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Comment by sushisource | Hacker News Reader

It's crazy to me that more people don't realize this. You're working crazy hours, have no meaningful hobbies or life outside of work... and for what? No one's going to remember that you built some nice feature in some bit of software in 100 years, or even 20. Enjoy your life, enjoy people and community and activities. You can still get paid incredibly well as an engineer, more than enough to live comfortably, and work a normal 40 hour week (or less).

People prioritize weird shit.

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It depends on how many years you do it, and how early. It's quite the trade in your 20s: Think of the freedom and peace of mine an extra couple of million in the stock market can give you. Then you slow down, celebrate, and know that you can let that money make more money on interest than you do from work. Reach the mid 40s? The pile has grown than enough to retire very comfortably.

The trick is that you have to know when to stop. I have a friend who ended up traveling with an oxygen machine, because she worked 80+ hour weeks for one too many months, and ignored a pneumonia.

Gotta stop gambling *before* you lose.

I've been reading books about the history of computing, stuff like "The Soul of a New Machine", "Showstopper!" and "Revolution in the Valley" -- all these people working massive unpaid overtime. I guess some of them got stock options. Part of me wishes that I could care as much.

If you're married/kids it usually happens by 35. If you reach 'enlightenment' after that you can't cut back easily (wife and kids accustomed,even maybe feel entitled to expensive private school etc etc), and if you do your family will often simply divorce you then the judge will impute your income for CS and alimony at the high amount you made before. If you scale back, they put you in a jail cell, take away your licenses, your property, and revoke your passport.

Not to judge too much, but that sounds more like the outcome of a crappy relationship rather than a universal experience.

Not exactly related, but ... I will admit, I'm occasionally mind-boggled by family court. Male rape victims have been made to pay child support because its not the child's fault that his mother was a criminal.[1][2]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermesmann_v._Seyer 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_fatherhood#United_State...

Child support is nearly universally enforced at least on paper. The incentive is to divorce quickly after a high earner scales back to lock in the high imputed income. You see sky high divorces in recently unemployed persons as spouses scramble to lock in CS and alimony against their recent earnings.

These are the acts of calculated actors getting in on the take as incomes reduce, to lock in the income stream.

Important if true. What is your evidence?

Studies such as this for example show highly elevated divorce risk after forms of layoff or termination.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11150-020-09506-x

Wouldn’t that most likely be due to the increased stress on the relationship of reduced income?

I think it might be a bit of a post-scarcity thing. A bit like how we don't cope well with the easy availability of lots of macronutrient-dense foods that exists in many developing nations, and our physical health may be suffering for it.

Similarly, once upon a time people needed to work whenever work was available so that they could secure the resources they'd need for times when it wasn't. That may still be the case in some industries. But in tech it's not like that. If anything it's the opposite. Extra work tends to just create even more extra work, which won't necessarily be compensated because you're salaried. Sure, you might get a raise or promotion, but that's not guaranteed. The reward mechanism uses gachapon mechanics. Which works out great for the company's owners in exactly the same way that loot crates are more profitable than more honest forms of game design. Whenever I see people sharing anecdotes of that one acquaintance of theirs who was a tech workaholic and was handsomely rewarded for all that extra work, it puts me in mind of a billboard for my state's lottery that says, "Only players win." Or the motivational dreck that MLM companies like Herbalife feed to their members. People seem to have trouble recognizing a scam when there are some token people for whom it actually worked out well.

And no, it's not healthy. The High Price of Materialism by Tim Kasser is about 20, 25 years old now, but summarizes a lot of the research on this sort of thing as of that time. Long story short, you get caught up in chasing the dragon.

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