The Incalculable Value of Finding a Job You Love | Hacker News Reader

The Incalculable Value of Finding a Job You Love

nytimes.com

54 pointssonabinu20 comments

Wasn't the original paper not that happiness decreases after $75k but that you get diminishing returns drastically afterward? For example, more than 50% of billionaires would be more satisfied with their lives while around 75k only about 42% would be and that at 35k it's 20%.

Yeah I think it's diminishing returns. Also the $75k depends on the living costs where you are. It'd probably be nearer $150k for the bay area http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/17/map-happiness-bench...

Looong time ago, as a recent graduate I had my ideal job doing research at the university, It was challenging, lots of fun and actually paid quite good.. (~$60K from 20 years ago) then I got the offer to join a new hot .COM, doing a boring, meaningless (technical sales support) job for four years and then not have to work for the rest of my life!

Two years after, with close to a million bucks on stock options, the whole market crashed and left me (Financially) about where I would he been, had I not left at all..

Would I do it again? Sure!.. Why? The experience made me much more marketable for higher paid positions from there on..

Work is work.. Not life. Go to work to make money, so then you can get out of work and do what ever you truly love to do..

> Work is work.. Not life

except that you're trading the very best hours of the day (and best years of your life) for the money you're earning. Considering the sheer number of hours you are at work, work is a big chunk of life.

Really nothing here that most HN readers don't already know about. The TLDR is that money has diminishing value after a point (around 75k for regular cost of living area last I looked) and doing work you find interesting is more likely to get you in the "flow" mindset, which means you'll get better at your job. Nothing else is really said in article.

Or you can earn $150k a year, put the excess into savings, and retire N years earlier. Which is part of the reason I find the "once you hit $75k a year money doesn't make you happy" arguments meaningless. Please, anyone with too much income, shoot me an email.

You're missing the point. You're happier at a job making $75k than $150k. Having more money in a bank account doesn't offset the unhappiness caused by the $150k job. Human brains are like that.

The total NET happiness over a lifetime might be higher with the $150k, because like you said you could retire much earlier. However, happiness is an odd topic, and overwhelmingly people always have a baseline happiness they return to. And the $75k figure is sort of the number that allows you to have that baseline happiness (i.e. no overbearing negatives in your life due to money). So I would think it'd very probable your lifetime happiness would be higher with the $75k job.

Everything in this comment is a generalization and obviously doesn't apply to every single person. Really smart people working at Google don't necessarily fall into the generalizations of numbers like these because on the large scale (billions of people) Google engineers are outliers.

I just disagree with the entire argument. What is "baseline"? I would be so much happier if I had a private sushi chef who made me dinner every night. I would be so much happier if I had a personal trainer who gave me a workout twice a day, every day. I would be so much happier if I had enough money to only work on topics that interested me, and quit anytime I feel like it. I would be so much happier if I could pay for college for everyone in my city so that everyone had equal access to higher education.

My answer to "how much money would make you happy" is infinite. There will always be something I spend money on to make myself happier.

The finding of the research (which is abundant and disagrees with you, as others have mentioned) basically boils down to:

Yes. Getting a private sushi chef will make you happy. But after your 1,000th straight day of having your own personal sushi chef make you meals, it starts to become mundane and no longer provides much of a net positive effect on happiness.

What will significantly effect your happiness long term is negative things happening to you. Not being able to pay your bills, not knowing if you're going to lose your home next month, eating ramen because it's all you could afford - these sorts of things eat at you.

The $75k figure people throw around is the point where, supposedly, you're making enough money that you will avoid most of the stresses/negatives of not having enough money so there's nothing dragging you down from "baseline". Adding more money after that will allow you to make marginal increases in your happiness, but nothing significant relative to removing those negatives.

Essentially no researcher has found that your anecdotal belief matches the data they analyze. Why do you think all of the studies that indicate diminishing returns of income on happiness are wrong?

>There will always be something I spend money on to make myself happier.

I don't doubt your sincerity, but it might be worth considering that a common theme in American lifestyle-pursuit fables (i.e., "Brewster's Millions" [1985] or "Blank Check" [1994]) is that the kind of 'happiness' you're describing ends up being rather hollow in the grand scheme of one's life.

I feel kind of sorry for people who feel like they need more and more money to make themselves happier. It seems like a trap set by a society that values consumption too highly.

The research in this area overwhelmingly disagrees with you. The concept of a baseline happiness is very well studied and supported. It's not difficult to search for.

I think you'd probably be surprised if you had billions of dollars how much less happier you would be than you expect. There is a reason billionaires don't act like they're high on heroin 24/7. Money isn't some magical happiness generator that ramps up with every extra dollar available.

>My answer to "how much money would make you happy" is infinite. There will always be something I spend money on to make myself happier.

the point of contention with the other responders here is probably one of terminology wherein they are discussing previous literature (which really amounts to "reducing causes of unhappiness" more than "actually increasing happiness") and you are discussing actually increasing happiness beyond the "baseline" discussed in their cited studies.

i'm in agreement with both lines of thinking; after a certain point, money doesn't reduce the major causes of unhappiness much further, but it probably does provide more reasons to be happy, if only transiently. the hedonic set-point is far from a settled concept.

All that stuff you're talking about results in an increase in responsibility and labor for you. You have to handle your sushi chef and trainers. You have to second-guess the value in working on your interests when they do not benefit anyone. You have to watch some of those college students squander your money or accuse you of having an agenda.

In short, the more money you have, the more politics you have to engage in, and that doesn't always translate to increased happiness for you.

There's a point here being missed by many commenters. People have trouble realizing future happiness today. The extra $75k/year you're putting in the bank is essentially going to be paid back to you after you stop working. This is going to contribute to your happiness (in the future!) at the same rate as going from $0 to $75k does now. So the study is reflecting that people undervalue their future happiness. Which makes sense, as you could get hit by a truck tomorrow, so future happiness isn't as valuable as the same amount of happiness today. That said, there are clearly diminishing returns involved as well, so I don't discount the study in its entirety.

If the goal is to retire early at any cost,even if unhappy getting there, then yes.

> The TLDR is that money has diminishing value after a point (around 75k for regular cost of living area last I looked)

I don't think it is that simple. A job is also a very strong social marker. Some people wouldn't be happy with a job that doesn't provide them with the social status they think they deserve or that is expected from them. Social pressure or ambitions can be powerful forces!

I think the diminishing returns is for the present and from the perspective of comforts of the present. From a savings perspective, there's no way more money in my retirement savings, kids' college funds, or for that $10k vacation won't make me happy. Who knows whether projections of 7% compounding rate of returns holds up for our generation's future!

That's still a very high income to reach for most people, median per capita income is ~$3k [1].

[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-household...

But what if your dream job requires an inordinate amount of resources?

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