Comment by arghwhat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arghwhat | Hacker News Reader

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Many seem to interpret what I said as "poverty equals laziness". This was never in any way what I said.

However, almost regardless of your situation, harder works gives greater results. You'll get significantly more if you work 14 hours a day instead of 8. Whether you're working a shit job and just trying to push up your work hours, you're trying to build your own company, or even if you're managing your multi-billion dollar portfolio, the more hours you put in the more you get.

Should that be punished? I get that a Dubai prince racing at 300km/h through a school zone in his Bugatti Chiron is one case, but what about the guy/girl that took on much more work than average? Should their punishment be directly propertional to the life-shortening stress they're taking on?

Designing laws around statistical outliers seem idiotic. The Dubai prince case is certainly not the norm.

(Using Dubai prince as my general example for "absurd riches+irresponsible behavior" for no reason in particular)

Okay, well I apologize if I misinterpreted what you're saying.

When you say > Designing laws around statistical outliers seem idiotic. The Dubai prince case is certainly not the norm.

I take you to be implying that outside of outliers, wealth is largely a matter of hard work, and poverty is largely a matter of laziness.

But that's the claim that I'm not aware of any evidence for. The Earth is full of extremely poor people who work nearly every waking hour.

There is no doubt some portion of the variance in wealth that's explained by hours worked after you control for other variables, but if your claim is that hours worked is a strong predictor of wealth, then that requires empirical support. It seems unlikely to me, but I'm not ruling it out.

> You'll get significantly more if you work 14 hours a day instead of 8

That's another claim that it would be good to see some citations for.

If you work in salaried position where overtime is unpaid (as many HNers will) then more than 8 hours of work will bring you no financial gain other than in those toxic workplaces where unpaid overtime is seen as a virtue.

In salaried positions, "overtime" is either rewarded with a raise or promotion.

For the types of job you are thinking of where overtime is entirely uncompensated (such as a lot of developer gigs), you are not really working overtime. You are working exactly what was expected from your employer. Any less, and you'd risk losing your position. Different jobs have different expected baseline work.

However, work above the expectation should still be compensated, and if it isn't, you're also within a group of people that is likely able to quit and find a different position at higher wage, or just a position where hard work will be rewarded. That is definitely the case for the developers here.

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