Because I'm not nearly as good at any hobbies as much as I'm good at my job and being good at something is what gives me day-to-day satisfaction. Having a high wage but not enough stored wealth to feel invincible against an increasingly uncertain future, I'm spending more time feeling good about work than finding and investing in a hobby that'll make me truly happy.
Because I know what it means to work a 40hour shitty job. And I mean shitty. As in fill paint cans and inhale paint fumes all week shitty. I mean crawl into a conveyor belt that's stuck, use a torch to heat it up and a sledgehammer to straighten it shitty.<p>That I'm now able to what I do and earn what I earn, to me, is like a miracle and I enjoy every minute of it.
Wages for professionals, such as law, medicine, tech, finance, consulting, etc., have really ballooned over the past decade, since 2008 especially, even after accounting for student loan debt and inflation. This makes working long hours more attractive, as the financial payoff is so great both in terms of wages but also by investing one's income in rapidly appreciating assets such as stocks and real estate (the post-2009 bull market is the biggest and longest ever). Consequently, there are many people on Reddit and Hacker News on popular subs such as /r/personalfinance , r/investing, /r/financialindependence, /r/wallstreetbets (a lot of gambling, yes, but also many rich people who have 6-figures to play with) and /r/fatfire who have amassed considerable wealth by late 20 or 30s. Putting in long hours in your 20s and 30s to have a massive nest egg that will last you the rest of your life by your 40s seems like a good trade-off.
Why do you suppose that people don't enjoy working 70 hours a week?
My dad regularly worked 70 hour weeks - had multiple careers doctor/businessman/public figure.
But he had a ton of help - manager, personal assistant, chauffeur. Everything on the home front was outsourced.
He loved it. But he had a lot of control.<p>Most people, I observe who burn out, do because of other reasons - work politics, poor health and ultimately not feeling in control of their lives.
Not everyone is built to work like that, but some are. And they can sustain it for long periods of time.
It's as if work is just toiling, but in reality it is not. Some people may just love meeting people and calling the shot. Some people may just love reading papers and tweaking and building systems. Some people may just love deriving equations and writing papers and giving talks. They call such activities work, but they enjoy doing them.<p>What matters is not hours but choice: can one choose to use her time at her own will? If she can, then I don't see any issue at all.
Because the prize for a pie eating contest is more pie.<p><a href="https://workingwithmckinsey.blogspot.com/2013/03/McKinsey-pie-eating-contest.html" rel="nofollow">https://workingwithmckinsey.blogspot.com/2013/03/McKinsey-pi...</a>
Based on people I know, either (1) they enjoy it and don't have anything else they'd rather do. This is common among business owners. Or (2) they also spend a lot of money and no other job is going to pay them remotely close to what they need to earn to continue spending the way they do. This is more common in industries like law and finance.
The headline itself is an example of a question that answers itself.<p>Another example would be "if you've saved up a lot of money, why don't you spend more?" Well because I saved it by not spending too much.<p>And in this case, "success" <i>is</i> working long hours, because of what these workers believe. Success is the appearance of working hard, and having put the effort in.<p>The article doesn't really address income/spending, though. Are they making excellent money because of working so hard? What do they do with it? If they spend most of it, they <i>have</i> to keep earning to sustain their lifestyle.<p>Of course, some people spend little, work hard, earn a lot, and perhaps never reach "enough", where they can work less, spend a bit more, and actually enjoy the fruit of their labor.
Working 70hrs a week is terrible, crushing it 70hrs a week is never enough. (shlinkedin has ruined me), but sincerely, work is inversely proportional to leverage, which implies someone working that hard doesn't have a lot of leverage. If you don't have leverage, you aren't managing well, and if you aren't managing well, that's a problem worth solving.<p>This seems abstract and businessy, but understanding what people mean when they use the term "leverage," in its myriad forms is a very useful concept to master.
"Work exceptionally long hours when you need to or want to, but do so consciously, for specified time periods, and to achieve specific goals. Don’t let it become a habit because you have forgotten how to work or live any other way." -- Having constraints on your time should help you better prioritize and utilize your energy levels during the day to boost your productivity.
There’s a high associated with intense work that you only get when around other people working hard.<p>There’s a reason why the strongest bounds are formed under pressure.<p>Pity that you can’t get <i>that</i> high and peace at the same time.
"J'fais dla poudre, pour travailler plus, pour faire plus d'argent, pour faire plus de poudre, pour travailler plus, pour faire plus d'argent..."<p>Classic Punk song from Vulgaires Machins (Québec band), translates to: "I do coke, to work more, to make more money, to do more coke, to work more, to make more money..."
I have, since the beginning of my career, refuses to work for anyone that expects more than 40 hours per week of me. I ask it as part of my interview. I'm not against the occasional crunch, or traveling for work on occasion. Those are fine. But if an employer expects more than 40 hours per week consistently, I will simply not work for that company.<p>And so far, I have remained upwardly mobile, and more importantly, happy with the work that I do and satisfied with the amount of time I am afforded for friends, family, and hobbies.<p>Everyone searching for a job should be asking their employers hard questions. Job offers aren't worth it if you're being exploited.
I don't. I've hit the peak of promotion that I think I want in my career at a FAANG. I work from home and in practice I work 30ish hours a week. I do put a decent amount of effort into making sure the time that I do work is highly productive. Depression and chronic illness practically limited my working hours so I learned how to "work with" what I have. If you let go of the ladder-climbing and the impostor syndrome, you don't have to work like you ego depends on it.
<i>> If You’re So Successful, Why Are You Still Working 70 Hours a Week?</i><p>Because I like it.<p>But, then, you probably wouldn't think of me as "successful." I'm not on anyone's payroll, and I won't be zipping around in any private jets, in the foreseeable future.<p>I would not agree with that assessment (I feel <i>very</i> successful), but it's not worth arguing about.<p>Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's off to work I go...
In Germany, the state will punish you if you work more than 32 hours per week by very high taxes. Germany has the highest average tax level for single persons (don't confuse with highest possible tax):<p><a href="https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=TABLE_I6" rel="nofollow">https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=TABLE_I6</a>
I enjoy the sense of accomplishment that comes from making beautiful things (mostly code) more than I enjoy things like vacations, social situations, etc. That's just me, but I think I'm not necessarily in the minority on "Hacker" News.
When you are succesful your work has been very rewarding, you will keep chasing that feeling.
I don't work that much. I do not hate my work at all. I went for something I really enjoy, and I don't really need many holidays to "recover" like I hear other people say.
I work doing what I want to do so I don't count hours. Yes you need breaks and cannot always sprint 70 hour weeks but I absolutely would continue to do whenever I can because I am building my future with it. If you are in a dead end job working 790 hours, sucks to be you.
I'm not successful and I don't work 70hr weeks.<p>I had worked about that much for a while (40-50 at IT job + 16-20 at Lowes), and I still wasn't successful.
Looks like a small demographic of east-coast financial professionals was studied? Anyway that's the examples given. May have nothing to do with 'us'.
The only true answer is that out there are 8 billion people waking up every day.<p>And all they do is seeking social relevance, and by doing so they are inadvertedly diluting your own social relevance.<p>There is not a mechanism which allows you to stop working and freeze your social relevance in place as some sort of videogame checkpoint type manner.<p>You stop working and your relevance is eroded away...hell you could keep the amount of work constant or even increase it and your relevance would be eroded away if you are in a sector or a country which is not performing well.<p>The biggest lie that those at the top of the social pyramid have ever managed to pass onto the rest of us is that "it ain't a zero sum game"<p>Well, matter of fact it is.
It's possible that the most self-made successful people see wealth / money as a means to pick what they want to spend 70 hours doing rather than whether to spend 70 hours doing anything. If they want to spend 70 hours a week playing tennis so be it. Or if they want to work on a new idea they had, equally fair. It is likely that success ultimately only buys the freedom to choose where to spend your time.<p>I know I've worked jobs and internships which required only couple of hours a day - and I was miserable. Working >70 hours a week on my own startup has felt more rewarding than any previous job :)
Sadly solution to this is to become a dick, be rude to people and just filter your interactions a great lot - otherwise lots of "nice" people will softly offload their job on you for free.