http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/jobs/01pre.html
"My sense of professional accomplishment was determined by the size of my bonus checks. I felt that my title and salary were all that I had to show for those long years of hard work, political maneuvering and Dilbertian despair.
"Like many of my co-workers, I thought I could eventually earn enough money to make up for the fact that I dreaded going to work every day. Then I would be happy, I told myself...
"But in fact, my high-paying but soul-draining job was beginning to take a toll on my personal life."
Read the article and let me know what you think!
5 comments:
I think many of us deal with this very struggle. Defining success by the size of your paycheck is misleading but since our jobs treat it that way through bonuses and such we tend to get caught in this trap.
Agreed. We shouldn't define our lives by our paycheck, but it's so easy to fall into the trap.
Hmmm... here's a question. What do you think a business culture like this (i.e. one that measures itself by the size of our paycheck, material gain) does to a person's sensitivity to the weak and vulnerable? In other words, if everyone is listening to their iPods, will we ever stop to give a homeless man a meal? Will we ever notice value in life that can neither advocate for itself, nor positively influence our bottom line?
Thanks for the comments fellas (although I suppose both 'renoranger' and 'pat' could be female names...).
Random ramblings begin now...
Anyway, this is somewhat of an ubiquitous topic. Everyone wants to "be rich and help the world." But in reality striking a balance between career and 'life' is indeed hard in a land that espouses career success.
There are essentially 4 groups of people:
Group 1: Those with nothing may claim they'd do anything to cash-in without recognizing the personal or human costs. They would laugh at this blog post, for instance.
Group 2: Those with a lot who love what they're doing are dumbfounded that someone would take a job for the hell of it.
Group 3: And those who love what they're doing but are underpaid probably fret about why they even bother. (Teachers? I think they should be exempt from paying income taxes given their already low salaries).
Group 4: And then those who are both underpaid and hate their job... well, back to group 1.
And perhaps another group who would prefer their tombstone to say "I wish I had spent more time in the office."
Anyway, to Pat's question:
Will we ever notice value in life that can neither advocate for itself, nor positively influence our bottom line?
Unfortunately, I think some would argue that every action has a direct economic impact. And, for many, that's what matters. The media isn't helping. These people forget the good fights for justice and fairness, and instead focus on the greenback only.
The funny thing, though, is that nature has a self-correcting mechanism. Most people who focus too much on one area and ignore the other always seem to regret it in one way or another.
The bottom line: stay focused, and keep your priorities straight. It's a lot harder to do in reality.
As they say, if he writes like a male, and speaks of himself as though he is a male then he must me a male......right? riiigghttt???
....
Ive put more thought into this subject and now Im thinking the market has been constantly working on this wage/time/stress dilemma that most of us face.
As we know, there is a strong positive correlation between wage and time at work / stress at work. The more of the latter you accept the higher the former you get. It is that simple. I think the issue most of us struggle with is the equilibrium trade off between the two.
The trick to reaching this equilibrium is deciding which is more important, leisure time (family, hobbies, etc.) or career? As they say(who are they anyway?), "You can't have your cake and eat it too!" i.e. It is unreasonable, in fact impossible, to think an individual can be a complete success at both due to constraints in time and energy. That is not to say they cant be good at both (which is also very difficult). You think CEO's of multinational corporations coach their sons baseball team or regularly attend their daughters dance recital? I doubt it.
I think the issue most of us struggle with is the equilibrium trade off between the two.
Yes Sir!
Well put, very much like I'd expect of a devout student of Adam Smith.
The problem, though, is that most of us (well, you guys and me) have lives with at least 3 main equations: religious, family, and work. So, we have the multiple equilibria problem and need to maximize all at the same point, at all times. On the other hand, there are certainly more than three variables that affect each equation (religious, family or work), and worse, each one affects multiple equations at the same time (endogenous variables?). So, needless to say, we have more variables than equations and hence an infinite solution. Do we need instrumental variables to help solve this?!
My econometrics has gotten crummy, but all the more interesting.
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