America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable | Hacker News Reader

America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

nytimes.com

296 pointsojbyrne460 comments

I just don't understand this at all. If you can earn a million a year, do it for 3-5 years, never have to work again, and pursue your passions in life.

I think the problem for most workers is the lifetime of toil, not the meaninglessness of the work.

I'd happily dig ditches for 8-12 hours a day for 3 years if I knew I was completely financially independent with millions in the bank that. Actually, I'd rather do that than write code. At least I'd be getting a workout.

As it is now, I write proprietary software for much less than those featured in the article, work is miserable, and I've still got maybe 10-15 years to go.

Am I in the minority here?

What % of that million are you spending

Meaninglessness creates the toil. It's not toil if it's meaningful, it's merely physical or stressful or whatever the hard part of the particular job entails.

Seriously, it was hard to feel much sympathy for the person earning $1.2M/yr when they could very easily retire if they just stopped somehow spending hundreds of thousands of dollars every year.

Perhaps they are earning $1.2M/yr because they never found anything they enjoyed to do with their time outside of work?

So the problem lies with said individual then.

5 years at a million a year, after taxes in a High COL state will be about 2.5M. A healthy sum indeed, but not enough to retire on, especially with a family.

A single person could absolutely retire on 2.5M. That's $100k a year using the 4% rule.

I thought nowadays the recommendation was the 3% rule.

Still absolutely doable.

The Trinity study said a conservative number was 4%. Since then a lot of people said "Well, I don't want a conservative number, I want a number that has no chance of failure", so went to 3.5% or 3%. Practically I don't think that's a wise choice, a vast majority of the time most of the time, any failures comes from sequence of returns risk and the remaining percent coming from simulated bad returns coupled with a very long life.

This means that as long as you're willing to cut back on expenses if the market dips soon after you retire, 4% is fine, and it's probably not worth the extra X years of your life to try to get that number lower.

Is that number for 30 years? If you’re retiring early you need your nest egg to last for 40 or 50 years.

Don't think of it as a large nest egg; think of it as a modest fixed income. You can easily make 2.5MM last for the rest of your life if you're able to live on 100k. That might require downsizing a bit and moving somewhere with a lower COL, but it's certainly doable.

2.5MM will not let you draw $100,000 for 50 years with inflation.

That’s a great number for retiring at 65. But this thread is talking about working hard for 5 years and retiring super early.

Assuming a 4% return, 2.5MM absolutely does yield 100k per year, forever.

Yes inflation will eat away at the value of that 100k over time, but that's less of a problem if you own your home and have something left over each year to reinvest.

> have something left over each year to reinvest.

Right. So my question is how much can you withdraw to indefinitely draw the same inflation adjusted value?

The annualized return on the S&P 500 since its inception is 10 percent. Adjusted for inflation it's 6.5-7 percent. In the last 20 years, it's 5.9 percent. Adjusted for inflation it's 4.37 percent. So withdrawing 4 percent per year would be reasonable and keep up with inflation. It gets slightly more complex when you think about taking money out during down years is much larger impact than during good years, but that's an exercise for the reader.

check firecalc.com for historical likelihood of portfolio success, given a starting nest egg and an annual withdrawal rate. The 4% withdrawal rate mentioned above is very likely to succeed for an indefinite period, and 3% is essentially impossible. This is all assuming 85% US equities and 15% bonds, and that the future looks vaguely like the past 150 years.

Despite all the skepticism above, the 4% claims are true. Not 100% chance of indefinite success, but close enough to be actionable. You can also google the "trinity study" for more info.

$100,000 per year for 50 years with a $2,500,000 base has a 79.67% success rate.

So pretty likely. But not guaranteed. And for sure not indefinite. Not if you pull the same 4% during down years.

My dream is 5,000,000 and a paid off house. I can live off 3% of that for sure.

85% in equities during retirement is a bad idea.

The longer the duration, the more it is a good idea to be heavy in equities. This can be teased out of the data on firecalc.

If you're buying equities and leaving them alone for decades, sure. But if you're retired and depending on your investments for an income, being 85% in equities is insane. One prolonged bear market could wipe you out.

I'm talking about a fixed income, like bond dividends, annuities, etc. It doesn't adjust for inflation; that's a separate problem. Just saying that if you can get a 4% return on 2.5MM, which is on the high side of realistic, that's a 100k indefinite fixed income.

> It doesn't adjust for inflation; that's a separate problem.

It’s my only question.

Assuming 7-9% return, there is a high chance you can draw 4% annually for a very long time despite inflation

Especially if you move to a lower cost of living place. That is, if that suits you. Some people absolutely love all that the big, expensive cities have to offer and it suits their lifestyle. A lifestyle you won't find in an affordable place.

But yes, saving a couple million and moving somewhere in expensive, buying a house cash and living off of interest is totally doable if you're into that kind of thing.

With no or minor medical issues, sure.

Add medical, and you need a hell of a lot more than 2.5M$ . Remember, it's the US. We don't care about your health.

Totally enough to retire on. The majority of families live on 75K/ year or less.

https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...

Assuming a 4% withdrawal rate yielding $100k/year, seems weird to me to retire on a middle class family income (in non-expensive cities) or lower middle class salary (in more expensive cities) when you have the ability to continue making $1m/year gross.

Have you actually dug ditches for a few weeks? It's a popular rhetorical device but I wonder how many engineers have actually done stints of hard labor.

I used to dig ditches on weekends as a way of relaxing. It's not bad when you get to do it on your own time. But yeah, I'd probably not appreciate doing it for eight hours a day five days a week.

I'd still do it for a million a year though.

I did it 10 hours a day, four days a week when I had just graduated from high school. Extremely good money for the time, but you would have to pay me a lot more than a million now.

Brutal and back breaking. I couldn't get enough to eat, my body was always sore and tired.

I would do it if I had to, I suppose, but even though my cushy desk job coding pays a lot less--a very much lot less--than a million a year, I would take it every time.

I have, yes. I've also framed homes, roofed homes, and water proofed basements. I spent some time landscaping. I've held a variety of manual labor jobs, from working fields to construction to warehouses and factory floors to the military. Today, I'm a team lead and senior software engineer.

I'd also rather be outside again all day, working with and alongside people, physically and towards goals we can visualize, doing tasks that we all understand well and can articulate in an accurate way, and cultivating a genuine sense of camaraderie. Not the sort of weird brogrammer nonsense that is frequently encountered in our industry and which is oftentimes confused with camaraderie.

I pull a lot of my previous lives experience in to my work today and I spend a lot of time working very closely with my colleagues, but it's not the same. I don't end a day with the same sense of purpose or belonging that I experienced with physically demanding jobs. I got close, once, but it was a shared experience between myself and one colleague, as opposed to a team, and it was because of circumstances that aren't exactly repeatable in a meaningful way.

edit/ Of course, the above is making some assumptions that probably don't hold. There is genuinely something that I miss from physically demanding work that can't be found or replicated with the work that I do today (or, perhaps it's just that I have failed to find or replicate it). But, I'm also dramatically better compensated and live a nearly fully autonomous life today, too. These are just the trade-offs that we make, I suppose.

Goddamn. Can we be coworkers? I've worked countless manual labor jobs and am now crammed in an office. If I have to be here, I'd at least like to have coworkers who have your notion of cohesion and vision.

I worked manual skilled labor for four years between college and graduate school. I enjoyed most aspects of it but there is a definite pay ceiling and a greater risk of injury.

Almost in the -exact- same boat, as if I could have written this comment myself. My favorite job, by far, was landscaping. Being outside all day, getting sun and exercise, and seeing your completed project were all very rewarding/valuable. I was in great shape, left work at work, and had no problem sleeping at night. It just doesn't pay well. I find working at computers all day rather depressing, at times pointless, and I can watch my health slipping. I really wish there was some kind of middle ground.

>> I really wish there was some kind of middle ground.

I think there is a market for a large, physically demanding computer keyboard. The keyboard 'keys' would require pressure from a full hand to activate, and the return and backspace keys could have a different type of lever action (pull to the side maybe). The operator would have to stand, which seems like a trend these days, and the PRO-version could come with a large inverted water bottle. Not joking about the keyboard, only half-joking about the bottle.

Repetative strain injury is already a common hazard of typing heavy proffesions. I'm not sure adding keyboard resistance is a good health move

I would often find it pretty satisfying to punch a punching bag to send emails.

The closest thing to a middle ground I can think of is FIRE-ing and going back to work as a landscaper, or a carpenter, or whatever. You can not "need" to work financially, but still have to/want to have a job. The key is it can be any low or even non-paying job that you want.

Some of the happiest people I've met are retires that work part time in jobs like you mentioned. They get to feel productive but not have the same level of pressure and hours that people that work full time and are living paycheck to paycheck have.

A stint of physical labor is certainly a valuable experience, I long for it too, but it DOES eventually break the body if it is done year after year for decades.

I suspect that years of meaningless work just shuffling money around for wealthy people and institutions has a similar effect on the psyche, even if it is obscenely compensated.

Physical work shouldn't break your body if you work within reasonable limits of exertion.

Also, sitting all day does breaks your body.

I've concluded when people say "break your body", they usually refer to the slowly accumulating string of little slip-ups. You turn the wrench too hard and bash your knuckle. You grab something that was still too hot. You drop something on your foot. You lift something the wrong way and pull something. No one slip-up is a real big deal, but you can't help but make a few, and they slowly add up.

I worked on a farm in high school. Ditch digging was one of many manual tasks.

It was a much more creative & rewarding job in many respects.

Having dug ditches for septic tanks for a few years I can definitely vouch for _not_ doing it. 5 years of digging ditches is awful work, and most people aren't cut out for that level of manual labor. After a week I think most programmers would happily return to their day jobs.

I'm not sure about nonstop digging of ditches, but I've done a fair deal of farm labor and construction. And absolutely love it.

I enjoy what I do, but I'd go back to it in a heart beat if there was even a chance for comparable earning potential. Hard work feels really really good at the end of the week. I think the one reason I enjoy software is because it gives you that similar high of being able to see something you've built with your own hands, that didn't exist before.

I have tried a variety of hard manual jobs over the years - mainly during my college years:

- Longshoreman (manually unloading 45 - 120 lbs of frozen boxes, non-stop, for up to 20 hours a day)

- Worked on construction sites, carrying cement/concrete bags up and down - for hours and hours - often in sweltering heat during the summer.

- Dug ditches all day long .

- Manually emptied trailers for appliances (fridges, ovens, dryers, washing machines, etc.) all through the night.

and some more.

Either way, they all sucked. Some were absolutely terrible, and made fresh workers quit only an hour or two into it (longshoreman), while others were more bearable (emptying trailers).

But all these jobs share a couple of things:

- The majority of workers lack formal education, and take the jobs because they have to. - They are all in it because of the cash - Almost no one over 40. 90% of the guys are in their 20's. - Injuries are extremely common. In fact, that's why I took those jobs: There "regular" crews were always short of people because of injuries or recovery, and would let anyone (with a fitting physique/strength) try for the spots. And on larger jobs, they would call in extras.

A lot of office workers seem to romanticize these types of jobs - like some kind of honest "manly" work where you get to be outside and enjoy the nature, while staying in shape.

Yeah, no, most of these jobs just suck.

Doing it for 1 hour might be OK, but when you're 12 hours into the shift, sore from the previous days, and know it'll be the same tomorrow, next week, next year, etc. you really start to question your life choices.

The only thing you look forward to is to lie down and rest - but even then, you're getting anxious because you know it's only X hours 'til your alarm goes off, and another day of grueling work. It gets to the point where you have actual nightmares, and will wake up depressed.

Of course, YMMV, and not all of these hard labors jobs are the same - people are different. But the above is based on my own experience, and what the other guys would say.

Most people don't have passions in life, they do have a passion for possession and social status though. Our culture also looks down on the people that don't have all these status symbols, and people naturally do not want to be looked down upon, so they keep racing to keep up just so their peers respect them. Our culture breeds depression. There are farmers in third world countries that live a more meaningful and joyful life than most do here. Koyaanisqatsi.

That is true but also people come to care about what they do. They may not be "passionate" about work but it is what they spend the most time doing, it is their main source of daily challenge and problem solving, it represents social interaction, and it is their main source of pride and accomplishment and personal striving. To just up and leave work leaves a huge void in their lives. People can learn to fill that void with art or gardening or various other things but it may take years and years of discipline and self-reflection to become satisfied.

I said that because the parent comment said "I just don't understand this at all. If you can earn a million a year, do it for 3-5 years, never have to work again, and pursue your passions in life." They don't have those passions in life per say and fill that void with work and other things. You are actually echoing what I'm saying in your own way.

Also, I like how people bring up gardening sometimes when passion is discussed. To me, passion is coupled with expression and allows you to take on an identity in some other "world". You can be passionate about music, you can have your musical identity. You can be passionate about mathematics, you can have your way of reasoning about problems. But gardening? Is there a difference between things you really like to do and a passion?

When I think of 'passion', I think of creating things, making things better, doing something that can bring me into a state of flow. I'm not an avid gardener, but I can absolutely see how gardening would tick those boxes for someone who was.

You're right. My father was a gardener, so I should have known better than to feel that way. I saw him prepare the soil, sow the seeds, and give the plants the support they needed to thrive over time. Thinking about the process of gardening makes me understand how it could be a passion. What about the classes of passion? Can gardening be put on the same level as art? Why or why not? They certainly at least have a different pace about them. A painter can work quickly, but a gardener must have such patience. Obviously a painter also must have patience with the process as well. I would like to think of this in a more mathematical way. This idea that in the space of gardening there are certain operations and objects that are distinct from, let's say, the domain of music. When you look at it that way, what is the character of the constructive mathematics being done in these spaces? This is now apparently liberal arts news.

Seeing seeds spring up that you sowed yourself is exhilarating.

Almost anything can be approached in an artistic manner and therefore considered art.

change 'gardening' to 'nurturing' and you might get a sense of the fulfillment (contentedness?) of being able to enjoy your creation that took planning, effort and time. exponential if you get to enjoy your children enjoying it too. it may be small but leaving _your_ patch of dirt a better place than you found it can be a personally enriching pasttime. then again, i don't understand people that create gardens so they can be photographed for lifestyle magazines so there's that...

When I read 'gardening', internally I interpreted that as any agricultural/floricultural pursuit. That spans everything from an indoor potted cactus, to no-till gardening, to hydroponics, to soil-management, etc etc. Growing plants is as much a science as it is a creative pursuit.

I wonder if the problem is simply exaggerated. Is this really only the case with white-collar Americans? I'd imagine that throughout the human history the vast majority of human beings have always been working like this, or even much worse, e.g. actual slaves who constituted a huge percentage of the population. Maybe it's just that there isn't that much of a tradition to talk about the problem that often, and now that our material comfort is quite advanced, we think about such issues more and more, which is a good thing. We're not quite there yet but at least we're rethinking our lives and trying to find solutions, instead of just passively accepting whatever is thrown at us.

No. I've also always held similar thoughts. I will say, though, that in my late 30s today, I fully expect to be at this for another 30 years, if not longer.

I'm 100% in agreement, and am trying to pursue that on a payscale that's fractions of what's described. I think the problem is the balancing act between "live now" and "save for living later." I think I have a healthy balance, particularly in not denying myself decent food and lifestyle despite the costs. That said, I'm moderate in almost every other way (and I don't have a car, or buy expensive clothing, etc.)

At one extreme I know people who save every penny, even though they make a fortune. One person I know spends maybe 10-20 dollars a week on food by never drinking, receiving farm deliveries of vegetables, etc. and etc. At the other extreme, as per this article, you have Real Housewives-types scoffing at making less than a million, perhaps living extravagant lifestyles.

Maybe this should be called "lifestyle inflation." Through social pressure, greed, trendiness, or perhaps stupidity, people piss all their money away and need more.

There's a balance there, but yes, at the end of the day the goal is to have free time, right?

> Maybe this should be called "lifestyle inflation."

It is: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lifestyle-inflation.asp

"Maybe this should be called "lifestyle inflation." Through social pressure, greed, trendiness, or perhaps stupidity, people piss all their money away and need more."

There's also a lack of education teaching people to value and strive for something beyond material goods, fashion, and whatever the mainstream media happen to be hyping at the moment.

>I think the problem is the balancing act between "live now" and "save for living later."

In my mind, this is key. My parents barely saved for retirement, mostly because they didn't make much money. The net effect of that is that I've maxed my 401k since day one of my professional life.

In contrast, my father also died at 46 (I'm 42, going on 43), so all of the life experiences he'd deferred to a more financially prudent time never happened.

I work hard to try to find the balance so that I'm not left without an emergency fund or a paid-for retirement, but I also don't fret over every penny and "waste" money from time to time. My motto is to plan for tomorrow, but minimize any regrets that could arise if tomorrow never comes.

I’ve thought about this...especially among the very wealthy. Why continue to be a high pressure CEO when you basically never have to work again?

My hypothesis is that most very high paying roles are incentive-based, and incentives can be addicting: meet a goal, get a million dollar dopamine hit. I don’t think these people hate their jobs as much as they might say they do.

It's more than that. People need purpose.

That's why things like UBI are a pipe-dream. Any Fortune-500 executive could live a life of leisure with 2-3 years of planning. They tend to not make that choice.

On the contrary, UBI would free people to leave the jobs that feel meaningless, and do things they are passionate about.

If the problem is that people need purpose, what better than a system that allows people to find purpose, rather than one that keeps them trapped doing work they hate?

Remember how the internet was supposed to bring people together, enhance the spreading and sharing of ideas, bring knowledge and information to everybody? Not many people predicted it'd end up with people going into echo chambers, spreading misinformation about one another, and helping to drive a wedge in society so extreme that an increasingly large chunk of society (myself not included) believe it will culminate in civil war [1]? Can't win 'em all I guess.

The point I'm making here is that we shouldn't play the naive game twice. Give people free money and an extra ~10 hours a day with no obligations to anybody. This isn't going to bring in some utopia of people pursuing wonderful new interests and ideas they always really wanted to, but were just held back by socioeconomic obstacles.

So let's think about realistic predictions. I mean I do agree with you people would be looking for purpose. Companies would be quick to try to provide this purpose by providing the most addictive, immersive, and life destroying games ever -- even the most hardcore WoW player would blush at what we'd have in store there. We'd also probably see people finding purpose similar to how we already do online. Imagine Twitter outrage mobs. Except now since people have no obligations and really nothing to do, there's a very good chance this would spill into the streets and likely in quite high numbers. 'Hey let's come protest against [xyz] in LA on the 17th!' 'Whoa, sounds like fun. Btw, no idea what [xyz] is, fill me in then?' 'Sure, not so clear myself tbh!'

Ooo and then the inevitable happens. There'd be another group, also looking for purpose, that now decides to counter protest. And these 'meetings' would be immense. There'd suddenly be thousands to millions of people with nothing to do and no obligations showing up to face off against each other to try to find some sort of purpose and meaning in life. No worries. I'm sure they'll just come together, spread and share ideas, and bring knowledge and information to one another.

Well at least everybody could come together in nonstop protests demanding that the basic income should be increased.

[1] - http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/gene...

I like the dystopian outlook and dislike of UBI. However, the advent of the internet = civil war 2 is a false premise. Dividing the country was possible long before the internet existed. You can argue that being able to rapidly spread information accelerated the preponderance of these echo chambers- however- you can just as easily say that the advent of the internet has made the world a more enjoyable place and has increased most people's quality of life.

TL;DR with the good comes the bad.

Yet the prejudice against UBI always assumes the poor and disadvantaged will always take the lazy option. They tend not to make that choice either as poor people need a purpose too.

It's politics all the way down.

> They tend not to make that choice either

Do you have any evidence of that? All the studies I have seen, imply or play out the opposite. The poor stay poor and disinclined to achieve. Survival is hard enough at the bottom rung.

Seems like that shows why UBI could work. The worry with UBI is that a ton of people just check out of the workforce forever once it’s no longer necessary in order to eat. If in fact most people want to work because they need purpose in their lives, that seems to indicate that this won’t happen.

When they did stuff like this during the great society era, it flopped.

People need support to thrive. Throwing a few bucks at people doesn’t nurture them by itself.

This is exactly why UBI works -- people need a purpose. The Canadian study I'm thinking of showed the only people who left the workforce left to pursue liberal arts or to be stay-at-home parents. UBI lifts up the bottom line in a society to a level we should all deem acceptable and freeing them to continue to find their purpose.

I read somewhere (I don't remember where) that when you're a CEO and all your friends are CEOs, you start to compare yourself to them and want to make as much as they do.

Many in finance do this, working like dogs until they reach their "number" they need to retire. Or, some take pride in their work and would do it for free. Creating and leading a company can be making history. I don't think it's clear cut as to whether enjoying life versus working hard to produce (and taking pride in this) is a better way to live.

In practice, their "number" goes up over time along with their pay, so they stay on the treadmill. Though obviously there are exceptions.

I read somewhere about to really torture a prisoner in the Galog you instruct the prisoner to just keep digging a hole and then have him fill it back up again.

Continue this to break thoroughly break him down. This is done without giving him any particular reason why he is doing it for...

Reminds me of “Cool Hand Luke”.

Boss Paul: That ditch is Boss Kean's ditch. And I told him that dirt in it's your dirt. What's your dirt doin' in his ditch? Luke: I don't know, Boss. Boss Paul: You better get in there and get it out, boy.

I don't know about "really torture". I'd have to dig and fill a ditch for a very long time before I'd prefer some traditional, physical pain based, tortures.

And I'd theoretically prefer water dropped on my head, but in practice it's just as grueling.

Maybe "Notes from a Dead House" by Dostoevsky?

People say these things all the time, but I always wonder how you'd actually feel if you did the 3-5 year work and saved that 3-5 million you earned. My guess is with most people, you get that 3-5 million and you're going to want more. I'm not saying you specifically, but people in general.

And a clarification, I'm not thinking it'd be because you're around wealthier people which would make you want to spend more to compare to them, but rather having more security, if your passion requires more money.

I think it's not just competing with other people. In many cases, spending more money really does get you stuff that's better quality. And then you discover that you can spend more and get things that are even nicer. Not just show-off nicer, but better design, from better materials, that last longer and age better. Real quality of life improvements. I suspect that a lot of people would find that hard to give up.

In my limited experience, and excluding obvious exceptions to the rule, the people who make 7-figure salaries are chosen for those positions because they are over-leveraged, and thus controllable.

Ding ding ding. In my brief foray in management consulting at a big three firm, both the company (helped by the credit card companies) sought to create a culture of excess. My colleagues were way overleveraged -- vacations weekly in Cancun, etc. This created dependence on the company, and ultimately intelligent workers who had no choice. By the time they made actual money (5-6 years), their expenses would way exceed their incomes. Thankfully, I got out and never really succumbed.

I have pretty much no exposure to that world, and about half the comments here seem to agree with you, but I still don't understand.

I can appreciate that you might need a wardrobe with nice suits, a respectable looking car, and a few stories about places you've been and things you've done. It doesn't seem like it would super hard to craft that image without spending a lot of money.

How'd you get into the management consulting world? Is there a 500k/yr salary just waiting for me if I fake like I'm a Wall St guy from the 80s?

I have quite a few friends who ended up doing this. It isn't easy at all. And if you are just in it for the money, you probably wouldn't get an entry-level position.

That probably sounds slightly crazy but how many people actually do end up leaving and doing something else? Not many. They end up in those jobs because they want the lifestyle, the status, and being "the guy" is critical to their self-image. Faking it would be pointless (it would probably lead to severe unhappiness).

And if you are an employer, your job is to feed into that. I don't think it happens consciously but most of these places have working environments where the stick and carrot are used quite heavily. If you "win", the rewards in status are huge. If you "lose", you will be crucified. And most people who do exit, exit because they lose. Not because they win and decide they have had enough...no-one does that.

> Not because they win and decide they have had enough...no-one

I was lucky in that I had my CS qualifications. I left 6 months in, and got a better paying job. Only gave them a weeks notice.

> How'd you get into the management consulting world? Is there a 500k/yr salary just waiting for me if I fake like I'm a Wall St guy from the 80s?

Straight from undergrad. I went to a tech-focused school, majored in math and CS, and did a financial course series as a requirement for a scholarship. That, and I guess I'm a good interviewer / have people skills?

> I can appreciate that you might need a wardrobe with nice suits, a respectable looking car, and a few stories about places you've been and things you've done. It doesn't seem like it would super hard to craft that image without spending a lot of money.

This is not difficult. I wore mostly hand me downs I had tailored. Worked in a big city, so lack of car was not a problem. I also had my fair share of 'stories' (mainly because being student body president at my college exposed me to a world of very rich people).

The difficult part is that you enter in 'classes'. You and thirty other people who just graduated start at the same time, and you are put through the grinder together. There is an expectation you do all your socializing in this group. For me, part of the problem was that I was engaged and planning our wedding, so I had to take time off to do that and not partake. The group would collectively decide to do things every single weekend. If you did not attend, you were ostracized. These were not things like playing board games together or even clubbing (although there was a lot of clubbing). These were things like, 'so and so has a birthday, let's go to Cabo!' or 'let's rent a boat' or 'let's rent a mansion'. These things cost a lot of money, and the company does not pay. However, if you do not invest in maintaining these relationships, you will face issues later on.

The company encourages this by throwing extravagant parties every few months. And I really mean extravagant.

For example, before we accepted the offer, we were all flown out for a weekend filled with free booze, clubs, etc. We were all 'beautiful people' so to speak (although, I personally think I was the ugliest person there). The company provides enough of an exposure to a lifestyle that it whets the appetites of status-seeking 22 year olds, who then seek to accomplish the same 'epicness' on the non-company-sponsored weekends.

> Is there a 500k/yr salary just waiting for me if I fake like I'm a Wall St guy from the 80s?

No. The salary is piss poor. Starting undergrads in 2014 made $75k/year in San Francisco at my firm. The big bucks only roll in after you've been there for many years (and thus have that large debt hanging on your neck).

As my first manager said, "you can wait until you're 30 to have a family and free time." She told me that the week before I quit.

That's fascinating. I had no idea about the 'classes' thing.

I wonder if there's an alternate track for someone already established in another field. Could an established software developer somehow transition to getting a "big bucks" management position? Or does it all flow through that class system, and if you didn't enter at the bottom, you're not able to get to the top?

As OP said, the typical way to go into management consulting or investment banking or another of these "big bucks" careers is to do it right from the start. Going to a "prestigious" undergrad school helps immensely. Being able to look and talk like a big shot helps. Slog it out in a bank as an analyst for some years. Then at some point go to MBA school as a finishing degree, and then back into a bank/consulting company as a made man higher-level employee. The key is to get that "elite" pedigree early, which opens the rest of the doors.

There are also career changers who start out as something else (like a software developer) and go to the best MBA school they can get into, in order to try to "sneak in to the back door of the club" that way. I actually tried (and failed) to walk this path. My jaded view, after blowing more $ than I care to admit on B-school and literally dozens of interviews that went nowhere, is that these employers are looking for people already in the in-crowd, pre-blessed as elite, and are in general not welcoming to working class career changers. Investment banks are primarily looking for pedigreed former bankers, and management consulting firms are primarily looking for pedigreed former management consultants, and good luck if you're not already in one of those clubs.

My "conspiracy" theory is that tech companies would be like this too, except it would literally be impossible to fully staff your CS team on elite bigshots.

> "big bucks" management position? Or does it all flow through that class system, and if you didn't enter at the bottom, you're not able to get to the top?

Unless you are bringing in substantial expertise in the strategy side of technology (and most importantly, have a rolodex full of rich potential clients), it is unlikely that you would be hired. Outside of the traditional hiring rounds from undergrad and biz school, it is exceedingly rare to be given an employment offer.

I know many people (two billionaires, a few several hundred millionaires, and many low 10's of million net worth) who make 7 figures and none fall into that bucket. The folks I know mostly fall into the buckets of Finance (think fund/investment management), inherited money, and self-made. The finance folks can move jobs at will and are able to get significant concessions to do so. The inherited money folks use the family money to invest and make even more money. The self-made folks parlay early success into bigger time roles and also seem to have no problems moving jobs. In all cases, the people seem to be in control, and not controlled by someone else.

It's not that easy.

'High status' jobs in many ways entail a 'high status' lifestyle.

Example: they got the jobs in the first place as the result of their parents ability to pay for private school, and Ivy League. So in that lifestyle context, you're going to be doing the same thing, it's part of the cycle. Very expensive.

Partners in law firms or consultancies are really in sales. They are using their business relationships to position themselves as thoughtful, successful, excellent pedigree etc..

For the same reason that real estate salespeople who drive people around a lot tend to drive nice cars, many folks in high end careers have no choice but to live that lifestyle.

When you go out for dinner with business associates, you're not going to talk about the deal you got at the dollar store, rather, your golf game, the new club you got, your trip to Pebble beach. If there is any chance anyone will see you in your car, it cannot be jalopi. Telling people about your trip to Davos would be more than ideal.

There are very few fields where high end folks can get away with not quite living that lifestyle. Some doctors, dentists, business owners can do that. People in tech, of course can life alt-lifestyles.

It's not to say that a Director of trading at some big bank couldn't really skimp in stuff either, but it's hard to avoid the expectations of lifestyle.

'Career progress' in may of these fields entails a lot of signalling, and such signalling can be expensive. "I have three kids, so proud they all made it into Ivy League". That's a very powerful signalling statement, and a massively expensive one!

Taxes on regular income are high, and expenses add up - and having a 'fairly comfortable retirement' is not cheap.

I'm not entirely sympathetic to these people, because they do make choices - my point is that they are not living a 'regular lifestyle', their careers often have expensive lifestyles 'baked in' to the process.

Also: "They talked about missed promotions, disaffected children and billable hours in divorce court. They complained about jobs that were unfulfilling, tedious or just plain bad."

I think maybe we all have this, and when the numbers, cars and suits get nicer, those problems don't go away. In many ways, the risks are bigger.

If your company falls flat it can ruin you. A carpenter can usually get work, as can most decent devs.

I can't help but wonder - shouldn't these people be getting their metaphorical lunch eaten by those who don't engage in absurd conspicuous consumption?

That has happened before certainly throughout history as "gentry" have had their delusions of superiority and even relevance shattered in spite of their abundantly privileged start.

Well, that would depend on whether it's really "absurd" or not; maybe it's effective. You put on glasses, people think you're smart. You wear an expensive watch, people think you're successful -- "nothing succeeds like success", "dress for the job you want", "talk the talk, walk the walk", and so on.

Shouldn't peacocks get their metaphorical lunch eaten by those who don't engage in absurd conspicuous plumage?

Not really. But remember the 1.2 Million guy is married. Sounds like an awful relationship since his partner laughed at him when he mentioned finding a more satisfying career with half the pay ( that's still 500k a year). He sounds trapped in this clusterfuck of either living in misery and keeping a luxurious "normal" lifestyle or seeking novelty and ending up in court with divorce procedures, loss of wealth, custody and a fresh start from zero. If I was this dude, I would take the red pill, but hey, who said shifting from blissful ignorance to brutal reality was gonna be that easy?

That isn't how most people work.

Would you rather be the worst lover in the world but everyone think you are the best? Or the best lover in the world but everyone think you are the worst?

For most people, work is their identity, it is status, it is the ability to abuse underlings terribly with no consequences. Constructing your self-image this way leads to, imo, a great deal of emotional vulnerability. If I leave my job, what will other people think? I am not the boss anymore. I am just another normal person.

And btw, if you feel that you are doing whatever you are doing until you reach $X in the bank. Then that is the same.

The point of the article is that you can be happy working a shitty job for no money. But you have to understand what makes you happy, what is fulfilling to you, etc. Although it is true that some jobs/working environments are just shitty.

It's easy to fall prey to the lifestyle creep.

Suddenly your $300k house/apartment is too small, and you aim for one that's 5-10 times more expensive.

Then your cars get more expensive.

You start looking at a summer home.

You get a couple of kids...and they turn out to be extremely expensive: - Daycare - Prep-schools - Private tutors - Prestigious Universities

Because you want to maximize their chances of success, and have planned their academic life for the next 15-20 years.

It all adds up. And since you're surrounded with peers that live the same lifestyle, you get conditioned that this is all normal.

Here's a personal example, and one that I never, EVER, thought I'd fall for:

I bought my first "real" suit after graduation, and paid $1000 for it. I felt like a real baller, but was also anxious about wearing it. What if I got stains on it, what if some douchebag with a cig bumped into me, what if, etc. I could afford it, sure, but it felt like A LOT of money for a piece of clothing.

Years later, and I'm buying suits 5-6-7 times more expensive. The old $1.5k ones don't feel right - the fabric isn't nice enough, the fit isn't as good, the small details are lacking.

Internally, I rationalize and convince myself that all these small differences are truly making the price (premium) worth it. And since I make good money, it doesn't mater.

But, what if I lost my income? Or had to settle with a "normal" job, making $45k a year? There's no way in hell I could afford spending 10% of my income on one thing. But at the same time, downgrading from luxury like that, and all the way down - it's not even like going from 3-ply to 1-ply TP, it's like going from 3-ply to newspaper.

And that's just for something as trivial as a men's suit. When I was a student, I didn't even own a suit - and had absolutely zero interest or care about wearing one. But then you get put in an environment, and ridiculous things start to get normalized.

I know people that swore to the shittiest of shit lite-beers, but now obsessively shop wine bottles worth tens of thousands. It doesn't happen overnight - but is rather a very gradual process.

Great comment. I'm still in school but I noticed how my lifestyle got slightly more expensive after I made some money through internships, or after I've been on vacation and enjoyed myself (and seen others enjoy themselves).

I used to think of myself as a very minimalist no-frivolous-spending kind of guy. I would do meticulous research on products to maximize the quality to price ratio (with strict upper bounds on price of course). Nowadays I just don't bother. I think you're right that the process is gradual. When a culture built around consumerism surrounds you, there is no choice but to become more consumerist.

There are apparently people who are able to maintain a frugal, minimalist and prudent lifestyle even when they're very rich, seeing from various stories and anecdotes. But yeah the moral of a lot of stories we hear is always to remind people constantly about how they should not lose themselves after they get rich. Says exactly how hard it really is for a large portion of people then.

Private schools and high-quality childcare. If you look in the parking lots of top-tier schools, you'll see as many old Hondas as Range Rovers. Many parents care more about getting their children the best possible education than their own financial freedom. If the job's tolerable, why not just do it to see the kids happy with a bright future?

In addition to the other answers, one of the reasons animals strive is to attract a mate.

I think a lot of people marry someone who did so with an understanding that the gravy train continues indefinitely.

One million a year is not that much, if you live in NYC. Various taxes sum up to about half of that: 330k Federal, 70k State, 40k City, 30k FICA [1]. Health insurance plus copays, a few more 10s of ks. Then there's real estate. Either you rent, or you buy. Rent for a family of 4 in Manhattan, next to a good public school can easily be >10k/month. If you buy, a 3bdr appartment in a similar zone is >$2.5MM, the mortgage plus taxes and common charges are easily >15k/month. Let's say you manage to put aside 200k/year and you want to retire after 3 years of work. If you are about 30y old, your life expectancy is about 52y [2]. That will buy you an annuity of about $22k/year [3] (assuming a 3% annual growth rate). That is far, far from "never have to work again, and pursue your passions in life".

[1] https://smartasset.com/taxes/new-york-tax-calculator#aYosnz0...

[2] https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/longevity.cgi

[3]https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/investing/annuity-calcu...

It's very important not to live in NYC.

If you remove NYC and SF from the equation, there aren’t many million dollar jobs out there ...

Most fundamental jobs out there would not make anyone a millionaire

I wonder if people actually do this and then go on to "pursue their passions in life". I wonder how you'd feel if you actually went through what you described here. What makes one's passion and one's work two strictly separate entities? In fact many people who retire early feel really lost and even depressed because they lose their bearings and aren't contributing to the community meaningfully.

If you dislike the current job a lot why not change it? For example, some people might only consider programming in functional programming languages. The number of job openings might be smaller but they are really passionate about the technology and they can be much happier on the job.

I think we're focusing on the wrong thing here (broadly), which is mocking the guy making $1.2m a year. Yes, that's a lot of money, and almost all of us (myself included) struggle to see how to spend that money. But at the same time, I feel some empathy for that guy - he's increased his expenses proportionally and he feels trapped doing something he doesn't enjoy with no end in sight. I know I've moved my expenses up and to the right since graduating college and starting a professional job.

But all of this is a distraction - at the end of the article, the author speaks about the people who are happy and satisfied in their careers - and broadly it seems like people who have autonomy and a sense of purpose in what they do. I run a small business and broadly enjoy working, so things like the Financial Independence movement don't really make sense to me. More money, less money - this is not the crux of the issue. Engagement and autonomy are some of the keys to a fulfilling work life.

Most people don't have the luxury of being their own bosses. For these people, financial independence will enable them to leave their unfulfilling jobs and pursue their own passions, whether it be starting a small business like you or getting a job that pays less but is more fulfilling. Most people are living paycheck to paycheck with little savings, and thus don't have the freedom to walk away from their jobs.

If you are saving towards financial independence you have the luxury of choosing if you'd like to be your own boss, or indeed if you'd like a job that pays less.

Most people are living paycheck to paycheck, but those are not the people who are saving for FI.

I think you assume people who are living paycheck to paycheck to be people that are just don't know how to manage their finances. If so, you would be massively wrong. Most people living paycheck to paycheck are people that usually got a horrible start at life with some bad luck thrown in. Maybe raised by a single parent who couldn't give the extra attention, so they fell behind in school. Maybe people who sickly as kids. Maybe people just born into poor families with bad habits. The list is endless. Yes this sometimes create people that were never given or taught the tools of proper finance but most just got the shit end of the stick. Or they made 1 bad choice and then couldn't get out of that hole.

Yes, but we aren't talking about poor people in this article. We are talking about people who earn a lot of money. In the parent comment I start by talking about a guy who's earning $1.2m a year.

Right it's in the title: "America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable"

Or, maybe they have a high time preference that was inherited in their genes.

> so things like the Financial Independence movement don't really make sense to me

> Engagement and autonomy are some of the keys to a fulfilling work life.

Isn't the second point exactly what most Financial Independence proponents are seeking FI for? I imagine most work (Mr Money Mustache, a prominent FI spokesman, certainly still engages in activities that would qualify)..

Lifestyle inflation is a very easy trap to fall into and hard to get out of.

Suddenly you feel like you have to have a fancy car, to live in a fancy neighborhood and get a $5 soy detox tea every morning and $300 a month crossfit/hot yoga/dance pilates classes or something like that

You're just describing weak willed people.

The crux of feeling trapped from increasing expenses with your income usually comes down to loans that you have to continue to pay off (or a contractual obligation). It's one of the reasons a lot of people see value in paying off their home earlier even though stock market investments are usually the better long term bet.

There's a degree of freedom that comes from knowing your cost of living can essentially be utilities and food if your income was suddenly interrupted.

"Lifestyle inflation" doesn't necessarily just mean nice vacations and fancy cars - education expenses for children are often a huge part of it.

In the major coastal metros, living in a great school district or paying for an equivalent-quality private school is a tremendous expense. Parents also feel pressure to save enough to send their children to the best college or university that they can get into, which can be a $300,000+ expense.

For many parents, these expenses are non-negotiable - "downsizing" in this area is off the table.

I think there's a fair case that these parents are locked in a society-wide arms race: everyone would be better off if the kids were under less pressure to get the "best" education credentials possible, but almost everyone thinks they would be worse off if they unilaterally "disarmed".

You don't need nearly the income described in this article to live in the neighborhoods in NYC with excellent public schools. The price of entry is below $200k after tax income, assuming you demand three bedrooms in your apartment, less if you can make do with two. Source: I live in such a neighborhood.

Saving for college is a thing, but one year at this income is enough to sock away an entire college education.

True, although many families aren't willing to deal with the pressure and risk of the NYC high school application process.

In a good neighborhood, your only risk is that you will go to a very good school instead of a great one.

Look, it's not that I don't have any sympathy. My household makes about as much as this guy and live in a similar situation, although apparently I like my job much more. Doesn't mean my life is without problems. Doesn't mean I don't get sad sometimes. But there are ways to mitigate the downside we have access to which most families simply don't, because they don't have the excess income.

Also 99.9% chance this guy actually spends a ton more than he really needs to and therefore has trapped himself. Again, I'm not without sympathy, but this is one problem no social program will ever target. If you're to dig out of your spending habits you really will have to do it by your own bootstraps. Find a therapist, cut up your credit cards, whatever is necessary. If someone making $1M per year really wants to get out from under, there are in the best possible position to do so.

Yeah, I'm not claiming that the guy is right, and I'm certainly not aiming to debate or criticize your personal choices. I'm just aiming to describe this attitude that seems to be really common in the NYC area, and which explains why many parents feel their choices are constrained.

I absolutely agree that this attitude exists, and it really is a shame, because a lot of people are limiting themselves from achieving real happiness.

Granted I don't have kids - but that parents act like this seems utterly delusional to me.

Frankly, I think you're getting a below-average education if you're spending tens of thousands a year on it (before college). Private school, getting a seat at a public school in an expensive suburb - fuuuuuuuuck that. Those experiences are nowhere close to worth all that money, and honestly prevent the students involved from learning about the real world in important ways that they'll pay dearly for later.

Honestly, this is insane. Those parents are spending tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars on making their children worse-off. I know they'd probably disagree with me.

yes, the marginal utility of the "better" education is not generally worth the tens of thousands of extra dollars, whether it be novel instructional methods, extra time/attention, better credentials, or nicer, more advanced facilities.

but like most such situations, i suspect wealthy families are not simply buying better instruction, but rather exclusivity and esteem. the treadmill they're on is an attempt to maintain and improve their (apparent) social status.

money doesn't buy you a ticket off the treadmill. even the richest people jockey with each other for status. jumping off the treadmill means social isolation and most folks can't stand that.

It's not just that it's not worth it, but that growing up in the rich-private-school/elite-suburban-school bubble is actively detrimental to people down the road. It's making the kids less happy and less able to be a part of the real world.

It is more that they're buying their kids a social circle that includes the kids of other elite families. They're not buying better math instruction, they're buying access.

That's nothing for someone who makes 7 figures a year. Two kids going to $70k/year top boarding schools still leaves a ton left over after tax for saving $600k over 18 years.

That's the point. They can easily afford the $140k/year in education expenses if they keep working the 7 figure job they hate, but they couldn't really afford it if they took a huge pay cut.

Ah, I get your point now. But $140k/year in education for two kids is at basically the second highest tier of education in the world (only things being higher are elite international schools or comprehensive private tutoring). Where I'm from in the US you could get the best education in the state for probably $15-18k/year/kid

Yeah I think the insane costs are a disease that mainly afflicts the major coastal metro areas. Families end up paying in some combination of high mortgages, high property taxes, direct private school tuition, or insanely long commutes. There are different choices you can make along those dimensions, but total cost is high regardless.

>I think there's a fair case that these parents are locked in a society-wide arms race: everyone would be better off if the kids were under less pressure to get the "best" education credentials possible, but almost everyone thinks they would be worse off if they unilaterally "disarmed".

That sounds like the case Elizabeth Warren made in "The Two Income Trap".

I feel like parents who obsess about the Ivy League track to success also tend to delegate raising of the child to the school. I would argue that a well raised child with a good enough education stands as much a chance of success as an Ivy educated child. Unfortunately there's no objective way to measure and compare the two.

I'd be 100% fine with working like a dog for $1.2M a year in a job I hated, spending as little as possible, if it meant after N<=5 years I'd have enough to retire and that work would be optional. After that, I'll happily obtain my "sense of purpose and satisfaction" doing hobbies or serving the community in the time I'd otherwise be working.

Have not found that job offer yet, but if you know of it, E-mail in profile :-) I won't hold my breath.

The guy mentioned in this story certainly has that job. In 5 years, he'll make $6 million. That should be plenty to retire on if invested correctly.

Yea, I know those jobs exist--they're just not open to working class schmucks like us. I can say for certain that if I accumulated $6 million after five years of work, those would be the last five years I ever worked.

This makes a lot of sense. Retiring early doesn't necessarily make people happy. In fact many could feel lost and unhappy since they're not contributing anything meaningful to the community anymore. A lot of advice mentioned working a job where you feel autonomy and passion, which I think does make a lot of sense and probably should be the way to go.

- He had received an offer at a start-up, and he would have loved to take it, but it paid half as much, and he felt locked into a lifestyle that made this pay cut impossible. “My wife laughed when I told her about it,” he said. Sounds like a good wife to me, and this "pay cut" is making 500k-600k instead of 1.2 million, what world are these people living in that you can't give up a job that you hate because you can't afford to live on 500-600k.

Not sure how you're interpreting the "good wife" but I interpreted her reaction as laughing at the notion they could afford to live on anything less than his current 1.2m salary.

I believe OP is being sarcastic about "good wife".

It’s not about living on 500k vs 1 million. It’s about much, much earlier retirement.

More likely it's about keeping up with the Joneses. If all your old school friends are making $5 million, it pains your status gland enough to "only" be making $1 million.

The funny thing is when you move from making $1mm to $5mm you pick up a different set of friends to keep up with.

It's true, the coke dealers don't really hang around until you reach a certain income threshold.

I don't understand the mindset of burning yourself out in middle age so you can "enjoy the world" when you're much more likely to be frail and have serious health problems that prevent you from participating in many activities.

If you make 1.2 million a year you could literally retire after 1-2 years and live comfortably (on ~40k) for the rest of your life. Want to live on 100k? Only takes 4 years.

Taxes.

And inflation.

Is it?

Many people could retire after one year at 500k or 1M because their cost of living is such that they would be able to save almost all of it, and this would spread across their retirement..

The average UK private pension pot is £100k ... this implies that either people with £1m should be retiring earlier, or we'll have a generation who can't afford to retire.

The situation is similar, if not worse, in the US, and the latter is true: absent government pension programs like Social Security, almost nobody can afford to retire. Social Security is the retirement plan for regular people. Basically only union workers with defined-benefit pensions and high-salary professionals who are able to fund their 401(k) meaningfully have any kind of plan for retirement besides living on Social Security. The luckiest can also draw on help from family, life insurance, and getting part-time work as e.g. a Walmart greeter.

Thinking about retirement savings at all is kind of a luxury.

Even a poverty level wage (for family of 4) is $25k/year. So $500k over a 20 year retirement sounds like a lot, but it’s not.

You're leaving out the compound interest that could be earned through stocks/bonds.

Yes, but even bonds don't keep up with inflation, and you need enough principle to ride out the dips. The "safe" return is considered to be 4%, which is $20k on $500k, so you'd be dipping into the principle even on that poverty scale.

It just take a lot more to retire than the average person realizes, and not eat Alpo.

not saying it's easy, and no, doesn't sound like a lot.

but it's possible, is my point - the difference on whether it is possible or not possible is the lifestyle one chooses to lead with it.

For many readers here, and adherents to the FIRE philosophy, sure.

But to most people who actually make $1.2 million per year, it means giving up all kinds of status symbols and creature comforts. Many of which they are locked in to via mortgages, leases, etc.

To expand on this, many people who make this much as employees have a great deal of anxiety about the future of tech, and a reasonable doubt that this level of income cannot continue indefinitely. From that point of view it seems foolish to walk away from the opportunity.

People outside of tech have anxiety about the future of tech.

People inside tech having anxiety about it?

Seems to me the anxiety has far less to do with tech than with the nature of the economy and employment in general.

The way I read this part is that his wife laughed at how ridiculous the idea of taking a 50% pay cut was. I think that she was the one who couldn't imagine living with 600k instead of a million.

>what world are these people living in that you can't give up a job that you hate because you can't afford to live on 500-600k.

The one where you lock into a mortgage and a car that assumes a $1.2M salary to keep ahead of.

It's really easy to let your lifestyle expenses balloon, especially in a high-COL city where minor increases in living space/amenities can end up costing large amounts of money.

> where minor increases in living space/amenities can end up costing large amounts of money.

It is pretty crazy how little extra money buys you. E.g. in NYC, the only differences between a $2,000 month apartment and a $20,000 a month apartment are going to be things like location, granite countertops, a well-designed bathroom, and better windows. But in most cases the actual floor space and layout is going to be almost identical.

Clearly those things are worth something, but it's easy to see how the work and stress of paying for those accents is to result in a net negative happiness for many if not most people.

This is not true. $20,000/mo rent in NYC will get you a gigantic apartment (thousands of square feet), as you can verify on any housing listings website.

It can get you that, but not if you want to be in SoHo on the 30th floor of a luxury building or whatever.

You are wrong. You'll pay $60-70 a square foot, but 20k will get you a lot.

https://streeteasy.com/building/chelsea-modern/rental/265743...

https://streeteasy.com/building/336-west-23-street-manhattan...

To consume $100k a month we need a $10-20 million dollar mortgage (50-100k/mo depending on years and rate). I have to assume a few cars, dining, etc would probably end up being $10-20k/mo so the mortgage is probably around $15 mil. So in NY or SF you are looking at something like a 1-2k sq/ft 2 bed 1 bathroom shithole apartment. Not so luxurious after all really.

Less than $15m could buy a 5 bedroom mansion of a single-family home in San Francisco, and in New York, a ridiculously stunning 5 bedroom apartment.

Where did you get 1-2k sq/ft 2 bed 1 bath shithole from?

And that's not even taking into account taxes...

I assume you're being sarcastic... a $15M shithole apartment! X^D

Yeah looks like I obviously touched a nerve with some people here I guess?

You didn't touch a nerve. You're out in bizzaro-land. $15MM in Manhattan will get you a brownstone on the Upper West Side.

Putting kids through school, paying for parent's mortgage, vacation properties, country club dues.

> country club dues

> vacation properties

I'm glad there's a "stupid tax" for wealthy people too.

You're likely not going to get that $1.2 million job unless you "travel in the same circles" as the people hiring.

Your NYC numbers are way off. Here are some listings for apartments for sale between 9 and 12 million: https://streeteasy.com/for-sale/manhattan/price:9000000-1200...

For those who don't feel like clicking the link: most are very large (5-6 br) apartments, in expensive neighborhoods, in nice new buildings.

Yeah, Manhattan real estate is something like $1600/sqft and SF is $850-$1200 unless you want something in one of the fancy new high-rises. $15 million will buy you 12,500 square feet haha. Just check Zillow.

Yup. The golden rule: don't ratchet up your lifestyle when your income rises and you'll be far happier in the long run.

Also don't give a damn what people think about you. Typically people get trapped in that mouse wheel because "look what they have."

Yep. And if you get windfall and are really itching to spend it do yourself a favour and research what stuff is expensive but lasts. In NPV terms you'll be saving money, but you won't be pulling on hard-to-escape expenses.

Source: I sold a company and quadrupled my spend on housing. Something stupid that I regret. But I also spent money on high quality stuff that is still lasting almost a decade later.

This isn't really germane to the $500k+ set the article is talking about. Everything you're buying at that tier is going to last. What eats up their incomes is housing, transportation, and stuff like private school tuition and childcare.

The challenge there is it's hard to ramp those down once you lock in. Downsizing on housing means having to move and possibly sacrificing social life and opportunities along the way. Pulling your kids out of private school has consequences for their long term prospects and their socialization. And so on.

> Everything you're buying at that tier is going to last.

I respectfully disagree. Luxury goods are often flimsy or expensive to maintain (e.g., Toyotas vs Porches) so research is still required.

As for private school and housing, these are exactly the expenses I'm talking about not getting wound up in. I went to private school almost my whole life, and I understand what it is to not want to be pulled away from a community, but the reality is that $500k—let alone $1m—is more than enough to afford a good private school and a good home in any city. The struggle to live on $500k / year is an artificial, self-sabotaging one.

Yeah... I literally don't buy it. High Cost of Living city has nothing to do with needing $500k/yr in earnings (post tax). What kind of mortgage and car do you have that? Simple answer... that's a $10M house or a $2M car or half of each of those.

Besides the fact that if you're earning $1.2M salary, you're taking home other bonus/stock that are comparable. Getting locked into this sort of lifestyle is a choice not driven by need. A drug dealer in "low cost" Detroit or Sinaloa might make the same claims...

The median annual earnings of palo altans is about $400k/year. That's probably workable for cheaper areas like south palo alto where a house built in the 80s will run you $2.5 mil. Move closer to downtown and you could easily double or triple your necessary annual take.

"According to Census data, the median household income in Palo Alto is $137,000 a year, while the US average is $57,600"

from: https://www.cnet.com/news/silicon-valley-middle-class-earns-...

I think this type of Census data understates household incomes. I am not exactly sure why, but Atherton comes in at about 400k a year per household. That is a lot, but doesn't seem like a lot for Atherton.

No, this seems right. The typical distribution of income across the pop., even in a distorted environment like the valley, looks far more like a Poisson distribution with a long tail than a typical Gaussian

137 is a median. Half the people in Palo Alto make less than 137 in household income? Maybe, if you count East Palo Alto. But Atherton at 443 ( https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-hundred-richest-plac... ) ? seems too low

I can't find the $400k/year number anywhere. The census puts it at "$250,001" which seems like a fishy number.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-hundred-richest-plac...

I believe it is skewed since many people in these neighborhoods aren't making their money through salary income (anymore), but instead through interest / dividends.

If you sold your company, aren't working at FB/goog/etc and are sitting on a ton of stock holdings, your income is going to show as near $0

that should be accounted for in govt household income calculations, but I could be wrong. For example, ton of stock holdings will pay you dividends or capital gains.

What you put on your tax return every year doesn't really reflect your actual wealth. Even in tech most people top out at ~$200k-$250k base salaries but you may vest and accumulate millions in stock RSUs that you don't sell in a given year.

Stock RSU vests go on your tax returns.

Ah ok - I'm thinking private shares

Those do too. The only thing that doesn't is deferred compensation in the form of an ISO or NSO. The latter is recognized as ordinary income when exercised.

Don't RSUs show up on the W-2 as income though (even if you don't sell them)?

They do; RSU vesting is a taxable event. It's counted as ordinary income based on the fair market value at the time it vests and taxes are due immediately. Companies tend to withhold a percentage of the shares and sell them to cover your tax burden.

My working explanation is that it's actually survey data. the richest people either don't answer the survey or understate their actual holdings when they do answer.

You don't want to rely on it for means because the high incomes are capped at a relatively low level so that they don't out high-earners in sparse areas. But that shouldn't affect medians.

Those numbers don’t remotely reflect the cost of living for people moving to the area now. Prop 13 has distorted things dramatically. In Palo Alto, there are numerous retired people living in houses paying property tax rates essentially set in the 1970s. In fact, Palo Alto has the lowest tax rate in the country by percent since the houses are so expensive but the people pay so little compared to the value.[1] You could definitely live off $500k, but $137 would be really tough to near impossible with a family. Prop 13 has really broken the California housing market.

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2016/12/01/pro...

Stock options are not counted as income. They are exactly that: Stock options. Your income is your take-home pay, specifically gross pay on your stub extrapolated to annual salary.

Yes, there is capital income from stocks and other market investments, but appreciation for those comes under capital gains, which are calculated (and taxed) separately, and don’t count as employment income, for good reason: You can’t use stock options vesting in 4 years to buy food tomorrow or pay mortgage next month.

Which makes it ironic that capital gains taxes can bite exercisers before they are actually able to be liquidated.

The spread between purchase and grant price for Incentive Stock Options actually is counted towards income for Alternative Minimum Tax.

100% agree. We recently purchased a car. In our case the "expensive" aspect is that we bought new... a new Subaru Outback. We could certainly afford a brand new Escalade, but those types of behaviors would lock me into my current employer or something that pays similarly and that idea isn't something I'm fond of.

And this dude bought that shit despite hating his professional life. Hard to feel bad for him.

I've been in a similar position as you for most of my life. One weird aspect: employers/managers/companies have come to rely on you "needing" the pay cheque as a powerful motivator and control. When you can literally walk away from a job because you don't need the money to make your end of month payments it makes the relationship weird in some aspects. I don't even know if the party who traditionally holds this power consciously realizes it, but in my experience they seem to exhibit less confidence or willingness to play the "because I own you" card. It could also just be that I come across as less of a push-over and they respond accordingly. Regardless, interesting phenomenon...

I’ve heard it given the name “Fuck you money” – the money you have that gives you the ability to just say “Fuck you!” and walk away from your employment.

More like a 2M house and a 120K car. 500K/year isn't enough to live in a 10M house because it's 20 years of work (30, accounting for other expenses) and that assumes no cut in income. To get into a 10M house one needs to start a very successful business, which is quite possible after all the experience at such a job.

Usually when someone mentions a salary figure it's pre-tax. $500k in NYC is ~285k post-tax.

If you have a family, a $1.5m house (which barely gets you a shabby 3-bedroom in a high cost city) will, assuming you put $300k down, be around $8-$10k/month in mortgage + property taxes + insurance + any hoa/maintenence, which is by itself 40% of your monthly take home.

> If you have a family, a $1.5m house (which barely gets you a shabby 3-bedroom in a high cost city)

Uh... median house price in Seattle is less than half that. $1.5 million for a house in Seattle will get you an extremely nice house. Extremely nice.

If you disagree, it's because you have incredibly high standards for what constitutes "nice". That's fine, but it makes it more than a bit silly to complain that you "can't afford" a different lifestyle.

You're just making bad choices at that point.

I didn't mention Seattle...I'm referring to NYC or SF.

So literally 2 cities. Wildly expensive cities like DC, Seattle, Boston are still highly livable on $1.5 million.

Honestly, if you're regretting your life choices so severely but you're unwilling to live anywhere but NYC/SF, you're either not really regretting your life choices that much, or you're just really bad at making good decisions with your life.

I'm making the assumption that there are more jobs that pay $500k+ in Silicon Valley and NYC. If you can get that salary in 2nd cities like SEA or BOS then of course you're doing better than someone making the same in higher CoL places.

Article says friend is in Manhattan and earned (i.e. total comp) $1.2mm. Very unusual for anyone in finance to have that high a salary short of being a CEO earning $10mm+.

Suppose he lives on the UWS in a 2000 square foot 3-4 bedroom condo which he bought for $4mm and has a $3mm mortgage. With a 30year fixed mortgage, that's maybe $180k a year. Don't forget the $60+k a year in condo fees and taxes. Throw in anywhere from $40-80k for nanny/childcare/preschool for the 1-2 kids he may have and you already have nothing left over if he went to a $600k comp.

I'm not saying he can't choose to live more conservatively, but when you're used to making $1.2mm a year, it's not hard to imagine how he got here. High cost of living does play a part, especially in NYC.

$1.2M total comp is not that unusual in finance if you've been in a number of years[1].

[1]https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/salary/investment-banking-co...

I'm surprised no one here has yet name-checked Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. There is a famous comedic passage in which Sherman McCoy discusses his expenditures relative to his (vast) income.

EDIT:

One breath of scandal—

—his spirits plunged even lower. One breath of scandal, and not only would the Giscard scheme collapse but his very career would be finished! And what would he do then? I'm already going broke on a million dollars a year! The appalling figures came popping up into his brain. Last year his income had been $980,000. But he had to pay $21,000 a month for the $1.8 million loan he had taken out to buy the apartment. What was $21,000 a month to someone making a million a year? That was the way he had thought of it at the same—and in fact, it was merely a crushing, grinding burden—that was all! It came to $252,000 a year, none of it deductible, because it was a personal loan, not a mortgage. (The cooperative boards in Good Park Avenue Buildings like his didn't allow you to take out a mortgage on your apartment.) So, considering the taxes, it required $420,000 in income to pay the $252,000. Of the $560,000 remaining of his income last year, $44,400 was required for the apartment's monthly maintenance fees; $116,000 for the house on Old Drover's Mooring Lane in Southampton ($84,000 for mortgage payment and interest, $18,000 for heat, utilities, insurance, and repairs, $6,000 for lawn and hedge cutting, $8,000 for taxes). Entertaining at home and in restaurants had come to $18,000.

-------------

It goes on. The guy needs Mr. Money Mustache.

So... sell your expensive shit and buy less expensive shit. That's what us plebs are expected to do. No one's locked into anything.

What world are they living in where startups are paying $500-$600k?

If “startup” means “pre IPO” then there quite a few places in town that go up to this for very senior roles.

Uber, Lyft, AirBnb....500k+ for Sr & Manager roles.

I think a lot of people here don't realize how lucrative the sales roles in tech companies are - if you're good at it. Top sales reps often make more than than top level managers.

I estimate the top sales people are the highest compensated people in a company. It is true meritocracy, however. You are judged on a single metric more or less and the bottom of the group is dismissed without second thought.

You can make a great living on the engineer side of the operation and it's steady but you'll never see the highs of the top sales people even when you're at a point with stock and salary being many hundreds of thousands.

It's not a life for me but I have nothing but respect for the effort, time and relationship building great sales people put in. It's a hard, competitive ladder but if you make it work you'll hit high 6 figures and at times 7 figures for many years.

Could be a sales gig, commission can push total comp quite high, particularly in enterprise sales gigs.

Sales. If you bring in 20million in accounts. A 1 million paycheck is just a write off.

>what world are these people living in that you can't give up a job that you hate because you can't afford to live on 500-600k.

New York City

The median income for NYC is $57,000. Surely 10X what a typical person makes is enough for a family to get by, it's just not enough for the lifestyle they want.

Source: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/newyorkcitynewy...

Avoiding lifestyle inflation in the first place is definitely part of the puzzle, but it’s not clear that it can dig you out of the hole once you’re in it. Is giving up the lifestyle they want and have really going to make them happier?

Is an answer of "yes" inconceivable?

You are correct, but if this guy's an HBS alum pulling in 7 figures on the buy side, then he and his family are living the Upper East Side lifestyle which means:

Private school tuition - $50k/kid/year Additional activities such as tutoring, sports, etc - $10-20k/kid/year Mortgages+fees or rent for a 1,500 square foot apartment in a doorman building in East 80's - $75,000-150,000/year Mortgage or rent for country home in Hamptons or Litchfield County - $40,000-100,000/year

Literally half of his income is going to be taxed as an NYC resident. So he's got $600k of cash flow and if he has 2 or 3 kids, the very basic fixed costs of housing and schooling are likely taking up about half of that. With the remaining half he has to pay for food, vacations, cars, clothing, etc, and anything left after that will get saved.

To be clear, nobody is making this guy do this. Nobody's forcing him to "summer" anywhere, nobody's forcing him to enroll his daughters at Spence when PS 6 is free. But at the same time, this is a guy who came up through a system in which preppy affluence was the chosen lifestyle of his "me 10 years from now" role models. As easy as it is to mock the concept of anyone being "trapped" when they make 1.2mm a year, the truth is that stopping his current job would be profoundly disruptive and stressful for this guy, his wife and their kids. So I get where his wife is coming from when she laughs at his mention of the startup.

This guy NYCs

Yeah they do. On the nose.

> Nobody's forcing him to ...

I dunno, his wife did laugh at his startup job offer and divorce is expensive. Not that I feel bad for the guy, but it is often something like that.

Plenty of people living in NYC are doing totally fine on a tiny fraction of that.

That depends on your definition of "totally fine" is and where in NYC someone doing "totally fine" lives.

Making $1.2 Mil and probably spending already even the future raises that may not come. Your lifestyle adjusts to your salary.

So this dovetails with what I think is the most fascinating topic in evolution: the demographic transition in humans. If you're not familiar, demographic transition is the term used to describe what has happened to the demography of nations as they become developed. Which is that, rather than producing more children with their material abundance, people in rich nations have less children. This is not, at all, what biology would predict. More resources should lead to more offspring.

My personal hunch as to what causes the demographic transition is that we have an evolved system for determining whether we are doing well or doing poorly and that system calibrates itself by examining the people around us. But, because our current economic and social system sorts people by income and status (talented people migrated into the cities from farms, even more talented people moved into more expensive neighborhoods, etc.), and because advertising constantly shows us higher levels of consumption to aspire to, even people who are, in an absolute sense, raking in obscene amounts of money are surrounded by a peer group that are roughly at their level. So it never really feels like you're rich; even though you live in a $3 million dollar home, you live on a street with $8 million dollar homes; even though your kid goes to a $30k/year private school, you can't afford to spend $200k vacationing in France during the summer like some of their peers, etc.

Interestingly, this parallels my own experience. As a senior developer, I'm now making roughly 3x what I made before becoming a programmer. Back then I would have imagined that all of my wants would be satisfied by 3xing my income. Yet somehow I still yearn to make more.

As it says on the wall at Jimmy Johns, "The gap between 'more' and 'enough' never closes."

hahahaa

> and because advertising constantly shows us higher levels of consumption to aspire to, even people who are, in an absolute sense, raking in obscene amounts of money are surrounded by a peer group that are roughly at their level.

Animals evolved using competition as a mechanism to select the best mates. Advertising is not the cause, it's the nature of all animals to project power. There might be some people here and there who are satisfied or whatnot, but even without advertising, people would be competing.

This is a fair nit, but still: it's self-evident that modern advertising high-jacks natural competition and amplifies it in order to drive an unnatural level of spending (else companies could just skip advertising and see no change in revenue).

tl;dr Not a root cause, but a powerful multiplier.

> This is not, at all, what biology would predict.

Why isn't it? Afaik in biology, healthy populations tend to be stable populations.

Populations that shrink or grow too fast are often a sign for something going very wrong, usually having to do with sustainability.

That's why I think people in rich nations having fewer children is a feature and not a bug. It's the result of increasing living standards because when you have very low child-mortality rates you don't need to "try" several times to get one into adult age, just like the availability of contraception allows for more reliable family planning.

The same applies to having a social security net: Without that, you have to depend on your offspring to take care of you when you get too old to work/sick.

In a situation like that, more off-spring is always better, as long as you get them through childhood into productive adulthood. Each child is a future potential care-taker and each one of them could end up being a big earner. In that context, a whole lot of people treat getting children like playing the lottery.

Biological organisms are machines for turning energy into additional copies of the genes that created the organism. People in the developed world have access to an obscene amount of energy. Yet fertility rates are below replacement level in basically every developed country (if you don't count first generation immigrants). And when you zoom in, you notice that poor people have more children than all but the top several percent of earners (so fertility goes down as access to resources goes up). If you saw something similar in any other species, it would be the biggest unsolved riddle in biology. Something truly strange. And yet here we are basically not paying attention to it at all.

> people in rich nations have less children. This is not, at all, what biology would predict. More resources should lead to more offspring.

This is not correct. Rich people in rich nations have more kids than middle-income people in rich nations. What matters is your comparative purchasing power.

Fertility actually increases with income, even for women with education; this is mostly due to rich being able to afford the costs of child care, and feeling secure enough to invest into all of their children as much as they feel they need to. (whereas a middle-class, educated woman would only feel secure investing into 1 child)

> This is not correct.

What isn't correct based on what?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility

All you really need to know is that developed nations are home to the highest levels of human affluence that have ever existed, at all levels of society. And yet they have the lowest fertility rates ever measured. So low that they are not sufficient to maintain population size.

But if you go even further, you'll see that fertility actually declines with income in developed nations. It's not until you get to the top several percent of income that fertility starts rising again.

> It's not until you get to the top several percent of income that fertility starts rising again.

Yes, that's what I meant. You could argue about the significance of the top percentage rise in fertility, but if anything, it shows that fertility is constrained by lack of resources in a significant way as well as education specifically.

If fertility is constrained by lack of resources, the why do poor people in the developed world have more kids than middle class people?

Presumably because within the budget constraint, the survival rate of many kids will result in a similar amount of kids at the end of the woman's fertility window.

I didn't say it is constrained by lack of resources, I said it's also constrained by lack of resources.

It's probably about whether women are on a career track and, thus, what age they start having children. Poor women generally aren't on a career track. They finish school and start working a job that doesn't require school or much training. So they can (and do) have children pretty early. Rich women do usually go to college, but they meet a future husband there who is on a high-earning career track and are able to start a family relatively early because they don't have to help pay the bills.

What I'm saying, though, is that if you look at the fertility curve[1] you'll see that many middle class families could eliminate one earner and still have 2-3x the income as poor families that have more children. But people are choosing not to do that (well, secular people are choosing not to do that; intensely religious people often do exactly that).

That's what's interesting to me.

[1]: https://twitter.com/CSchmert/status/993934031174725632

It's also worth examining if our typical ways of measuring inflation (in the USA, the Consumer Price Index, or CPI) is an accurate guide to the real costs of raising children. The CPI currently takes into account a very diverse range of goods, including canoes and guns and lamps and kitchen wares and music and coffee grinders. The CPI tries to avoid the assumption that some purchases are more important than others, but if you are raising children, you know some things are much more important than others. You can cut back on coffee grinders, but you can not cut back much housing -- you need a certain minimum for each child.

My great grandmother gave birth to 16 children (this is my mom's mom's mom) who lived to adulthood. She (with my great grandfather) had no trouble housing them, feeding them, clothing them and ensuring they got educations to at least 8th grade, most to 12th grade. Does the CPI accurately reflect the changing costs of each of the things that were then easy to afford? How much would it cost to raise 16 children now? In theory, we are much more wealthy now than my great-grandparents were in the period 1880 to 1910, and yet they were able to afford something that nowadays would take a great deal to afford. Why is that?

Another thing that the CPI does not capture is how some new expenses have arisen that have become essential. In particular, automobiles. In much of the USA, having an automobile is non-optional.

We should think about those changes in lifestyle that make comparisons difficult across time. My great-grandparents raised 16 children in a dense town where transportation was dominated by walking. If you were trying to recreate that lifestyle in a USA suburb, some odd questions come up. Can you fit 16 children in one car? Do you get multiple cars? Who drives them? These questions point out how difficult it is to make direct comparisons.

Nor is it correct to simply say "No one needs to live in the suburbs in the USA, they can, if they wish, continue to live in a dense urban center". But the USA economy is a cohesive whole, and the existence of the suburbs effects the price of things in the urban core, as well as the focus of transportation infrastructure. Over the last 100 years, most USA urban centers have built significant transportation infrastructure to help workers in distant suburbs come into jobs in the urban core, and then go home at night. The money spent on those infrastructure projects could have been spent on some other priority, but instead were spent as they were because of the existence of the suburbs.

So it is very difficult to make direct comparisons, because some lifestyle changes make direct comparisons blurry. But in that blurriness, we can argue that in important ways our standard of living has not increased as much as the CPI seems to suggest. In particular, for those people who have a strong craving to have a large family, one can reasonably argue that their standard of living has actually decreased over time.

During the 2008-2010 crash, there were reports of many women leaving their wall street husbands when they lost their jobs. I still remember reading about one woman - one of her excuses were that she was no longer able to buy organic fruits (avocados or something) - apparently she only eats organic, and organic everything.

That might be a small example, but it shows the way the wealthy lead their lives. Luxury cars, high end electronics, multiple homes ... they all add up.

Did those wives have any way to make the kind of money needed for their lifestyles themselves?

After all, it's not like wealthy bachelors were common during the recession.

Let me guess: he lives in San Francisco?

Ok, looks like it was actually New York, but under the same principle: golden handcuffs.

Let's say you've got three kids and you're living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Your mortgage and maintenance for a 3 bedroom apartment at $3.5MM are going to be ~15000 a month or 180K a year. Three private school tuitions are 150K. Living in NYC you're paying NYC, NYS and Federal income taxes for probably the highest tax rate in the country. So basically it's easy to be paycheck to paycheck on 500K in NYC.

a problem easily solvable by a move to NJ, which of course, would dramatically increase your misery level. In fact, that's probably why that guy is miserable - he doesn't live in Manhattan and has a 2 hr or more commute every day.

There are plenty of wealthy people living a comfortable lifestyle in rich communities off the Palisades pkwy. with a 20 minute hop into the city. 15 if you drive at entitled speeds.

> with a 20 minute hop into the city.

Maybe early on a Sunday morning? Or maybe if you're stopping the clock as soon as you get to the other side of the GWB?

On a weekday morning, you'd be lucky if you can get from Secaucus to the Manhattan side of the Lincoln Tunnel in 30 min.

It's "easy" to squander almost any amount of money -- even Johnny Depp went broke. But just like Depp didn't have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on wine, nobody has to live on the UES and send their kids to 50k/yr schools.

Yeah but imagine that you already do and now you're explaining to your wife why you want to pull your kids out of their schools and move to the suburbs so you can take a job that pays half what you already make. I'm not saying I'm sympathetic to the guy, but I understand the situation he's in.

I bet its mostly taxes and real estate.

City + State + Federal taxes are around 50%. So $600k. Private School per kid is $50k. Assume two kids so about $100k.

Okay, now a 4 bedroom apartment in NYC is like $25k/month (on Zillow, eyeballing it), or about $300k/year.

You're down to $100k-$200k for food, vacations, clothes, cars etc.

> You're down to $100k-$200k for food, vacations, clothes, cars etc.

Oh, the humanity.

You're doing fine, but at $600k, you'd be taking home $300k, and then its all going on rent unless you downsize drastically and move out of private school etc.

I'm just explaining why the move would feel tough for a family.

Take home pay in NYC on a $500k salary is ~285k/year or $23.75k/month. If you are supporting a family, then rent + living expenses + tuition + retirement + college savings etc will eat most of that easily.

Contained in that question is a really interesting bit of learning.

There are many ways to go through your career and your 'wealth' cycle. What worked for me was that when ever I got a raise or "extra" money (bonus, stock vesting, etc) I always adjusted my savings rate so that my take home pay was unchanged relative to inflation. The company gave me a 10% raise and inflation was 3%? I added 7% of that raise to my savings rate. As a result, my savings grew and my lifestyle didn't change, I could always "live on" a much more modest salary than I was being paid. That gave me tremendous flexibility in being able to take jobs that had a 'pay cut' but had other aspects that made them desirable (learning something new, opportunities to develop a new skill, more fun, Etc.) And after a while the amount of money your "savings" is kicking off gets to be more and more significant. If you're lucky, then one day the number your savings is kicking off is the same amount you're paying yourself out of your own paycheck and then you can walk away at anytime, keep your life style, and never have to work again. That gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility in how you spend your time.

>what world are these people living in that you can't give up a job that you hate because you can't afford to live on 500-600k.

The same one where a dev making $160k can't give up a job they hate because they can't afford to take a job paying $80k.

Everything is relative. To many Americans and $80k desk job is the lap of luxury. To many devs, that pay would be insulting.

In my experience, for men it's usually some combination of women, children, addictive substances and "stunting" that finds guys in that situation.

The rich are depressed, the middle-class is shrinking and fearful, the poor are hopeless. I'm gonna take a leap here and say maybe people need some religion in their lives to give direction and meaning.

I found it interesting that a person in the article who made $1.2M a year was still depressed in thinking they were wasting their lives and it was all meaningless. I ask myself, does this person have children? a family to leave wealth to? or children to teach values to? I'm sorry but we have become so weak in our desire to satisfy only our own goals. That person's duty is to his family, and children (if he has any). His duty to society is to raise children with values that are compatible with the society. Religion instills this virtue and gives framework of how our actions on earth and our ability to reason and create is an imitation of "god" aka creation of existence.

I disagree about it being religion specifically, but I would say that people need a better philosophy, a model of reality, to understand why the things they think will make them happy don't.

I think it's useful to divorce the concept Religion from the concept of God in your mind. IMO, the religions of the future will be God-less. If you look at the jobs that religions typically do, a lot of the ground is being covered by science (telling a story about how we came to exist and what our purpose is) and the rest is being covered by political ideologies (how we should live our lives and how we should relate to other people).

Someone is going to figure out how to marry those two together someday...

The religion of social justice based on marxist identity politics is alive and well.

I disagree about it being God-less per-se. I think people will come back around to a conception of God, not as an anthropomorphized magic sky wizard full of wrath and dogma, but as a philosophical concept that seems to underpin all of reality. And when that happens, they will look back at the religions of the past and find that they, in their own words, often spoke the same wisdom that will then be commonplace. We merely misunderstood it because we lacked the context see what what was really meant. Because the thing about context is that it is necessary for communication, and you don't get it for free.

His duty is to go traveling and have adventures and drink the finest craft beers. I can't imagine why he'd find that all meaningless.

I agree in general, it's something I've thought about. Sometimes I want to quit my software dev job and become a shaman because I see people miserable and unable to make sense of their lives. But who can afford to live on a shaman's salary :p

One thing I've consistently noticed in regards to jobs is that people's perceptions are very inward focused. It is all about whether they are fulfilled, if they are interested, if they are bored, if they're learning, etc. You can see this clearly in discussions on HN about "Bullshit Jobs". If people thought more about whether their job is useful to other people, rather than gratifying to themselves, they'll come to very different conclusions.

Because a 10% tithe is definitely something the shrinking middle class and the hopeless lower class can afford.

But putting that aside this sentiment of "look how bad things seem for people, religion can help" reeks of predatory behavior. If none turn towards whatever god you preach in times of plenty then what is left? To strike in a moment of weakness? To shift blame from whatever problems could be solved to instead attribute success and failure to the nebulous concept of faith? It's disgusting.

>That person's duty is to his family, and children (if he has any). His duty to society is to raise children with values that are compatible with the society

A society that is growing increasingly secular.

It's increasingly secular right now. But religions grow and shrink like fashions and a new clutch may rise to fill the evident vacuum.

Sure it's possible but one can hope we've grown beyond the majority needing a crutch to get through life.

It may not be a crutch at all, but an essential part of human society. That's not the same as to say we need excessive dogma, churches funding super-PACs, DMCA wielding lawyers on staff, or silent code for dealing with rapist priests. We do need community, guidance, and a safe place to seek help when we're in trouble. Surely we can let some religions go by the wayside, and perhaps embrace alternatives that aren't in conflict with science or the contemporary rule of law.

There's no denomination or sect that actually tithes 10% on average. There was a freakonomics episode about it. There was as researcher who found that certain donominations tithe more or less but none reached 10%.

I currently live in Utah which, for those who don't know, is predominately of Mormon faith. While those rates aren't published for some pretty clear reasons the overwhelming majority of individuals I've spoken to within the industry tithe at or above 10%. Granted this is the tech industry so middle class and above is common but it is pretty much a requirement to be an active member of the church.

This 1980 statement from the church is an interesting one and the sentiment seems to me mostly unchanged from my admittedly outside viewpoint. https://www.lds.org/study/ensign/1980/06/concerning-tithing?...

I think there are some misconceptions of "Religion" here. I will readily admit that there are some cases where it has been used for predatory behavior, but one cannot generalize that.

I can vouch that many churches do not treat the tithe as an "entrance fee" and honestly many have no idea how much you make or force you to give that. More-so, it is up to the person to decide how much to give be it 1% or 50%.

I personally believe in God, I think there is enough evidence to point that direction. However, even if I were to not believe this way, I honestly feel that my lifestyle as a result is more fulfilling and enjoyable. As a result, I regularly get together with like-minded people from a variety of backgrounds and occupations that I probably would have never met otherwise, which has resulted in some of my closest friendships. I regularly get together with others in our homes for Bible study and "just hanging out" (fellowship in "Church words"). This small group of people has been instrumental in each others' lives when things are stressful by helping each other out (providing meals, childcare, or simply a listening ear).

My children also have a group of friends and an organization that aids me in helping teach a moral compass and values that are overall advantageous to our society, such as generosity, politeness, putting others first, being helpful, among other faith-oriented traits as well. This can stand as contrasts to some of the traits our children commonly see in our society or in various media forms (advertising, etc).

As far as tithing, I currently probably am "a bit below" 10%, though I'd like to increase it over time, because to me the value in my life and the value I see being provided to others makes it worth it. But I do not feel obligated to give.

While all these things potentially could be replicated in the "secular world," there is little incentive for people to become dedicated to it, and this is why by-in-large it is not replicated. The "organized" part of organized religion I think is the key here.

Also as contrast to the "predatory behavior" you speak of, a very large portion of the aid provided the poor or "less desirable in society" is provided by religious organizations (food banks, homeless shelters, etc). Many of these, because of their religious convictions and the convictions of their supporters are able to provide more services, more personal care, and more impactful results for much less money than many of the government initiatives. To be clear, I'm not proposing we get rid of the government initiatives. I'm mostly pointing out that in many cases, if practiced in alignment with the values they teach, religious activities are the opposite of predatory.

> maybe people need some religion in their lives

I'm going take 'religion' to simply mean 'something that gives them purpose and fulfillment' and agree.

Now that I'm reasonably comfortable (semi-retired, no debts) I've been focusing on "mindfulness" i.e. being fully present in the moment and enjoying the moment. Not looking at the past or longing for some particular future. I think this helps.

I agree with your point, but not necessarily the execution. We deserve a better religion, one that skips the hand-wavey-guy-in-the-sky implausibility but can still serve as a mental shortcut for whatever society agrees morality is ~currently~.

> but can still serve as a mental shortcut for whatever society agrees morality is ~currently~.

Can that be philosophy and humanist approaches? That is a way to look for higher meaning without rewarding fanaticism or dogma.

> maybe people need some religion in their lives to give direction and meaning

I can't just accept dogma because I'm miserable. I can't just say 2+2=5 even if it would make me feel better. Religion isn't something you can just pick up like pilates. If life is inherently without meaning or direction, I'd rather go with that and be true to myself than refract the universe through some doctrine I understand to be false.

Self-knowledge, mindfulness, wisdom, spirituality, reflectiveness - I can make my peace with these. But I think it is bordering on unfair to proffer a deity as a solution to depression and anxiety.

Practicing regularly to increase self-knowledge, thinking spiritually, reflecting on your relation to the world – do you not consider that a religion? Organized Christianity is just one flavor.

> Practicing regularly to increase self-knowledge, thinking spiritually, reflecting on your relation to the world – do you not consider that a religion?

I'd call that mindfulness not religion.

Religion has been the guiding force for this kind of internal reflection and family/community thought. As religion has declined in many west societies, we haven’t replaced them effectively.

We may not need more religion, but it sure seems like we need something. Building our society so heavily on economic expediency can’t be healthy long term.

I'm in favor of more prolific philosophy circles. There is probably a group in your area that gets together regularly to discuss the works of different philosophers, join in and study up on some Kierkegaard and I think you'll find it gives you a lot of the same pay off.

I’m familiar with those kinds of meetings and family members that attend. I’m fortunate in that I work in a field that is very much service oriented (from a humanism point of view) that offers a lot of fulfillment and the opportunity to consider & and demonstrate my personal values.

My comments - I guess - are more generally focused. I feel similarly about male identify. We’ve walked back many aspects of traditional masculinity (often for good reason and for positive social benefits) but haven’t - as a society - replaces them with alternatives. I think it leaves many young men without a positive vision for “what it means to be a man”. These are opportunities, but I don’t know how we can work through them without a distinct shared cultural vision for what we all want to be. Individualism has its downsides too.

What would you call a religion?

Maybe I jumped the gun there and got a bit sidelined by semantics. In my mind, theism is a necessary but not sufficient condition for religion. Ritual, on the other hand, intersects with religion and irreligion (again, in my mind). I saw another comment speaking about 'atheistic religion' which to me is an oxymoron. I now think the word religion is overloaded.

Didn't mean any offence to anyone - I have an issue with the idea of palliative doublethink, not religion, theistic or otherwise.

Actually, you can. There is a no dogma religion that exists for this reason (among others) because the value of religion and community of like minded individuals is recognised. However, the danger of religion is also a central tenet. Check out Yoism if you are actually interested.

You're right that you can't just dive head first into a religion. I was raised Catholic, but I don't identify with that at all anymore. I was atheist for a few years, but recently I've been reading Tao Te Ching and I've really taken to it. Religions don't have to be western and you don't have to believe in some omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent creator. It might be worth exploring some "religions" that you've never thought about before. I'm not saying they're going to cure your depression, but they may change how you see the world.

I picked it up in 15 minutes with a DMT trip, but results may vary.

Stoic philosophy can also float in a nice pantheist grey area. I always keep in mind that the most insightful and present religious people I’ve ever met are by no men’s dogmatic and their spiritual exploration is part of their spirituality. The journey, the acceptance of your own fallibility, mindfulness, these are all parts of faith. The word faith works better for me than religion.

1. Man is the son of an infinite source: a son of that Father not by the flesh but by the spirit.

2. Therefore man should serve that source in spirit.

3. The life of all men has a divine origin. It alone is holy.

4. Therefore man should serve that source in the life of all men. Such is the will of the Father.

5. The service of the will of that Father of life gives life.

6. Therefore the gratification of one's own will is not necessary for life.

7. Temporal life is food for the true life.

8. Therefore the true life is independent of time: it is in the present.

9. Time is an illusion of life; life in the past and in the future conceals from men the true life of the present.

10.Therefore man should strive to destroy the illusion of the temporal life of the past and future.

11.True life is life in the present, common to all men and manifesting itself in love.

12. Therefore, he who lives by love in the present, through the common life of all men, unites with the Father, the source and foundation of life.

That's Tolstoy's distillation of Jesus' teachings from "The Gospel in Brief". I have felt the same as you in the past, but when you look closely at some of these premises, they are more philosophical in nature rather than dogmatic. As a scientifically minded person, I have seen the unity of things, like in physics, where it does seem like there are some natural principles laid down. Or like in mathematics, where it seems like eternal truths are discovered, not manufactured. You can have a spiritual interpretation of this, or you can interpret it in whatever way you'd like. What I like about Tolstoy's rendering of Christ is that he basically rejects the stupid personification of God, and claims that Jesus didn't mean it that way to begin with, that the Church actually warped the teachings into a system of control.

I don't even believe Jesus was a real person, but these principles do make sense to me (at least some of it does), maybe they will make sense to you. Or maybe it's just dogma to you.

dude religion isn't just dogma. Its also the collected wisdom of untold generations about how to live and not live your life. The stuff religion recommends, on average, works to make people's lives better for those who practice it.

our society has completely thrown the baby out with the bathwater when we arbitrarily decided that all organized religions are bad and that God doesn't exist.

We've been killing gods since the dawn of times.

The word religion itself originally was all about worshiping a god.

Now everyone can define "God" how they want and follow whatever the scriptures advise, but let's not fool ourselves here, it's always been about power / control.

> The word religion itself originally was all about worshiping a god.

Not really, it was specifically about life under monastic vows (which, where it was coined, involved worship of the Christian God, but that wasn't the feature “religion” referred to, but instead the life bound by vows.)

In fact, the Catholic Church still used the adjective and noin “religious” in that sense, while it uses “religion” in the newer modern sense; a monk or nun is a “religious", a cleric in an order is a member of the “religious clergy” while those outside of an order are members of the “secular clergy”.

Yeah but if you dig deeper [0], original latin word : "respect for what is sacred, reverence for the gods; conscientiousness, sense of right, moral obligation; fear of the gods; divine service, religious observance; a religion, a faith, a mode of worship, cult; sanctity, holiness"

https://www.etymonline.com/word/religion

Have you considered "religion" as "that which gives meaning in life" rather than "the supernatural"?

I don't know why you were downvoted, this is right on the money. There's a reason we've all heard the phrase "crisis of meaning."

I’ve agreed with this more and more as I get older. It wouldn’t surprise me if this correlation was pretty much universal.

It reminds me of using cheat codes in old video games. When you play normally, you’re chasing an objective that can take you a substantial amount of hours to achieve. But once you activate god mode and unlimited resources, the interest/enjoyment lasts about 15 minutes, and then the game feels pointless to play.

Without a higher purpose, then what is there? Personally, I don’t think I could ever be persuaded by or force myself to subscribe to to any religion. The highest goal I’ve given myself is to create a great family and teach my future children as best I can. I find it easier to ignore the question of “But why?” a little easier with this goal in mind than others.

> He had received an offer at a start-up, and he would have loved to take it, but it paid half as much, and he felt locked into a lifestyle that made this pay cut impossible. “My wife laughed when I told her about it,” he said.

It sounds like part of the problem is his family (or at least with his wife)...

You could also simply read excellent literature. That’s a more effective strategy to unpack and comprehend the human experience, with the added benefit of not incorporating tall tales of dubious veracity.

My take was that the author's life only revolved around working, trying to maintain a set income level, and therefore did not have time to explore more interesting ventures.

beware of journalism masquerading as statistical analysis. This is useful as an interesting and entertaining serioes of anecdotes, not as a guide to what is actually taking place.

I have individual faith and it's arisen out of a general respect for nature and acceptance of existential philosophical crises but... I'm never setting foot in a church. Organized religion in America is a toxic and terrible institution.

When I was growing up my parents were friends with a couple that had moved up from Georgia, as I grew older I learned that they have moved there after the father had been the pastor of a church and, when their daughter was born with down's syndrome. Due to the birth he had taken a sabbatical from preaching to raise his daughter, and while they were absent they became ostracized by the community. They were given the southern shame treatment and cut off from friends until they gave in and just moved up to New England.

While they were being shamed by their neighbors everything else carried on as normal, those neighbors went to church and prayed with everyone else and I outright reject any institution that supports that kind of behavior.

Organized religion is responsible to so many ills in modern society.

Just curious, but how do you know that the church they prayed at supports the behaviour of their neighbours?

It just strikes me as odd logic, like saying that because a thief goes to church to pray, that church must condone thievery.

Because the church was the community and the community shunned them as a group. Churches and organized religions lead to group think and in this case that group think was directed toward a deeply hateful purpose.

I have my own personal issues with religions involvement in politics on the modern stage, as well as the general concept of a prosperity gospel and the ills it forces on those who already have so little but what happened to that family is deeply disappointing and stabs at the core of me.

> Religion instills this virtue and gives framework of how our actions on earth and our ability to reason and create is an imitation of "god" aka creation of existence.

Isn't USA more religious than other more happy countries? Is not possible that actually religion and other external expectations are making Americans miserable?

If any, there is a correlation between religious countries and unhappiness.

Can you elaborate more on why do you think that religion is the solution and not the real problem?

Really? I read long time ago, not at the country level, but that religious individuals were more happy.

Edit: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/religion-happy-athe...

I think it is a leap to say that duty and/or religion are the only logical cures for the existential ills of a miserable person stuck on a meaningless treadmill.

I started writing fiction in my own time and it has done wonders for my mental health and existential outlook. I do it for myself alone, and I'm not sorry for that; I certainly won't be made to feel guilty about it.

I'm sure what I'm doing is just one of many roads people could take out of their existential doldrums. Religion is one of those roads, I have no doubt.

America is already incredibly religious and the rich/wealthy are no exception. What exactly makes you think that these miserable people are not religious? Because it seems like you're extrapolating miserable = lack of religion, which seems like a nonsensical connection.

Religion has nothing to do with this unless you decide to No True Scotsman and claim that they aren't actually religious. The issue is that they're chasing a lifestyle of endless consumption where at a certain point consumption doesn't actually add anything to your life. Better houses, more cars, wealthier friends, eventually you hit a point where your capital only marginally affects your life until you hop into the hyper-wealthy category. At that point you can start using capital to influence policy but that still relies on personal conviction.

I think OP means religion in the framing context of spiritual belief in a moral philosophy, less in which flavor of the god of Moses you want to throw your sword behind.

Consumerism is, in large part, a religion. Its just, as you describe, a really shitty one. Capitalism for the capitalists is a religion. Totalitarianism for the dictator is a religion. I'd bet a lot of the animators and artists working at Disney and Pixar treat their business model and the company proper as a religion - the experience, the intent, the purpose behind what they do. For the shareholders its just to make gross amounts of money by owning all culture, but for those in the trenches giving their blood they probably feel like they are creating joy and that is a valuable pursuit.

Same for those working at Space X or Tesla or probably even Google and Apple. Most of the employees at those companies drink the kool-aid and have faith.

In those regards, anyone who is just existing, or anyone without faith - and it need not be more complicated than just faith in humanity or the potential for good in people or the promise of the future - is living a hollow, pointless life. And I'd buy that argument.

I think you're very close to right, but not quite. I think what we actually need is something that fills the role religion used to fit into, but that is compatible with the modern world. Religions have too many supernatural elements that attempted to explain the world before we actually had the tools to find real answers. People see that dissonance, and a lot of the social control imposed by religion, become distrustful, and "throw out the baby with the bathwater". It's unfortunate because they then lose a lot of the wonderful underlying messages and meaning religion can give to life.

I think a lot of people feel that gap, and that's why you see a lot of the flimsy "spirituality" that is essentially just feel-good notions cobbled together. Eliade talked about this in The sacred and the profane: The nature of religion. People want meaning beyond pleasing themselves, they've just completely lost it in the face of a culture advocating self interest and consumption, and increasing secularism.

The happiest people I know aren't religious, but they have strong personal philosophies born out of healthy relationships and education. We don't need religion, we just need a healthier culture.

Many commentators in this sub-thread mention that they can't accept the dogmas of a religion, despite acknowledging community and other benefits. For some, the Unitarian Universalist Church may be a good middle-ground:

https://www.uua.org/find

Individual congregations vary widely, so finding one near you that fits best may take a few months/weekends.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism

So there are a few things to unpack here.

Some questioned how the guy couldn't live on 500-600k. There is some foundation for this. People do tend to spend up to their means. It can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking you "need" that $5m house, $150k/year in private schools, save up $1m/child to pay for 4+ years at an Ivy League school and so on when hardly any of that is true and trying to make it true is really what's making you miserable.

Fact is, if you'd be much happier in your job this will reflect on your family life and your children's lives much more than being able to go to Yale with no debt ever will.

The second thing is though, depending your career, you have to realize that you won't be earning $1m+ a year for 30-40 years. This isn't even necessarily about early retirement either. Think of pro athletes. Your earning window may be very small. You may also have to factor in luck. If you're a corporate lawyer, for example, you may not make it to partner or your firm may go under and that was really your one shot.

So having worked for now two big tech companies, I see these kinds of complaints about not being happy or not being paid enough or the like primarily from people who live in the Bay Area who have decided they need a 5 bedroom house in Palo Alto and all the aforementioned education expenses.

The fact of the matter is that the Bay Area is (IMHO) a pretty terrible place to live. The way I like to put it is people choice to live in the Bay Area to work for company X. Everywhere else pretty much they're working for company X because they live in city Y. The Bay Area probably has a high number of temporary residents. I've met more than a few people in tech who intend to "move home" in N years (where N is typically <7). To be fair, NYC probably has a fairly high number of temporary residents too (although my guess is less than the Bay Area).

Lastly, this article was written about MBAs. Honestly, if corporate politics isn't your thing it seems like they've picked the wrong career track. Or they've done it for the money and don't really enjoy it and that's a pretty stupid reason to do anything. I know some of my worst decisions have been made "because money".

I have a lot of friends who originally went into finance in college to "save up" and then pursue their dreams. But once they started living the good life, things changed.

Before you know it, they have a gf/wife who expects the best. An expensive apartment in NYC with a great view they don't have the time to enjoy. And a job that's really a cage because they are addicted to the pay and they know if they leave, they won't be able to make the same amount of money.

It seems the longer you're in the system, the harder it is to leave and be willing to let go of that 5th avenue penthouse with stunning views and the "girlfriend who is hotter than the wildest dreams" or "dream artist boyfriend about to make his break". Sad but true

I think a lot of people tend to see the issue from a lower-middle class perspective (economically speaking), this makes it very difficult to understand some of the different issues that can occur at that level. It is similar to someone living in a less developed nation looking at the things most people in the developed world sees as a necessity.

People make trade-offs, in some cases the perceived cost of making less money is: * Later retirement * Longer commute * Smaller house * Lower quality of life for the kids (no/limited private school, extracurricular, etc) * Limited network (which can mean power) * Decreased prestige in society (yes, society still see money as prestige) * Lower quality vacation * Less 'mating' options * Ability to provide to extend family & friends * Exchanging a stable income

People are afraid of change, "what if the lower wage means losing my wife?" "what if I realize that my new job wasn't what I hyped it to be and I can't get back to what I used to do?" The more you have (money in this case), the more you stand to lose.

Statistics about income not making people happy are common. I wonder how wealth/savings affects it. If the $1.2 million worker hadn't inflated his lifestyle, he'd be free to take any job he wanted, or even perform his own job the way he thought best, safe in the knowledge that he would be financially fine if let go.

It seems that a lot of people who reach high incomes never maintain slack in their lives. As much as possible I've tried to keep expenses lower as my income grew. And to watch in advance what the big possible causes of such lifestyle inflation are: expensive real estate, expensive car, private school, large vacations or purchases made on debt with no plan to fund them, etc

The janitor study cited here is interesting, but I wonder if they controlled for disposition. Cheery people may simply be good at finding meaning in what they do, no matter what they do. And the opposite.

For instance, the fund manager could think "if I do my job well, I am allocating capital well and helping companies succeed and helping the economy grow faster than it otherwise would." I am sure that some content fund managers do think that. But is it merely dispositional, in the same way that not keeping your expenses low may be dispositional?

Most things I have read previously showed that more money generally only makes people happier up to a certain point, somewhere around $80K. At this level it is possible (in most places) to not live paycheck to paycheck and have some savings and financial security. Above this level, nothing really changes except how expensive our things are.

Find meaning in your hobby or in your volunteering or your exploration of nature, not your work or your income bracket.

Yeah that's what I'm referencing. I'm just wondering if there'd be any difference if they measured wealth/surplus income. Like, is someone with a $40,000/year lifestyle happier with $150,000 salary than $80,000?

If you have that kind of surplus you experience a great freedom. You can seek a better job, you can retire early, etc

The article seems to be omitting an important piece of data: Are people who make more money less happy/equally happy/more happy than people who make less?

It implies by its framing that they're less happy, but that's not actually supported by any actual data in the piece (though to be fair, on cursory googling I wasn't able to find any evidence one way or another).

> Are people who make more money less happy/equally happy/more happy than people who make less?

This is already known though. Its a curve. People who live in poverty (local standards) are unhappy, and happiness increases a lot till they have more breathing space. I'm not sure what exactly is the magic border where this doesn't count anymore but say it is 60k a year (in USA, which is a bit odd because living expenses vary a lot but hear me out). After that ceiling, the happiness does not increase much anymore.

Agreed. This is a glorified op-ed piece / human interest story. It's not proper objective journalism.

I mean, given all the complaints and struggles we read of at other class levels the headline could be: The Elite - Miserable and in Fear, Just Like the Rest of Us.

And it's fear that drives greed. I mean, when you can't go from $1M to $500K that's fear of losing what you have; just like the rest of us.

There is a link between money to happiness according to studies. The trick is that it stops after you have enough. Basically its terrible being poor, that will effect you happiness in a negative way. Once you have enough you are happier. But even more doesn't effect it that much.

These things are hard to measure.

I think it goes like this: You make $X. You'd like more, you see there are things that you could do with more money, and so you're kind of unhappy. But you don't get your hopes up for those things, because you only make $X, and there's no point.

Now you make $(X + Y). Now some of those things become possible that you didn't dare let yourself dream about before. The problem is, you gained $Y in income, but the amount of things that became possible is 10 * $Y. You could do any one of the things that became possible, but you can't do all of them. So now they're realistic dreams, but you still can't do (most of) them.

For many people, this makes them less happy then they were, because the gap between dreams and reality got wider, even though they actually can do at least one thing more than they could before.

> Are people who make more money less happy/equally happy/more happy than people who make less?

This has been studied comprehensively over the years, that the results seem very clear: there is an ideal income level in terms of happiness. If you earn below or above that, you're probably sacrificing happiness.

The ideal income level depends on cost of living, but on average, in the US, that income level seems to be a bit north of $100,000/yr.

I saw right around $200k in then current dollars around 1990ish, and you weren't sacrificing above that, on average, it's just that increasing income above that point had no further correlation with happiness/satisfaction measures.

Per www.usinflationcalculator.com, that would be ~$385k in today's dollars.

$200k for a happier life, and more realistically $385k, make a lot more sense to me than the $70k that I saw floating around a few years ago.

The more you make, the better you can handle the 3 versions of yourself. The debt from the past, Food, clothes, shelter, and fun in the present, and savings for the future.

When I rented a cheap single bedroom and made 70k in the midwest I was living a "better life" than I do now making much more, saving much less due to a kid, house, safer (but modest) car, more insurance(s), etc.

Sneak attack lifestyle inflation!

> Are people who make more money less happy/equally happy/more happy than people who make less?

Are they happier snorting five grams of coke a week vs 1 gram? vs a guy rationing a six pack over a week?

I don't think there's any known objective way to measure happiness.

True in general, but high stress is correlated with un-happiness, and can be objectively measured based on blood cortisol levels (at least for people with normal endocrine systems).

Good point, but obviously this would be difficult to gather for a large scale study of correlations between income and happiness. If someone's done it, I'd be curious to see the results.

Bullshit Jobs, a 2018 book by David Graeber, discusses this phenomenon pretty extensively and calls for more research. His rudimentary theory is that people who aren't contributing to society know that they aren't, and it makes them miserable. People have an inherent desire to change the world around them, and most professional jobs are actually mostly nonsense. This results in professionals being depressed and feeling hopeless.

There was one study the book cited, "Taxation and the Allocation of Talent", which was particularly interesting. As it's abstract says: "Estimates from the literature suggest that high-paying professions have negative externalities, whereas low-paying professions have positive externalities."[1]

As a successful lawyer who quit that profession and became a software engineer, writer, and startup founder, all of this really resonates with me.

The book is an outgrowth of a 2013 essay that got re-printed 100s of times and spurred some polling.[2] I recommend at least reading the essay. It has a lot of implications for economics, business management, and various other fields.

[1]https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/693393

[2] "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant" http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

This article is like a watery, inoffensive version of Graeber for the author and his MBA classmates in the managerial class.

> We want to feel that we’re making the world better, even if it’s as small a matter as helping a shopper find the right product at the grocery store.

My question for HN is do you feel that the content you are working on makes a difference in your career satisfaction? Or do you just need to know that _someone_ out there is being benefited?

Is it just as fulfilling to work on a video game that flops (but maybe a few people still enjoy it) as it is to work on Fortnite where your code changes are used by millions?

Is it more satisfying to work on consumer facing iPhone apps like Apple Fitness where you are enabling millions of people to be healthier compared to working on a high frequency trading algorithm that makes a few people lots of money?

> My question for HN is do you feel that the content you are working on makes a difference in your career satisfaction?

For me personally, this is the primary thing that affects my career satisfaction. If I don't find the work I'm doing to be meaningful, I will be miserable. There is no amount of money or other perks that can change that.

Speaking personally, the things that give me the greatest satisfaction are those where I feel I've done a good job from a perspective of craft. Even if the code itself doesn't do very much or will never really be seen, I get the greatest contentment from feeling I designed and put it together well. If I worked on a video game that didn't get traction but that I loved, was beautifully built and designed, I think I'd be happier than say, an online poker game.

I'd be lying if I didn't care at all, obviously I'd rather the app be used. There's a special feeling of showing something to someone completely outside tech, saying "I built this" and having them "get" it. Hence why I think consumer apps are also more satisfying than a high frequency trading algo.

EDIT: minor grammar/missing words

Good question.

In my personal opinion it does. Without getting into specifics, I've been working recently on a project in which I will be proud of having had a large part to play. It will [potentially] indirectly reach hundreds of thousands to million(s) of people, depending. It is also in a field I have long believed in. I won't be working with it, or the field forever, but I am glad to have done so.

There have been roles I've turned down that, while they may have provided value of some kind to somebody somewhere— I would personally find it rather empty. I've done those projects before. They're ephemeral (not that everything isn't, but I'm not being so extensive in scope...). Those things can depend on the nature of the work, or the people you meet in the process. Sometimes it can work out well, other times it can feel like oblivion for a time.

Personally it's satisfying when customers thank you for your product. If you're looking to make a difference only by thinking, then you need to study the industry you are in and its purpose in society. Is high frequency trading really about the allocation of resources in the economy ? Who wins, who loses, and why ?

Definitely where it helps more people. If I have to make tough choices in order to get there, so be it.

As it stands, I work in online advertising by choice and I love it. It's pretty meaningful to me.

It's the hard choices that really attract me: defence, advertising and privacy, pharma, companies like Monsanto. Hated but worthwhile. That's what I like.

At least in my country (Argentina) I think that at a personal level (indoor) we are all OK, the problem is at a social level (outdoor).

I can think of several projects that would make me happy and 100% sure that they would improve my community as well. But I don't have time or wealth or mechanisms to deal with it. We are lacking community level organization, because it is really hard to do it well, without messing with corruption or ineptitude.

Interesting, what projects for example and how can you be so sure people would be interested ?

I tend to think that one kinda needs to exchange (i.e. not just give everything away) with others in order for the "improvements" one is looking for gets validated / get real time feedback.

As a clear example, We lack green areas in our cities by any measure. That's something that already have been done in many places and have 100% positive impact. You don't really need to innovate, just copy what have worked in other places.

I'd just like to add a thought - maybe happiness isn't all it's cracked up to be? I mean sure, we should strive to achieve a certain standard of living for everyone. But once you get to a certain point of "happiness", maybe it's the happiness itself which makes you miserable?

> I find I am at my best when things are not going perfectly and I am backed against a corner.

I would suggest that such a situation makes you happy. Happiness does not imply the lack of struggle or difficulty. In fact, I think most people need struggle and difficulty in the mix in order to be happy.

That's fair and I do not disagree. But put another way - there is a large set of emotions out there of which happy is just a single member. But for some reason it is put on this pedestal as the holy grail. Maybe it's not? But I am getting pretty OT from the article so I apologize.

I agree. I think that generally when people are using the term "happy", they really mean "lack of misery".

I think a better term in the context of this discussion is "satisfaction" over "happiness".

It's fleeting. What makes you happy today might feel miserable tomorrow. You need to recognize this and be willing to change.

It's hard. Life is hard.

> What makes you happy today might feel miserable tomorrow.

Not to get too philosophical, but I honestly don't think that things make people happy or unhappy. Happiness appears to be a choice. I say this based on my observation that I've known people who've lived in objectively awful circumstance, but were genuinely happy -- and I've known people who've lived in ideal circumstances, but were miserable.

That's fair, but I also think there's a lot to consider with various brain chemistry. I don't think anyone can just thrust themselves into it if they're in objectively bad scenarios.

I don't have much sympathy for someone who earns 1.2 million a year. No matter how bad it is, all you have to do is get your spending down to an absolute minimum and save up for 2 years, then you'll have over 1 million in the bank. Then move out to a nice midwestern town and live happily ever after.

I know it's really rough leaving all your friends and family and everything you know, but it's not as rough as being poor/homeless your entire life.

The meaning of life is to live (not work). The meaning of work is to make money. Money lets you live.

Not sure why you felt you needed to make a throwaway to post this. Most sane people should agree with your sentiment.

> Then move out to a nice midwestern town and live happily ever after.

That would be hell to most living in the 1%

But he's miserable in his current life, too. Maybe the problem is him, not his circumstances?

As long as he keeps wanting what he wants and doing what he's been doing, he's going to keep getting what he's been getting.

The richest people I know are definitely also some of the most miserable.

We've been sold a story that careers are a path to fulfillment, self actualization and empowerment. When in reality they are a soul sucking, near pointless burden that enriches investors, founders, execs and few others.

I love what I do for a living and I make a very healthy amount doing it. That being said, I see stay at home parents and think they are the people actually living life to the fullest. It's extremely difficult being a parent but the rewards trump all the accolades and money in the world (imo).

I think the 20th century screwed up our value system via marketing and mass media. People lost sight of where true fulfillment comes from and lost the ability to think in the long term and work hard to get there. Focusing on your career so you can travel internationally and buy mid-century modern furniture for your Brooklyn 1bd is pure hedonism and I think people are starting to wake up to that fact.

It's worth watching the documentary The Century of the Self to see how some of this played out and was orchestrated by the media and marketers. It's very interesting and really shows you how developments in psychology and technology lead to corporations triggering hedonistic instincts to sell more product. It's a great watch:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self

Century of the Self was a mind-blowing tour de force. Highly recommend. Completely transformed my views on capitalism and consumerism.

I think there was a Blind post a few weeks ago where 40% said they were depressed despite most making $300k-$600k/year

I think this is a quintessentially American slash Protestant-work-ethicy sentence. Why is anyone surprised that people who work so much that they don't have a life, meaningful relationships to other people or a vibrant social circle are depressed?

If you optimize for making lots of money, that's (hopefully? probably?) what you will achieve. But it's very misguided to think that having a lot of money is how you become happy. If you want to be happy, make time for your friends, family, people important to you, and spend time on yourself and what you like doing. It's not complicated.

The thing is I don’t think a lot of these people actually work that much. If you’re in a mid level engineering role at a FAANG you’re not usually working 50-60+ hour weeks. You’re actually probably underutilized and working on uninteresting tasks.

> But it's very misguided to think that having a lot of money is how you become happy.

still applies

Or stress at work maybe thats a big cause of depression

... pay no attention to the post-enlightenment free-market liberal materialist bias behind the curtain

Money can't buy happiness. It can only rent it.

I've always felt the key is to focus on how much you spend not on how much you make. I want to make a lot of money, but I'm always careful to never spend too much. It's consumption that ruins things.

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.

In terms of accumulating wealth, this is spot on. A very wealthy man once told me his secret to getting wealthy. He said the key isn't how much money you're taking in, it's how much money you're keeping.

He also gave me a pain-free method of accumulating money that I've followed my whole life. His point was that no matter how much or how little you are earning, you can do with 10% less without it dramatically affecting your lifestyle. So every time any money comes into your hands, immediately take 10% of it and stash it somewhere where you'll keep your grubby paws off of it.

It's Blind. 90% wankage and 10% community wankage.

TC or GTFO. It's a joke..... That part of Blind is really self centered and annoying.

The kinds of jobs that pay so much tend to not be very satisfying and come with high levels of stress. It's no wonder that the end result is depression.

Someone I know makes money at this level and the thing he worries about is that he doesn't have much control over it and if his marriage ends while he's still working, he's going to be on the hook for maintaining that lifestyle whether he wants to or not.

It's not what you make, it's how you make it, and whether it's ever really yours.

The trick is to not fall into the trap of spending all the money you're making. Make a budget of how much you spend on rent, bills, and fun things, and don't bump it up each time you get a raise or a new job. Eventually, you'll find you're saving a lot of money. That gives you freedom and flexibility.

A big problem with lifestyle creep - IMO - is that the environment you're in, will/can influence you a great deal.

If you're a millionaire hanging around with avg. Joe's making $50k a year, then there's really no external forces to influence your habits. Your buddies aren't going to come around with their $300k sports cars, or invite you to their million dollar homes, and you won't be going to diners or clubs, spending thousands of dollars.

The more you see, and hang around those above things, the more normal they become. Peer pressure, even if not intentional, can be quite powerful.

If you're a $1.2MM fund manager / senior banker / law partner / management consultant / etc., then I'm gonna go ahead and assume that you:

A) Live in a very expensive city (NYC as stated in the article)

B) Mostly hang around with peers of your own socio-economic class. (Co-workers / business partners, clients, friends - friends of friends, social activities / clubs, etc.)

C) Are regularly exposed to expensive lifestyle events (expensive client diners, first class business trips, expensive homes, etc.)

All that stuff becomes so normal - it's easy to get sucked in.

"...an underlying sense that their work isn’t worth the grueling effort they’re putting into it."

Just because you've become wealthy doesn't mean that you find meaning in your work. Or, conversely, non-wealthy people can also fall into this syndrome.

There is certainly another population of people who started out and continued doing what they love and in the process became wealthy. It'd be interesting to identify and interview both groups and look for what makes the difference. For example, what about the Harvard MBAs who took control of a struggling company, turned it around and grew the workforce, putting more people to work and winning the allegiance of their customers. I'd guess that group would find much more meaning in that result than the bulk of the hedge fund group.

I think this is probably the biggest reason why people found startups: not money, but to actually work a fulfilling job they find real meaning in. Even if it fails, it's a lot more fun and interesting than being a cog in a machine trying to react to the fickle whims of 3-12 layers of managers.

I sometimes wonder if the problem is that we don't believe in anything in this country. Religion is on the decline, but we as a society haven't replaced it with anything meaningful. Nationalism is a swear word, jobs are performed with no loyalty (not to blame workers, we're treated pretty expendably), marriage is no longer sacred (don't like your partner? Just divorce and move on to the next!)...

What meaning can someone find in such a life? Good times create weak men, and weak men live in existential crisis. Perhaps we need hard times to grant the cure of purpose for our collective depression.

> we don't believe in anything in this country.

I haven't seen any indication that this is true.

What matters more than income is wealth. When you become a high earner especially in cities like NYC and SF, you learn about the power of inter-generational wealth and the opportunities it affords. You see it every day. You become acutely aware about how unfair the world is, and how it will only become increasingly unfair as the truly wealthy entrench their power. Forget about lifestyle creep, if you are self aware parent who wants an easy life for their kids, you start having wealth creep. You don't just want to hit a number where you can retire in a low cost area. You want enough wealth to buy your kids access. Access you didn't have when you were clawing yourself up to a high income and would have made things alot easier. Access that eliminates the need for luck.

Inter-generational wealth could require you to leave behind 10M+ for 2-3 kids. A property each.

For those of you who scoff and say that is ridiculous, you probably don't share the paradigm that the world is unfair and becoming increasingly unfair to overly benefit the wealthy. Or you are fine with letting your kids fight for themselves in this world. I wish I didn't have the above paradigm, but I have seen TOO much and that is the worldview I have.

I was just thinking about this in the bus.

Most of the time, it's not really the fault of politics making us sway one way or another. It's also the routine and the whole we-ve-always-done-things-this-way. Society is not always really competent and organized in a way that brings improvement, but it's not really the fault of anyone, it's just civilization being too rigid by definition. It's a communication problem.

I have little sympathy for someone making $1.2m/year and complaining that they're depressed because of their job. If you hate your job so much on that income, just work for a year or two and leave! At that income there's no reason why he shouldn't have enough saved up to retire in a lower cost of living area (assuming this isn't his first job out of uni and he's not spending like a maniac). If not (or at least if he's not on track), then he's just being financially irresponsible and needs to cut down his expenses. You don't need that $4m penthouse or Lamborghini.

On another note, how does one land these $1.2m/yr jobs? That's over $3k/day, I couldn't even spend that kind of money if I tried.

>> He had received an offer at a start-up, and he would have loved to take it, but it paid half as much, and he felt locked into a lifestyle that made this pay cut impossible. “My wife laughed when I told her about it,” he said.

Sounds like it's the wife that he needs to cut. Or he needs to do a better job of communicating his happiness to her. This is the type of marriage that ends up in divorce.

I just finished re-reading Drive by Daniel Pink. My book notes here: https://parveenkaler.com/posts/drive-daniel-pink

Using Daniel Pink's model, the characters in this story seem to be lacking 1) Mastery 2) Autonomy 3) Purpose in their work.

I grew up on less than $10 per month for all expenses, including food, clothing and shelter. Now I'm worth $2MM+ at age 40 and an executive at Silicon Valley. I also have an Ivy League MBA. Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does solve for basic anxiety that arises when you don't know where your next meal is going to come from. There are things in life that money can't solve for, such as genuine love of a person, mental health, kid's health, family ego clashes.

>> If you spend 12 hours a day doing work you hate, at some point it doesn’t matter what your paycheck says

Bullshit. If someone earns $1.2 million per year, they can retire after 2 or 3 years. They have no right to complain. They're weak.

$1.2 million is the definition of eternal happiness. If you earn that, whatever emotion you feel in your life is called happiness. This emotion which their greedy brains interpret as sadness, my brain would interpret as euphoria.

You're assuming not working/retirement = happiness, which is wrong.

It is pure happiness.

I'm a curious person and I have a pretty intellectually stimulating job right now (so I understand the appeal) but heck; for $1.2 million per year, I would sit and stare at a blank wall every day for 5 years straight. I can even picture myself after finishing a hard day of hardcore wall-staring, I'd go home with a huge smile on my face. It would be like reliving the best day of my life over and over again for 5 years straight.

You kindnof have a point but the problem is wife and kids. You would have to stare all together.

Sounds great. I think we'd do it for $600K each. It would be nice to have a colleague to talk to while doing the wall staring.

> Bullshit. If someone earns $1.2 million per year, they can retire after 2 or 3 years. They have no right to complain. They're weak.

that's the point, lifestyle creep means you hang out only with people that earn that too. it becomes normal, average even. and you can't dare step away

If it costs so much happiness to be around such people, I would stop seeing them because no human relationship could possibly be worth even a tiny fraction of that kind of happiness. That is some serious happiness.

How could a relationship with a person deplete the kind of profound, intrinsic, highly quantifiable joy that this kind of money brings? I can't imagine any kind of relationship which could do that for me.

can you clarify if this is sarcastic?

i actually can’t tell if you’re 1. sarcastic 2. trolling 3. honestly believe this 4. engaging in self deception to rationalize your own behavior

I know this is true because I once worked at a contractor for a really boring (and highly regulated) gambling/lottery corporation earning twice as much as I do now and I was almost twice as happy as I am now (all else being roughly the same). The feeling of security that you get from even that kind of money is amazing so 6 times that amount must be euphoric.

1. There will always be unhappy people regardless of their income. 2. Extreme population density is not for everyone. Just the sheer frequency of daily subconscious eye contact in a megapolis must be extreme by e.g. 50-100 years ago standard. There should be some self-limiting mechanism in human population. Maybe that’s the factor provoking the unhappiness and decline.

> Rather, they had learned from their own setbacks. And often they wound up richer, more powerful and more content than everyone else.

This seems like wish fulfillment to me. Either things change a lot more than I think over 15 years but the so-called "gunners" that I know in their 30's are exceptionally more happy, well adjusted and wealthy than the non-gunners.

I think the struggle to find meaning in jobs is correlated with just how abstract the jobs have become nowadays. Most people don't directly interact with their customers or they don't see any tangible effect of their work. Their work is so specialized and niche that they cannot figure out why the economic machine needs them doing this.

It makes me smile that the janitorial staff at some large hospital can be so satisfied with their job.

I often encounter this “wealth doesn’t make you happy” sentiment... and I find it to be ridiculous. Of course wealth doesn’t make you happy. Poverty however has a tendancy to wreak havoc on the mental health and well being of those who live under its oppression.

Interesting that this article and the one below, about living a good enough life, were posted on the same day:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19218947

Relevant: https://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/14/money-can-buy-happiness-but-...

I think the article dances around the point a bit, with its discussion of the greater satisfaction that comes from meaningful work. The implication is that finance is fundamentally meaningless, and it makes people miserable.

How does the design of that page do anything but detract from the content and the reading experience? The NYTimes has a pretty decent boilerplate article template, they should just stick to it.

This title seems to amply describe most of the people I met while living in the Bay Area - both around the Peninsula (MTV ~ Los Altos) where I lived and in SF.

> The upper echelon is hoarding money and privilege to a degree not seen in decades.

Is this another way of saying they're being offered high salaries and taking them?

On a side note, I thought I stumbled on to Financial Times. This was the first article I read in NY Times in pink canvas.

One of the best nuggets in this article, IMHO.

"There’s no magic salary at which a bad job becomes good."

https://outline.com/hS54Lp

"he felt locked into a lifestyle that made this pay cut impossible"

That's all there is to it.

This just in: "Money doesn't buy happiness"

Is this truly new or even newsworthy information?

Everything is much easier if you decide not to have kids.

if you can control your urges: make the $1.2Mil, live as you're making $150K and do it for x years. After that find a job you love.

If the entire point of your work is to make money, your work is ultimately pointless.

(Not saying making money isn't important, but that it's not good for you if that's the primary goal.)

People lost their spines. If your wife laughs if you want to take a hit in salary, consider a divorce, and so on.

So just imagine their kids...

This kind of thing blows my mind. If I were making that much money I'd work for 5 years and retire.

I sometimes wonder if that's why I don't make that much? Has anyone here done this and retired?

There are online communities and websites based on this idea. They call it FIRE, Financial Independence, Retire Early.

>“I feel like I’m wasting my life,” he told me. “When I die, is anyone going to care that I earned an extra percentage point of return? My work feels totally meaningless.”

Capitalists are realizing the fundamental emptiness of capitalism. It's hard to have a sense of purpose when your entire life is spent making a number on a spreadsheet into a slightly larger number for the benefit of someone even more elite than you.

is it capitalism or the fundamental emptiness of life?

Life isn't fundamentally empty. It's the philosophical underpinnings of profit-worship that make life seem empty.

Life is fundamentally empty. Unless you're religious: you live for a while then you die. Maybe you successfully procreated, and your descendants live until something gets them too.

Eventually climate change, or asteroids or supernova gets everyone left.

I don't see how being temporary means that a thing lacks meaning.

How could anything mean anything when pretty soon (in a cosmological sense) there won't be any such thing as a mind in which meaning could exist?

Well in that case, since the universe itself is ultimately doomed, why not delude ourselves into believing that there is, in fact, meaning in our lives so that the remainder of our life isn't spent in misery?

I submit that the "fake" subjective meaning and some "real" objective meaning are indistinguishable.

And how do you know that the black of our heat death isn't the white of more universes and civilizations than there's ever been before but which we'll never see not that it matters except in an absurdly selfish way? :3

That's what a Nine Inch Nails song taught me once.

(But, given that we don't know what most matter or energy that makes up the Universe is, it feels a little silly to anchor meaning to current cosmological knowledge. Maybe a nice meaning to adopt is to improve that knowledge because we might discover ways to insulate against heat death indefinitely or something. Although you likely won't be doing that at the salaries in the OP.)

> why not delude ourselves into believing that there is, in fact, meaning in our lives so that the remainder of our life isn't spent in misery?

I believe I already stipulated to religious belief as a way out of this quandary.

I contest the use of 'religion' to refer to 'subjective meaning' on the grounds that it doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Things have meaning right now during your existence. I honestly don't see how the impermanence of your existence impacts that.

It lacks objective meaning (that we know of or if that can even exist), but that doesn't stop me from assigning it, and operating on, subjective meaning. In fact, I can't even stop myself from doing that. It's almost as if the brain evolved to run on silly fiat meaning for its survival.

Agree with you here, but how does communism give meaning?

For me, I've grown up in a capitalist society, with parents from a communist one. My sense of meaning in life comes from navigating through this environment (our laws, rules, societies, etc.), and trying to make the most of it (and earn a healthy living) to provide for my family, and make sure that I and everyone I care about have long, healthy, enjoyable lives together.

If we were in a communist society (and not one that's post-scarcity which seems far, far off), I wouldn't be able to do this... and I don't know how you can argue that there's no meaning to the pursuit of a better world for everyone (with small exceptions, creating value is necessary for making money in a capitalistic society), reaping the rewards of that value creation, and making sure that it benefits and protects those I love.

I never said anything about communism, and neither did the GP for that matter, you can blame Jon for bringing that term to the table.

>My sense of meaning in life comes from navigating through this environment (our laws, rules, societies, etc.), and trying to make the most of it (and earn a healthy living) to provide for my family, and make sure that I and everyone I care about have enjoyable lives together.

> If we were in a communist society (and not one that's post-scarcity which seems far, far off), I wouldn't be able to do this

Why not? It's just a different environment, different set of rules, and different challenges. Some people navigated communism well and found meaning, many others did not.

The GP seemed to be using the label of capitalism to apply to sociopathic profit-seeking-for-its-own-sake, as opposed to the loosely defined economic and political model of capitalism. In that sense, what they're saying makes a lot of sense.

> Life is fundamentally empty. Unless you're religious

There are more -isms than those.

In Sapiens, Harari argues ideologies such as capitalism and communism and belief systems such as your company serve the very same purpose: to give life a meaning.

To me, it appears akin to fairytales we tell our children.

Unless we have a diaspora. Believing in the future of humanity is a thing.

Not all higher callings are religious.

Damned right. This guy is on the money. Power to our future.

Nothing lasts forever. Eventually the heat death of the universe will come for humanity, no matter how many solar systems you imagine we might colonize.

I disagree. I am not religious, but I don't see life as fundamentally empty at all. Our mortality isn't relevant to that.

Is that really true?

Meaning can absolutely be found in life, one way cited throughout history across many cultures and religions is directly helping others (charity, teaching, medicine).

It is the false premise that employment in a capitalist system exists to provide meaning or value through work, that work is noble or carries some implicit moral weight or dignity of purpose.

Work exists to allow you to enrich the capital ownership class, of which you are likely not a part (if you were, you wouldn't need to work to eat.) That's it.

If you want to find more, look elsewhere.

And yet, when I look around me I see a bunch of older colleagues, some of them older than 65, who rode the same wave from smallish to a pretty big company. Like me, they could afford to not work anymore, but they keep on working anyway.

They have exactly was the article describes as essential features for job happiness: respect from people they respect, working on something that make the world a (little) bit better for others, and lots of trust and autonomy within the company.

I don't really care about heavy claims like moral weight or dignity of purpose. But what I do know is that it provides immense amount of satisfaction that I wouldn't want to do without.

You and your colleagues are lucky and privileged to be able to find satisfaction in work, but that's still orthogonal to the purpose of work. Enjoying one's job is a coincidence, not an expected result.

You initially explicitly mentioning capitalism as a system where work as a way of providing meaning is a false premise.

Do you have any systems in mind where work exists to provide meaning?

I have the impression that you are arguing as work as a way of finding purpose in general.

And at that point, the whole discussion becomes kind of pointless.

> Even though, in theory, the investments he makes each day help fund pensions — and thus the lives of retirees — it’s pretty hard to see that altruism from his window office in a Manhattan skyscraper. “It’s just numbers on a screen to me,” he told me. “I’ve never met a retiree who enjoyed a vacation because of what I do. It’s so theoretical it hardly seems real.”

Helping other people is meaningful. When the work is alienated from the people you're helping is when a job feels empty. It seems particularly common in high-paying jobs - or perhaps certain jobs are high-paying precisely because they're so alienating.

If this is your thesis you’ll have to explain how e.g. Communism totally did not have this problem.

I don't see how that follows but I'll answer anyway. One main difference is that the economic gains in a hypothetical alternate economic system could be distributed to you, your peers, and the needy in a more humane fashion instead of the majority of the gains concentrating to the elite.

What is this hypothetical system like, and how is it different from the ones that have been tried, whose proponents would describe in a way similar to what you just said, but have been shown to have the same emptiness problem you attribute to capitalism (as well as some others, like mass murder and economic collapse)?

No he doesn't. Invoking that Communism has problems does not magic away the problems that Capitalism currently has. The two don't bear any relationship.

It does in this case because it's the same problem in both systems.

He ascribed a problem to capitalism that is also a well-known problem of non-capitalism. The same thing happens in both places (actually worse under communism), so the blame is clearly misplaced.

False dichotomy much? The world isn't divided into some platonic form of "communism" and "capitalism." These are just labels we attach to a whole bunch of social and economic dynamics.

Names for colors or kinds of automobile are also just labels we attach to whole spectra of related things, but the words still have meaning and we are able to use them productively.

Responding to a comment like “this red color is agitating” with “you don’t get to complain about red unless you accept all the ways that yellow is bad” isn’t using terms productively.

To say that capitalism is empty doesn't necessarily mean you are anti-capitalist. E.g. many people find their job fundamentally empty, and they find meaning elsewhere, for example in their family. But they don't quit their job- it enables them to enjoy their family. Similarly, you can view capitalism as a fundamentally empty, but extremely useful system that enables us to find meaning elsewhere.

Why? He never said anything at all about Communism or any other ideology being superior in particular. Looks a bit like you're itching for a fight that no one is actually giving to you.

Showing that system X has characteristic Y in no way requires showing that systems P, Q, R, S do not have characteristic Y. They may or may not.

I exist in a capitalist economy. I make a number on a spreadsheet a bit larger and then I go home and live a meaningful life using, in part, the money I've earned doing so. I'd be hard-pressed to do that under any other economic system that's ever been tried.

> I exist in a capitalist economy.

If you live in the modern developed world, you probably live in a mixed market economy that has incorporated many structures advocated by socialist critics of capitalism (in many places some straight out the Communist Manifesto), rather than an actually capitalist system.

And it's quite likely that, for those outside of the bourgeoisie—and even much of the petit bourgeoisie, as much as many critics of capitalism see them as class enemies—your ability to have a meaningful life outside of doing what is necessary to maintain your condition in the economic system is a direct result of the ways in which you do not live in a capitalist society.

OK, fine, I don't mind you negating my claim as long as you agree it also negates minikites's!

There's nothing inherent to capitalism that requires individuals to constantly be attempting to maximize wealth. And there are ways for a society to discourage such behavior, such as a very high tax rate on income over a certain amount (perhaps 90% on income over $1 million). That would change behavior after a certain point, without throwing out all of the optimizing benefits of capitalism in general.

Yes, the right wing will cry "socialism!", but that's simply not true. Capitalism is still the mechanism that decides winners and losers—there's just less incentive to "win" above a certain amount. At worst (if one considers capitalism as the end goal rather than the means to drive production), it's a hybrid of some sort.

So just now the NYTimes is finding out that money can't outright buy happiness?

It can most certainly buy happiness if money was the only issues. Many other issues are usually introduced such as being a workaholic and making yourself miserable, love issues, lack of wholesome friendships, etc.

"Money can buy happiness if money could buy happiness"

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