called at 2:30AM to answer bs questions that could have waited until 9AM.
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I remember our first meeting with a high-level female executive at my company. One of the things she said that struck me as insanity on so many levels was "I know that if I have a question at 2:30am I can just call x and he'll have an answer for me!".
I don't care how much the job pays if A: I'm going to be awake at 2:30AM worrying about it, or B: If I'm the poor sucker getting called at 2:30AM to answer bs questions that could have waited until 9AM.
When I started working for my current employer, she would send me emails and text messages after 10pm and I replied each time with "go to sleep".
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I've heard partners at my firm say "we like people with big mortgages", and have been pressured to buy property in this VHCOL city.
I've been on the receiving end of that as has my son in his current job.
One of the joys of being a saver is you can push back against that sort of bullshit. I'm convinced this is better for the employer as well, modern workplaces need independent thinkers.
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I've heard partners at my firm say "we like people with big mortgages", and have been pressured to buy property in this VHCOL city.
I've been on the receiving end of that as has my son in his current job.
One of the joys of being a saver is you can push back against that sort of bullshit. I'm convinced this is better for the employer as well, modern workplaces need independent thinkers.
It also helps to understand the actual math of home ownership, rather than just looking at the big gains boomers made in the past.
Luckily I don’t get this same pressure from my family. My parents are in favour of home ownership, but they understand that the financial value of a home is the rent it saves you by living in it, and that home ownership costs way more than the mortgage. They accumulated their wealth through stock market investing, not a massive windfall on their primary residence.
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The Millennial Revolution blog has an article about this (warning: profanity): https://www.millennial-revolution.com/freedom/the-fuck-over-ability-index/ (https://www.millennial-revolution.com/freedom/the-fuck-over-ability-index/)
I really enjoyed this article. I tend to do these mental calculations to see how close to the wire someone lives. I also now realize why an old boss looked so confused when I pushed back on awful tasks. Clearly she miscalculated.
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That was a fantastic article.
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That article is a work of art.
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yes heartbreaking, really hits home, as just last night I learned a friend was sick... the last time I saw him 2 weeks ago, he was working until midnight and on weekend to meet a deadline, I'm not surprised it affected his health. Makes me so angry, but I understand when your job is on the line it's almost impossible to say "no" and managers are also under pressure from "upper management" or the big boss or whoever to enforce the insane work hours.
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The Millennial Revolution blog has an article about this (warning: profanity): https://www.millennial-revolution.com/freedom/the-fuck-over-ability-index/ (https://www.millennial-revolution.com/freedom/the-fuck-over-ability-index/)
Basically, employers like employees who are deep in debt, have expensive lifestyles, and live paycheque to paycheque, because they have to do whatever their manager tells them to do.
I think there's more to it than that - including technology, corporate downsizing, and a culture that glorifies "busyness" - but companies also do it because they can get away with it because people can't risk losing their jobs. I've heard partners at my firm say "we like people with big mortgages", and have been pressured to buy property in this VHCOL city.
This is frustrating as a mustachian since employers have limited experience with staff that don't indebt themselves severely. My attitude probably appears more cavalier than average and I think it disturbs them.
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I remember our first meeting with a high-level female executive at my company. One of the things she said that struck me as insanity on so many levels was "I know that if I have a question at 2:30am I can just call x and he'll have an answer for me!".
I don't care how much the job pays if A: I'm going to be awake at 2:30AM worrying about it, or B: If I'm the poor sucker getting called at 2:30AM to answer bs questions that could have waited until 9AM.
Just curious, was the fact that the high-level executive was female have anything to do with the rest of the story? I mean, I have had that same experience many many times with male execs, yet I never called them "a high level male executive"
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The Millennial Revolution blog has an article about this (warning: profanity): https://www.millennial-revolution.com/freedom/the-fuck-over-ability-index/ (https://www.millennial-revolution.com/freedom/the-fuck-over-ability-index/)
Basically, employers like employees who are deep in debt, have expensive lifestyles, and live paycheque to paycheque, because they have to do whatever their manager tells them to do.
I think there's more to it than that - including technology, corporate downsizing, and a culture that glorifies "busyness" - but companies also do it because they can get away with it because people can't risk losing their jobs. I've heard partners at my firm say "we like people with big mortgages", and have been pressured to buy property in this VHCOL city.
This is frustrating as a mustachian since employers have limited experience with staff that don't indebt themselves severely. My attitude probably appears more cavalier than average and I think it disturbs them.
I'd say a very good percentage of my coworkers (including my boss) are super cheap like me (which is good and bad).
Not all of them though. There is one particular 70 year old man who seems to think I should add a $500k second story to my house because it will pay for itself when I sell the house! No it won't.
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The Millennial Revolution blog has an article about this (warning: profanity): https://www.millennial-revolution.com/freedom/the-fuck-over-ability-index/ (https://www.millennial-revolution.com/freedom/the-fuck-over-ability-index/)
Basically, employers like employees who are deep in debt, have expensive lifestyles, and live paycheque to paycheque, because they have to do whatever their manager tells them to do.
I think there's more to it than that - including technology, corporate downsizing, and a culture that glorifies "busyness" - but companies also do it because they can get away with it because people can't risk losing their jobs. I've heard partners at my firm say "we like people with big mortgages", and have been pressured to buy property in this VHCOL city.
This is frustrating as a mustachian since employers have limited experience with staff that don't indebt themselves severely. My attitude probably appears more cavalier than average and I think it disturbs them.
I'd say a very good percentage of my coworkers (including my boss) are super cheap like me (which is good and bad).
Not all of them though. There is one particular 70 year old man who seems to think I should add a $500k second story to my house because it will pay for itself when I sell the house! No it won't.
Seems weird that your coworkers are frugal. What do you think the explanation is? I've always found frugal people to be outliers.
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The Millennial Revolution blog has an article about this (warning: profanity): https://www.millennial-revolution.com/freedom/the-fuck-over-ability-index/ (https://www.millennial-revolution.com/freedom/the-fuck-over-ability-index/)
Basically, employers like employees who are deep in debt, have expensive lifestyles, and live paycheque to paycheque, because they have to do whatever their manager tells them to do.
I think there's more to it than that - including technology, corporate downsizing, and a culture that glorifies "busyness" - but companies also do it because they can get away with it because people can't risk losing their jobs. I've heard partners at my firm say "we like people with big mortgages", and have been pressured to buy property in this VHCOL city.
This is frustrating as a mustachian since employers have limited experience with staff that don't indebt themselves severely. My attitude probably appears more cavalier than average and I think it disturbs them.
I'd say a very good percentage of my coworkers (including my boss) are super cheap like me (which is good and bad).
Not all of them though. There is one particular 70 year old man who seems to think I should add a $500k second story to my house because it will pay for itself when I sell the house! No it won't.
Seems weird that your coworkers are frugal. What do you think the explanation is? I've always found frugal people to be outliers.
- Bunch of engineers
- Most of whom were graduate students for a long time
- A fair % moved here from various other countries (Asia mostly, but also Europe)
- Startup company always trying to cut costs, so some self selection bias there also.
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The Millennial Revolution blog has an article about this (warning: profanity): https://www.millennial-revolution.com/freedom/the-fuck-over-ability-index/ (https://www.millennial-revolution.com/freedom/the-fuck-over-ability-index/)
Basically, employers like employees who are deep in debt, have expensive lifestyles, and live paycheque to paycheque, because they have to do whatever their manager tells them to do.
I think there's more to it than that - including technology, corporate downsizing, and a culture that glorifies "busyness" - but companies also do it because they can get away with it because people can't risk losing their jobs. I've heard partners at my firm say "we like people with big mortgages", and have been pressured to buy property in this VHCOL city.
This is frustrating as a mustachian since employers have limited experience with staff that don't indebt themselves severely. My attitude probably appears more cavalier than average and I think it disturbs them.
I'd say a very good percentage of my coworkers (including my boss) are super cheap like me (which is good and bad).
Not all of them though. There is one particular 70 year old man who seems to think I should add a $500k second story to my house because it will pay for itself when I sell the house! No it won't.
Seems weird that your coworkers are frugal. What do you think the explanation is? I've always found frugal people to be outliers.
- Bunch of engineers
- Most of whom were graduate students for a long time
- A fair % moved here from various other countries (Asia mostly, but also Europe)
- Startup company always trying to cut costs, so some self selection bias there also.
That makes sense.
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Seems weird that your coworkers are frugal. What do you think the explanation is? I've always found frugal people to be outliers.
- Bunch of engineers
- Most of whom were graduate students for a long time
- A fair % moved here from various other countries (Asia mostly, but also Europe)
- Startup company always trying to cut costs, so some self selection bias there also.
Sounds like mine, but in my case add that lots of them came from rural areas, where many grew up helping with DIY repairs.
Engineers tend to be pragmatists, and many have skillsets that translate well to saving money.
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"The subs themselves made Johnstone possible by obeying his impossible orders."
Bukowski, Post Office
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Seems weird that your coworkers are frugal. What do you think the explanation is? I've always found frugal people to be outliers.
- Bunch of engineers
- Most of whom were graduate students for a long time
- A fair % moved here from various other countries (Asia mostly, but also Europe)
- Startup company always trying to cut costs, so some self selection bias there also.
Sounds like mine, but in my case add that lots of them came from rural areas, where many grew up helping with DIY repairs.
Engineers tend to be pragmatists, and many have skillsets that translate well to saving money.
engineering helps a bit, but not a whole lot, at least in my office. It prevents a lot of utter financial recklessness, but just about as much of the usual upperish middle-class level consumerism. (expensive car on a low apr 5 yr note vs. say lease or 7+ year note w high apr)
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There are actually quite a few frugal people in my department. I work in a research department for gov. It skews female with science, tech or social work backgrounds. Unlike the private university staff/faculty there is no culture of "status" consumption, or one upping people. There have been a number of my co-workers who have retired sooner than ave retirement age, but more 62 than extreme mustachian. I like where I work. There are lots of conversations in the break room about recipes (the majority brown bag it with homemade food).
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I remember our first meeting with a high-level female executive at my company. One of the things she said that struck me as insanity on so many levels was "I know that if I have a question at 2:30am I can just call x and he'll have an answer for me!".
I don't care how much the job pays if A: I'm going to be awake at 2:30AM worrying about it, or B: If I'm the poor sucker getting called at 2:30AM to answer bs questions that could have waited until 9AM.
I'm right there with you.
Years ago I was the manager of the programmers for a North American subsidiary of an International firm. The CIO informed me he had ordered pagers for me and the other programmers.
I looked him in the eye and quietly said, "When I and my programmers write such bad code that we need to have pagers, **I** will find another line of work." Then I just looked at him.
Never saw those damn pagers.
That is the power of FU money (and being damn good at a key job).
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I remember our first meeting with a high-level female executive at my company. One of the things she said that struck me as insanity on so many levels was "I know that if I have a question at 2:30am I can just call x and he'll have an answer for me!".
I don't care how much the job pays if A: I'm going to be awake at 2:30AM worrying about it, or B: If I'm the poor sucker getting called at 2:30AM to answer bs questions that could have waited until 9AM.
When I started working for my current employer, she would send me emails and text messages after 10pm and I replied each time with "go to sleep".
I got myself in trouble by telling a physio who emailed me at 11pm that she was a fucking physio not a brain surgeon. Few people die through urgent lack of physio-fucking-therapy!
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I remember our first meeting with a high-level female executive at my company. One of the things she said that struck me as insanity on so many levels was "I know that if I have a question at 2:30am I can just call x and he'll have an answer for me!".
I don't care how much the job pays if A: I'm going to be awake at 2:30AM worrying about it, or B: If I'm the poor sucker getting called at 2:30AM to answer bs questions that could have waited until 9AM.
When I started working for my current employer, she would send me emails and text messages after 10pm and I replied each time with "go to sleep".
I got myself in trouble by telling a physio who emailed me at 11pm that she was a fucking physio not a brain surgeon. Few people die through urgent lack of physio-fucking-therapy!
Well...yeah.
Even I would fire you as a patient if you said that to me.
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I remember our first meeting with a high-level female executive at my company. One of the things she said that struck me as insanity on so many levels was "I know that if I have a question at 2:30am I can just call x and he'll have an answer for me!".
I don't care how much the job pays if A: I'm going to be awake at 2:30AM worrying about it, or B: If I'm the poor sucker getting called at 2:30AM to answer bs questions that could have waited until 9AM.
When I started working for my current employer, she would send me emails and text messages after 10pm and I replied each time with "go to sleep".
I got myself in trouble by telling a physio who emailed me at 11pm that she was a fucking physio not a brain surgeon. Few people die through urgent lack of physio-fucking-therapy!
Well...yeah.
Even I would fire you as a patient if you said that to me.
Not her patient, actually a distant colleague that she really didn't need to email at all.
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I have a millennial friend who gets docked pay if he doesn’t answer a text message within 15 minutes any hour of the day. The guys texting him are old and in far away time zones.
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I remember our first meeting with a high-level female executive at my company. One of the things she said that struck me as insanity on so many levels was "I know that if I have a question at 2:30am I can just call x and he'll have an answer for me!".
I don't care how much the job pays if A: I'm going to be awake at 2:30AM worrying about it, or B: If I'm the poor sucker getting called at 2:30AM to answer bs questions that could have waited until 9AM.
When I started working for my current employer, she would send me emails and text messages after 10pm and I replied each time with "go to sleep".
I got myself in trouble by telling a physio who emailed me at 11pm that she was a fucking physio not a brain surgeon. Few people die through urgent lack of physio-fucking-therapy!
Well...yeah.
Even I would fire you as a patient if you said that to me.
Not her patient, actually a distant colleague that she really didn't need to email at all.
Ah, that makes more sense.
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I have a millennial friend who gets docked pay if he doesn’t answer a text message within 15 minutes any hour of the day. The guys texting him are old and in far away time zones.
How can that be legal?
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I have a millennial friend who gets docked pay if he doesn’t answer a text message within 15 minutes any hour of the day. The guys texting him are old and in far away time zones.
Does an autoreply saying "I am asleep, will reply when I wake up" count as a reply?
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I have a millennial friend who gets docked pay if he doesn’t answer a text message within 15 minutes any hour of the day. The guys texting him are old and in far away time zones.
If your business really requires someone to be available 24 hours a day, there’s a simple solution: hire someone to work the night shift or to be on call for defined hours (like doctors). Anything else is unreasonable.
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There's a cruel double standard perpetuated by many companies: they have work-from-home policies, flex time and other family-friendly accommodations, but penalize the employees - mostly women - who make use of them. They get passed over for raises and promotions because they're seen as less committed to the job. On the other hand, hard-working women who don't make use of these accommodations are also penalized, because bosses assume they're neglecting their families and that makes them bad role models!
Women do indeed suffer from a double bind.
Nonetheless, I have little sympathy for the men complaining in the article. If you want to excel in anything, you will sacrifice other areas of your life. Top athletes neglect their families, too, famous writers mostly have shit lovelives, and good fathers tend not to go far professionally. You can't do everything.
I had to choose between professional advancement (in small business) and family. I chose family. That's nobody's fault, that's just life, there are only so many hours in a day. No, you can't have it all, nor does anyone owe that to you.
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There's a cruel double standard perpetuated by many companies: they have work-from-home policies, flex time and other family-friendly accommodations, but penalize the employees - mostly women - who make use of them. They get passed over for raises and promotions because they're seen as less committed to the job. On the other hand, hard-working women who don't make use of these accommodations are also penalized, because bosses assume they're neglecting their families and that makes them bad role models!
Women do indeed suffer from a double bind.
Nonetheless, I have little sympathy for the men complaining in the article. If you want to excel in anything, you will sacrifice other areas of your life. Top athletes neglect their families, too, famous writers mostly have shit lovelives, and good fathers tend not to go far professionally. You can't do everything.
I had to choose between professional advancement (in small business) and family. I chose family. That's nobody's fault, that's just life, there are only so many hours in a day. No, you can't have it all, nor does anyone owe that to you.
Very good point to make today, even. When the local news site says they are canceling the Gifted program at one of the schools, for incoming 3rd grade only. Well, the reason they are doing it is that there were ONLY 11 students interested in enrolling. Usually, there are 25 in a class and a 10-25 kid waitlist.
Oh goodness the privileged mommas and daddas talking about how their exceptional children are/ were bored in regular classes - so much they had to work with their kids at home. And this program, it saved them! And not everyone can do private school for their exceptional children.
Yeah, I get it. You can get free public education. You can get excellent, tailored education to your children's special needs (whatever they may be). If you hit the jackpot, you can get both. (My kids are Gifted, we opted to stay at our home school, and our teachers have been fabulous at challenging them!) But you are not OWED that. One of the people complaining that not everyone can DO private school is a friend of mine - they've both got PhDs in engineering - i KNOW what they make. You can afford private school.
There's a limited budget and I feel like it's MUCH better spent getting all the other kids to grade level. Getting the extra support for the disabled students (THIS IS NOT CHEAP.)
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Yes. Once my son started school, I quickly realised that it was not about helping each child reach their individual potential, it was about having them achieve certain standards. Around 1/3 of the class can achieve the standard on the first day before the teacher does anything with them; they are ignored. Around 1/3 will get there with a bit of help, so long as they show up to 80% or so of class days and don't have too much wax in their ears. That leaves 1/3 who are way below standard and need a lot of help or they'll have to grow up to be beauticians, members of parliament and football players; these are the ones the teachers spend most of their time on.
Which 1/3rd your child is in depends largely on you. Basically, if you read them a bedtime story each night, have educated adults visit the home and have the kids around while they talk, if you feed them three good meals a day, if you don't abuse alcohol or drugs and have a stable marriage - they're going to be top 1/3rd in their class.
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I have a millennial friend who gets docked pay if he doesn’t answer a text message within 15 minutes any hour of the day. The guys texting him are old and in far away time zones.
If your business really requires someone to be available 24 hours a day, there’s a simple solution: hire someone to work the night shift or to be on call for defined hours (like doctors). Anything else is unreasonable.
What is and isn't unreasonable is really for the employee to decide. As long as the parameters are well set out on advance and transparent, it's a free market.
I sometimes have to work long hours straight under immense pressure. Occasionally I have had to work from 4am-11pm one day and then 6am - 8pm the next. And that was full-on work, no screwing around. I did it for the money, it was fine. If I didn't want to do it I could have not accepted the assignment.
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Which 1/3rd your child is in depends largely on you. Basically, if you read them a bedtime story each night, have educated adults visit the home and have the kids around while they talk, if you feed them three good meals a day, if you don't abuse alcohol or drugs and have a stable marriage - they're going to be top 1/3rd in their class.
Sorry, this generalization strikes me as rather callous.
Just know that among that bottom 1/3 are still a fair mix of kids with non-environmental road blocks, where kids struggle despite good parenting. Good friends of ours have a daughter who has a couple learning disabilities despite two fully educated, highly involved, and dedicated parents. There are laws in place to assure these kids get the necessary extra help they need. Sadly getting a school to properly recognize/admit which kids are in this situation and need these extra dollars spent on them often requires dogged determination, lawyer fees, and an intimate knowledge of "The System". Were this same kid in the hands of even slightly less stubborn parents she would likely have been a write-off to the school system rather than currently barely treading water. Many other anecdotes are out there, many with years of heartbreaking parental efforts without any fairy tail ending in sight.
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Which 1/3rd your child is in depends largely on you. Basically, if you read them a bedtime story each night, have educated adults visit the home and have the kids around while they talk, if you feed them three good meals a day, if you don't abuse alcohol or drugs and have a stable marriage - they're going to be top 1/3rd in their class.
Sorry, this generalization strikes me as rather callous.
Just know that among that bottom 1/3 are still a fair mix of kids with non-environmental road blocks, where kids struggle despite good parenting. Good friends of ours have a daughter who has a couple learning disabilities despite two fully educated, highly involved, and dedicated parents. There are laws in place to assure these kids get the necessary extra help they need. Sadly getting a school to properly recognize/admit which kids are in this situation and need these extra dollars spent on them often requires dogged determination, lawyer fees, and an intimate knowledge of "The System". Were this same kid in the hands of even slightly less stubborn parents she would likely have been a write-off to the school system rather than currently barely treading water. Many other anecdotes are out there, many with years of heartbreaking parental efforts without any fairy tail ending in sight.
I don't think he intentionally left out disabled kids. He was making a generalization.
I've got friends who are both teachers...one of them went to Stanford and Berkeley. One of their sons is gifted, the other is disabled (genetic defect), will ALWAYS need help, and his mom basically had to quit working when he was born. (He's a teenager now.)
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Yeah, the kid could be disabled, and the kid could, god forbid, get hit by a truck tomorrow. Bad things happen. Such is life.
I'm talking about the things you can control, not all the other nonsense life throws at us. I stand by what I said.
Guess what, if you as a parent of disabled kids... let's see, what was it? "if you read them a bedtime story each night, have educated adults visit the home and have the kids around while they talk, if you feed them three good meals a day, if you don't abuse alcohol or drugs and have a stable marriage" - they are going to be a lot better off than in the reverse situation.
Where are all the average kids? Nowadays everyone's kid is gifted, or disabled, or somehow both at once. Somehow we no longer have average kids, they're all special - autistic, allergic and asthmatic. What happened to the kid who just sorta paid attention in class and picked their nose during long division and was kind of mostly picked for the team and was happy to get a C, and more importantly their parent who sent them outside to play and told them to come back home before dinner with all the fingers and toes they left the house with?
This desire for every kid to be special is what leads to insane work hours. We have to work hard to send them to that private school, let's just hope it's not one where the teachers molest the students, eh? Look, work sensible hours, come home, talk to your spouse and kids, have a cup of tea and relax. You're probably never going to become CEO, make partner, get an industry award or get a Nobel Prize however long you spend at work.
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Contrast this to what you see anywhere in Europe, for instance, with shorter than 40-hour weeks and people actually going home when their shifts end, and you see that the work still gets done and there's still the ability to get family time with children and loved ones. It's a matter of priorities. The biggest impact I think mustachianism, or in general frugality, can have on society (outside of the beneficial impact of reduced consumption on the planet) is simply that employees are more likely to prioritize things that don't always correlate positively with income and in so doing gain power over employers to back away from profit-mindedness. Maybe that becomes a springboard to a greater plurality of employers, as people depart bad jobs to create good ones for themselves and potentially others as well.
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Which 1/3rd your child is in depends largely on you. Basically, if you read them a bedtime story each night, have educated adults visit the home and have the kids around while they talk, if you feed them three good meals a day, if you don't abuse alcohol or drugs and have a stable marriage - they're going to be top 1/3rd in their class.
Sorry, this generalization strikes me as rather callous.
Just know that among that bottom 1/3 are still a fair mix of kids with non-environmental road blocks, where kids struggle despite good parenting. Good friends of ours have a daughter who has a couple learning disabilities despite two fully educated, highly involved, and dedicated parents. There are laws in place to assure these kids get the necessary extra help they need. Sadly getting a school to properly recognize/admit which kids are in this situation and need these extra dollars spent on them often requires dogged determination, lawyer fees, and an intimate knowledge of "The System". Were this same kid in the hands of even slightly less stubborn parents she would likely have been a write-off to the school system rather than currently barely treading water. Many other anecdotes are out there, many with years of heartbreaking parental efforts without any fairy tail ending in sight.
I don't think he intentionally left out disabled kids. He was making a generalization.
I've got friends who are both teachers...one of them went to Stanford and Berkeley. One of their sons is gifted, the other is disabled (genetic defect), will ALWAYS need help, and his mom basically had to quit working when he was born. (He's a teenager now.)
One of my personal peeves is the Exception Martyr that seems to leap from the woodwork and brow beat the sane poster into submission with their holier-than-thou edge cases.
You see...that sane poster is really a terrible and heartless monster because they didn't explicitly take into account poor Timmy in Timbuktu who...you know...is an outlier...and doesn't deserve such callous treatment.
Apparently Exception Martyrs can't handle an argument that doesn't cover precisely 100% of situations. If it isn't Black, it has to be White!
Aren't they saintly?! Look how they are championing for the vast minority! How noble! How selfless!
...how remarkably pedantic and dis-servicing they truly are....
Sorry for the rant. I guess we're all idiots and don't understand that all rules have exceptions (with exceptions of course).
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This is a great point. However, we are mustachians and one of those values is to try to figure out the systems, and its benefits and flaws and craft a life around that.
I worked a crazy job for four years. Then a slightly less crazy job after that. Now I work 9-5:30 and my wife doesn't work. I am still paid pretty well, because I have a lot of reasonably solid experience.
You can use intense corporate jobs to your advantage. Get in, make money, get out.
One solution is that we shouldn't look up to people who work terrible jobs to make more money than any person possibly needs and then who frequently wreck the environment with their high-consumption lifestyles. That's not a sustainable model for anyone.
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You can use intense corporate jobs to your advantage. Get in, make money, get out.
Exactly, this is what I'm doing. Fortunately I like what I do so it is enjoyable, but even I can't do crazy hours over and over again. Once in a while is ok, that's the tradeoff for the relatively high pay.
The high pay is going to be hard to walk away from at some point. So I think I'll glide down by going 4 days a week, then 3.
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You can use intense corporate jobs to your advantage. Get in, make money, get out.
Exactly, this is what I'm doing. Fortunately I like what I do so it is enjoyable, but even I can't do crazy hours over and over again. Once in a while is ok, that's the tradeoff for the relatively high pay.
The high pay is going to be hard to walk away from at some point. So I think I'll glide down by going 4 days a week, then 3.
It feels hard to walk away from because as humans we're heavily biased towards maintaining the status quo.
In my experience though, once you've walked away from it, not having that income very quickly becomes the new status quo.
The anticipation of losing a high income is a lot more intense than the actual reality.
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The other thing is that once you've earned and consolidated a good reputation, you can use that rep to keep your fees high and your income solid with only "maintenance" work. It's the climbing of the mountain that's hard, not the staying on top.
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You can use intense corporate jobs to your advantage. Get in, make money, get out.
Exactly, this is what I'm doing. Fortunately I like what I do so it is enjoyable, but even I can't do crazy hours over and over again. Once in a while is ok, that's the tradeoff for the relatively high pay.
The high pay is going to be hard to walk away from at some point. So I think I'll glide down by going 4 days a week, then 3.
It feels hard to walk away from because as humans we're heavily biased towards maintaining the status quo.
In my experience though, once you've walked away from it, not having that income very quickly becomes the new status quo.
The anticipation of losing a high income is a lot more intense than the actual reality.
For me, I went to the hospital with chest pains in the middle of the night at 29. Luckily a false alarm but it scares the crap out of me. I figured if I kept it up I'd be dead by 55. It took a few months from that point to actually get out but psychologically that was the breaking point and my hours dropped from "impressive associate" to "under the bonus threshold" from that point on.
Blessing in disguise really.
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One of my personal peeves is the Exception Martyr that seems to leap from the woodwork and brow beat the sane poster into submission with their holier-than-thou edge cases.
You see...that sane poster is really a terrible and heartless monster because they didn't explicitly take into account poor Timmy in Timbuktu who...you know...is an outlier...and doesn't deserve such callous treatment.
Apparently Exception Martyrs can't handle an argument that doesn't cover precisely 100% of situations. If it isn't Black, it has to be White!
Aren't they saintly?! Look how they are championing for the vast minority! How noble! How selfless!
...how remarkably pedantic and dis-servicing they truly are....
Sorry for the rant. I guess we're all idiots and don't understand that all rules have exceptions (with exceptions of course).
goes both ways. There's a whole lot of gray out there, and so many people prefer black and white and talk like it.
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For me, I went to the hospital with chest pains in the middle of the night at 29. Luckily a false alarm but it scares the crap out of me. I figured if I kept it up I'd be dead by 55. It took a few months from that point to actually get out but psychologically that was the breaking point and my hours dropped from "impressive associate" to "under the bonus threshold" from that point on.
Blessing in disguise really.
Sounds like you're in law, where that inhuman grind is worn as a badge of pride (for some reason). I'm a firm believer in your strategy to get in, make money, get out and Covid-19 has only bolstered this. The garbage culture and expectations came across during a call with firm management early in the quarantine right after we'd all started working from home. The implicit (but almost explicit) message was you need to be working 12 - 14 hours a day right now because you're likely going to get Covid and then you won't be able to bill for a week or two.
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For me, I went to the hospital with chest pains in the middle of the night at 29. Luckily a false alarm but it scares the crap out of me. I figured if I kept it up I'd be dead by 55. It took a few months from that point to actually get out but psychologically that was the breaking point and my hours dropped from "impressive associate" to "under the bonus threshold" from that point on.
Blessing in disguise really.
Sounds like you're in law, where that inhuman grind is worn as a badge of pride (for some reason). I'm a firm believer in your strategy to get in, make money, get out and Covid-19 has only bolstered this. The garbage culture and expectations came across during a call with firm management early in the quarantine right after we'd all started working from home. The implicit (but almost explicit) message was you need to be working 12 - 14 hours a day right now because you're likely going to get Covid and then you won't be able to bill for a week or two.
Yep. Memories.
I did one year nonprofit (a voluntary deferment during financial crisis), 4 year biglaw, 4 year "boutique" and now I am in-house (technically gov't but I do transactions and am paid well and so the feel is more like a corporate inhouse gig).
I have no regrets about doing biglaw but also no regrets about leaving. It does get better.
Advice that I received and should have followed but didn't -- just aim for middle of the pack (particularly, try to be slightly above average in terms of quality and slightly below average in terms of hours). That should keep you safe from layoffs but make it more tolerable, which actually might help you last longer and make more money and get access to better exit opportunities. Trying to be a star in year two is pointless, it will burn you out and then embitter you when you realize nobody gives a shit anyways.
I was a really good associate. For a couple years running I was one of the top billing associates to our largest private equity fund client. For which I received an extra $5k above market bonus about half the time and some pats on the back and some rich people who treated me like an ant got richer. Yay. I also was so fed up that by the end the last thing I wanted to do was go sign a partnership agreement and lock myself into a lifetime of grind. If I could do it over again, I'd do what I did and pick the practice area I chose but just try to strategically phone it in a bit more where I could.
Another thing I didn't really do but you should -- You can delay the delivery of an individual message or you can use rules to delay the delivery of all messages by having them held in the Outbox for a specified time after you click Send. (https://support.office.com/en-us/article/delay-or-schedule-sending-email-messages-026af69f-c287-490a-a72f-6c65793744ba). I would write up e-mails on a bunch of deals and then send them all when I left, so everyone on all 10 deals would see that I was working late and not bother me as much the next morning. But I never went so far as to just straight up schedule shit to go out at crazy times. But you can learn from my mistakes.
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For me, I went to the hospital with chest pains in the middle of the night at 29. Luckily a false alarm but it scares the crap out of me. I figured if I kept it up I'd be dead by 55. It took a few months from that point to actually get out but psychologically that was the breaking point and my hours dropped from "impressive associate" to "under the bonus threshold" from that point on.
Blessing in disguise really.
Sounds like you're in law, where that inhuman grind is worn as a badge of pride (for some reason). I'm a firm believer in your strategy to get in, make money, get out and Covid-19 has only bolstered this. The garbage culture and expectations came across during a call with firm management early in the quarantine right after we'd all started working from home. The implicit (but almost explicit) message was you need to be working 12 - 14 hours a day right now because you're likely going to get Covid and then you won't be able to bill for a week or two.
Yep. Memories.
I did one year nonprofit (a voluntary deferment during financial crisis), 4 year biglaw, 4 year "boutique" and now I am in-house (technically gov't but I do transactions and am paid well and so the feel is more like a corporate inhouse gig).
I have no regrets about doing biglaw but also no regrets about leaving. It does get better.
Advice that I received and should have followed but didn't -- just aim for middle of the pack (particularly, try to be slightly above average in terms of quality and slightly below average in terms of hours). That should keep you safe from layoffs but make it more tolerable, which actually might help you last longer and make more money and get access to better exit opportunities. Trying to be a star in year two is pointless, it will burn you out and then embitter you when you realize nobody gives a shit anyways.
I was a really good associate. For a couple years running I was one of the top billing associates to our largest private equity fund client. For which I received an extra $5k above market bonus about half the time and some pats on the back and some rich people who treated me like an ant got richer. Yay. I also was so fed up that by the end the last thing I wanted to do was go sign a partnership agreement and lock myself into a lifetime of grind. If I could do it over again, I'd do what I did and pick the practice area I chose but just try to strategically phone it in a bit more where I could.
Another thing I didn't really do but you should -- You can delay the delivery of an individual message or you can use rules to delay the delivery of all messages by having them held in the Outbox for a specified time after you click Send. (https://support.office.com/en-us/article/delay-or-schedule-sending-email-messages-026af69f-c287-490a-a72f-6c65793744ba). I would write up e-mails on a bunch of deals and then send them all when I left, so everyone on all 10 deals would see that I was working late and not bother me as much the next morning. But I never went so far as to just straight up schedule shit to go out at crazy times. But you can learn from my mistakes.
Thanks for the reply - your insights are interesting and helpful. A few friends have embraced the middle-of-the-pack mentality with significant benefits to mental health. Ultimately, I too think I'm on the path to in-house, or potentially government, work for a variety of reasons (work-life balance primarily but I also seek more a of teamwork type of environment) - unless I can grind it out for a few more years and get to FI first!
The bolded part of your reply really stands out to me. As stressful as worklife is for an associate, most of the partners I work with (and partners at similar firms) work longer hours on more stressful matters. What's that adage: it's a shit eating contest where the winner gets to eat more shit.
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For me, I went to the hospital with chest pains in the middle of the night at 29. Luckily a false alarm but it scares the crap out of me. I figured if I kept it up I'd be dead by 55. It took a few months from that point to actually get out but psychologically that was the breaking point and my hours dropped from "impressive associate" to "under the bonus threshold" from that point on.
Blessing in disguise really.
Sounds like you're in law, where that inhuman grind is worn as a badge of pride (for some reason). I'm a firm believer in your strategy to get in, make money, get out and Covid-19 has only bolstered this. The garbage culture and expectations came across during a call with firm management early in the quarantine right after we'd all started working from home. The implicit (but almost explicit) message was you need to be working 12 - 14 hours a day right now because you're likely going to get Covid and then you won't be able to bill for a week or two.
Yep. Memories.
I did one year nonprofit (a voluntary deferment during financial crisis), 4 year biglaw, 4 year "boutique" and now I am in-house (technically gov't but I do transactions and am paid well and so the feel is more like a corporate inhouse gig).
I have no regrets about doing biglaw but also no regrets about leaving. It does get better.
Advice that I received and should have followed but didn't -- just aim for middle of the pack (particularly, try to be slightly above average in terms of quality and slightly below average in terms of hours). That should keep you safe from layoffs but make it more tolerable, which actually might help you last longer and make more money and get access to better exit opportunities. Trying to be a star in year two is pointless, it will burn you out and then embitter you when you realize nobody gives a shit anyways.
I was a really good associate. For a couple years running I was one of the top billing associates to our largest private equity fund client. For which I received an extra $5k above market bonus about half the time and some pats on the back and some rich people who treated me like an ant got richer. Yay. I also was so fed up that by the end the last thing I wanted to do was go sign a partnership agreement and lock myself into a lifetime of grind. If I could do it over again, I'd do what I did and pick the practice area I chose but just try to strategically phone it in a bit more where I could.
Another thing I didn't really do but you should -- You can delay the delivery of an individual message or you can use rules to delay the delivery of all messages by having them held in the Outbox for a specified time after you click Send. (https://support.office.com/en-us/article/delay-or-schedule-sending-email-messages-026af69f-c287-490a-a72f-6c65793744ba). I would write up e-mails on a bunch of deals and then send them all when I left, so everyone on all 10 deals would see that I was working late and not bother me as much the next morning. But I never went so far as to just straight up schedule shit to go out at crazy times. But you can learn from my mistakes.
Thanks for the reply - your insights are interesting and helpful. A few friends have embraced the middle-of-the-pack mentality with significant benefits to mental health. Ultimately, I too think I'm on the path to in-house, or potentially government, work for a variety of reasons (work-life balance primarily but I also seek more a of teamwork type of environment) - unless I can grind it out for a few more years and get to FI first!
The bolded part of your reply really stands out to me. As stressful as worklife is for an associate, most of the partners I work with (and partners at similar firms) work longer hours on more stressful matters. What's that adage: it's a shit eating contest where the winner gets to eat more shit.
I'm an associate in a big regional law firm in Canada, and the same dynamic applies. Why grind it out to become partner, when the reward is more stress and more hours? I, too, aim for the middle of the pack: doing high quality work in less hours than most of my colleagues. I also have a unique skillset that tends to draw in interesting work that many other associates don't want to do or aren't as good at, which protects me from layoffs.
Now that I'm reaching the "mid-level" associate range, though, people may start noticing that I'm not doing the things that people do when they are gunning for the partnership. I'm not sure whether I'll stay in private practice and grind it out until I reach FI in 5-7 years, or move to in-house or government work which might be less stressful but slow down my path. My real life goal is to write fiction, but I'm too much of a realist to expect I'll be able to earn much doing that, especially from my first novel.
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“Nobody ever had a good idea after 5:00 PM”. George C Marshall
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@raincoast -- I will say that 8 years of private practice made me better at my government job than if I had left earlier. So there's that. But realistically, if I found a suitable exit that I was excited about earlier, I would have left earlier. There were a few years in there where I was too busy to look for a new job, oddly enough.
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Get in, make money, get out.
Saul Goodman would approve.
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I've been laid off for a month now. A coworker of mine has been officially fired although that might be because he was failing his technical exams(tradesmen exams). My layoff has been extended up to four months. ff I face termination, I could offer to work three days a week--we should be into our busiest season by then, I can work days and times when more manpower is useful, and I can afford the difference and it would be great for my work/life balance. Might be an option my employer would consider.
I guess I'm just posting to state my agreement with work/life balance and the benefits of not buying useless crap that forces you to work a ton. I'm open to working longer in my life if it's in semi-retirement; it's been something I've thought about for a while now.
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I have a very close friend that did not get tenure because they took family leave for the birth of their child (as a male).
The expectation is that males do not take family leave for child birth, even though it is covered in the collective bargaining agreement.
They consulted a lawyer and the only way they can collect damages is through proof of loss of income. Because they got another job right away they didn't have any monetary losses. It sucks that they do not value the 200-300 hours of time they spent on finding a new job and moving their family to another state.
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I have a very close friend that did not get tenure because they took family leave for the birth of their child (as a male).
This is vile and should be allowed to reflect on the institution publicly. Were there enough parties privy to the situation that the details could come out? I can imagine that in the academic world that might be regarded as something of a warning sign about their culture as an employer, as well as an undesirably archaic culture for students to contend with - if they punish male educators for prioritizing their families, will they also discourage students from equal, meritocratic opportunity-seeking?
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Based on what he has said, there is enough evidence for a case, which is why he consulted a lawyer. However, with no potential for monetary gain for his time, it is simply not worth it to him. I personally think it would be a risk to his career if he officially sued a previous employer. He didn't seem worried about that part. He was more focused on being compensated for his time. Yes, in a perfect world, the institution would get punished. However, we do not live in perfect world. I think we all have experienced something similar to this in our lives.
At my previous job, we had a faculty member leave during the first week of classes. He was on a two year visiting appointment and starting his 2nd year. They gave him his schedule and on Tuesdays/Thursdays he taught class from 8:00 a.m.- 9:15 a.m. and 5:00 p.m to 6:15 p.m. He claims this was punishment for filing a complaint during the previous semester. I do not know the details of his complaint. He went out with a blaze of glory. He sent an email out to everyone telling administration to go fuck themselves. It was pretty awesome.
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I suppose what I'm wondering is whether - without the effort, expense, or exhaustion of pursuing a suit - the story might become circulated, by parties other than himself, of course, as a warning to prospective employees, affiliates, and students. There are still arenas in which a black mark on one's reputation means something and academia is exactly the sort of sphere where it could effect some change.
Brilliant to hear about the other faculty member's exercise of just that sort of social disincentive, though.
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I am in academic research. Over the years, I had very demanding to laid-back bosses. I was productive and produced high quality research papers when working with laid back bosses. The demanding bosses work themselves very hard and expect new results/findings every week without allowing for downtime. My current boss is a workaholic who drives all of his students and support staff crazy with his insane expectations of work hours and productivity. I am glad I am leaving the job soon.
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I'm reminded, MBK, of reading about education. Here schools have been closed so that students have been doing "remote learning" - because it's been put in place hastily and ad hoc, it's really not remote learning, but state-supported homeschooling. Anyway, people were concerned about the performance of children with time away from formal schooling.
It was pointed out that after the Christchurch earthquake, children had 7-10 weeks off school - and there was no remote learning or homeschooling at all. And the results of the high schools on exam were... better! Likewise, our own children could miss an entire semester, and still get more total hours with a teacher than Finnish schoolchildren do - and they do better than ours.
In my own (now suspended) work as a fitness instructor, I see this all the time. People think that if one hour of endurance work or a set of 10 is good, then two hours or a set of 20 must be better. And it's just not so. As you add work you get diminishing returns, and then eventually negative returns - the person becomes weaker, dumber and so on.
It is of course the same with work. Unfortunately some people are locked in an unproductive mentality. In my experience it's usually the less-skilled managers who think like this. They're dimly aware of how unproductive they are, and try to compensate by working more - and working everyone else more.
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Based on what he has said, there is enough evidence for a case, which is why he consulted a lawyer. However, with no potential for monetary gain for his time, it is simply not worth it to him. I personally think it would be a risk to his career if he officially sued a previous employer. He didn't seem worried about that part. He was more focused on being compensated for his time. Yes, in a perfect world, the institution would get punished. However, we do not live in perfect world. I think we all have experienced something similar to this in our lives.
At my previous job, we had a faculty member leave during the first week of classes. He was on a two year visiting appointment and starting his 2nd year. They gave him his schedule and on Tuesdays/Thursdays he taught class from 8:00 a.m.- 9:15 a.m. and 5:00 p.m to 6:15 p.m. He claims this was punishment for filing a complaint during the previous semester. I do not know the details of his complaint. He went out with a blaze of glory. He sent an email out to everyone telling administration to go fuck themselves. It was pretty awesome.
Well, schedules like that are deemed OK when it comes to mandatory classes for students. It's one of the things that makes it very hard to hold down a job while in post-secondary school. Most of the mandatory classes feature make-work and remedial skills that should have been acquired in junior high school. The students also pay exorbitant costs for tuition for the dubious privilege of maintaining that schedule. The high tuition rates are necessary to pay for all the landscaping, the high-consuming departments such as athletics and fine arts, the exorbitant salaries of the athletics coaches, and all the jock development facilities the cash cows aren't allowed to actually use. I'd say, under the circumstances, that if it is awesome for a faculty member to object to the same nonsense (while being paid for their time) it ought to be equally awesome for a student to refuse to do so.
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“Nobody ever had a good idea after 5:00 PM”. George C Marshall
Funny you should mention him. His work habits during the war are mentioned as an example to follow in this article.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2020/may/no-time-victory?fbclid=IwAR3dEmv6wM8USnXwHFx7sk9qly551Hh9F7Ki2cqUg9J0pOv5UDkZ5CfsxUA (https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2020/may/no-time-victory?fbclid=IwAR3dEmv6wM8USnXwHFx7sk9qly551Hh9F7Ki2cqUg9J0pOv5UDkZ5CfsxUA)
Workaholics end up getting the job done and expect the next generation to bust their asses as much as they did. We hold meetings that can be solved by email, and if we're not working until midnight, well then clearly we're not putting in maximum effort. The military is a great place to be if you want to learn how to wreck your marriage, relationship with your children, and your own health via self-inflicted wounds. I knew of a general in Iraq who insisted on being on the road every day, living off of one meal, dip, coffee, and four hours of sleep. He dragged his aide-de-camp around on this insane schedule as well. The aide would crash in my office when they came to my base for meetings and it was clear each time that she hadn't slept in days. After four months of this the general was medically evacuated back home for having some kind of breakdown.
My last boss where I worked in recruiting made it clear to everyone on day 1 of his time in command that there were particular hours that he should be notified of specific things via specific forms of communication. If needed an answer within 24 hours, email him. If a couple hours, text. If an emergency, call him. Nothing after 7pm unless it was an emergency and he'd get to the rest the following morning. He held himself to the same rules. Aside from wanting to enjoy his own family time, he acknowledged that Army Recruiting Command breaks a lot of people with some unavoidable long hours/days/weeks. My current boss goes door to door at 5:30 and kicks everyone out of the building who might still be here. If he calls me on the weekend, the first words out of his mouth are "sorry to bother you." Both have been exceptions in my experience.