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| Thread: 8 hours per day is too much. |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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mvassilev
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posted January 14, 2009 10:41 PM |
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Quote:
On what experience do you actually base that claim?
You'll have more money and job opportunities.
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Corribus
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posted January 14, 2009 11:02 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 23:06, 14 Jan 2009.
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Quote:
Corribus, that's pretty terrible. Maybe you should try to change it? After all, you're a smart guy, with high education (PhD, right?) and you don't need to be some corporation's slave overworking for some pennies 
Well, let me say two things here.
First, if my circumstances were different, I could probably work a part time job and earn enough money to have a nice little apartment, a kick ass computer and loads of computer games. In some sense, I would be "happy" and it would be unnecessary to work harder or get a better paying job (which are often synonymous). That's fine when you're in your early 20s, but time changes your priorities, and what made you happy in your 20s doesn't necessarily make you happy in your 30s. In fact, if you don't plan ahead and live only by what you need to be happy today, chances are you're going to be very UNHAPPY later on.
Granted, I still like my computer games, and watching movies, and most of the stuff that made me happy when I was 20. But now, I have a wife, and a child. And even with my wife and I pulling in decent salaries (and me about to pull in an even better one), there's still not much left over for lots of extras. There's no way I could live on a part time job right now. Not when I've got to spend so many thousands of dollars a month on daycare, and food, rent, two cars, health insurance, life insurance, car insurance, property insurance, investments, yada, yada, yada, yada. I've got to work hard to afford all that and provide a good enough life for my family. And before long we'll be looking to buy a house, which will increase the financial burden even more.
You'll find as you get older that life is just not all about having fun with hobbies. But, the payback is that having a family is immensely more rewarding than an XBOX. You won't of course believe me. You have ot have one to appreciate it.
Second, your point of view probably stems at least in part from the fact that you don't enjoy your job. If you're dreading going to work, then it's probably not the right job for you. A job can - and should - be enjoyable. Or at least, not an absolute bear. Of course, most people would rather be out playing golf than in an office, but being successful at a job you love can be rewaarding beyond the money you make.
Beyond the obvious financial reasons and the fact that it was time for me to go and make a real living, I left my previous job because I just couldn't stand it any longer. I don't really want to get into it, but the bottom line was that I just wasn't happy. So I went and got a new one, that pays much better and hopefully I will enjoy much more.
When I was a graduate student, the pay was awful, but (at least in the beginning, before I grew disillusioned with the academic system) I did really enjoy what I was doing. And even though I was pulling 80 hour weeks sometimes, I didn't really mind because it was rewarding and fun. That doesn't mean I didn't look forward to breaks, but a rewarding job gives your life meaning and needed structure.
While of course we all dream of being able to not have to work, and while it's true it would be nice for a while to be unemployed because of all the free time I would have, I have to say that when you get down to it - I don't think I'd much like not having a job. Being a contributing member of society gives me a sense of self-worth; I feel important. It's also my duty as a citizen. It's also important socially for me because otherwise I probably wouldn't interact with people that much.
I think you need to distinguish between a job and career. If I had to work 40 hours a week at Wendys, then yeah - I don't think I'd be that happy. But 40 hours a week in a career that you love, that is important, and in a field you find interesting and are good at, well that's a whole separate story.
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Doomforge
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posted January 14, 2009 11:27 PM |
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I really wish I had your attitude.
Every job I tried was horrible. I struggled to get up early and face another X hours of boredom. Fortunately, I managed to get around it and now I get as much money as I need by working with my father once per month for 2-3 days (nepotism, yes. I don't feel guilty, though.)
I can't find anything in jobs that gives me joy. It's all boring. I have countless hobbies, but working hurts my mind.
Career somewhat seems like rat race to me. Get better, better, better. Earn more more more so you can get better better better.. you climb, reach the top and die. Bah. Good riddance.
The thought is kinda maddening. You work to live, you live to work.
Sorry for the nihilistic babbling. I feel kinda hopeless now.
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TheDeath
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posted January 14, 2009 11:31 PM |
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Quote:
Being a contributing member of society gives me a sense of self-worth; I feel important. It's also my duty as a citizen. It's also important socially for me because otherwise I probably wouldn't interact with people that much.
I don't think that's valid for nonconformists, for example.
and yeah, most working sucks, though I love to work myself, but more on the side of the examples like Linus Torvalds than Bill Gates 
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Corribus
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posted January 15, 2009 12:06 AM |
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Edited by Corribus at 00:07, 15 Jan 2009.
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Well doomforge I can only tell you two things.
(1) Your job needs to be in a field that interests you. If you have a hobby or interest, mold your career around it.
(2) Generally you have more options the more you work. For instance, most people just aren't going to be interested in their work when it comes to lower-paying jobs. Lower paying jobs tend to be menial labor of some sort, and it's just not the sort of stuff people are interested in. Let's face it, people who take those jobs do so out of the necessity just to pay the bills, and as a result they approach their jobs as a chore rather than an enjoyable part of their life.
Let's say your interest is in video games. It's a hobby of yours. Since it's something that's interesting to you, it's natural that you might build a career around it.
Ok, so if your job is flipping burgers 40 hours a week, and all you want to do is play video games (or be involved with some aspect of video games), clearly you're going to resent having to spend 40 hours a week flipping burgers because it doesn't interest you at all.
So, let's say instead of flipping burgers you get a job at a video game store. Now that might be a little better for you. You might not resent having to go to work 40 hours a week quite as much if you're selling video games rather than flipping burgers. After all, you get to talk to customers about video games, you might get good discouts, you might be able to play new ones in the store when there are no customers around. Etc. But, this sort of job is more desirable than flipping burgers so you might have to work at flipping burgers for a while to get some work experience before a video game store is going to hire you. Also, because you're not REALLY getting to do much with your interest, it's probably still not that interesting.
Alright, but what if you got to DESIGN video games. Now that would really be cool. Now you're doing video games in your job all the time. It's a hobby you love and you really get to make a difference to the field. Of course, to get there requires a lot of work. You can't just walk over to Bethesda and say "Gimme a job. i like video games so I would be great here." You've got to go to school, learn about programming, etc. Probably you also have to take some less-interesting jobs programming other stuff like microwave ovens or tax software before you have enough experience to be competitive. After all, LOTS of people want to make video games.
The point is that in order to get a job you like, and that interests you, you need to work hard, because good, interesting jobs are desirable. Most people don't like their jobs, and they approach their jobs with that attitude, and they don't work hard and so they never get anything better. And so they quit and take another job they don't like. Ad nauseum.
I mean, let's take me as an example. I suffered through a job for a few years that I really couldn't stand, but I worked hard and was productive. So I got experience which made me a more desireable applicant. So now I got a better job, with better pay and better hours. And I'll be here for a little while, and if I like it, great. If I don't, well I'll go somewhere else to something better. To some extent you're right: you work hard to get to the top and then you die. But better to die at the top than at the bottom, no? And the thing is that all that work CAN be enjoyable, if you're doing it in a field you love - but to get there is probably going to require doing a lot of work that is NOT enjoyable. That's just the way the system works - you work hard, you get rewarded.
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TheDeath
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posted January 15, 2009 01:59 AM |
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If you're dedicated like me it's easier to teach yourself programming than to attend boring classes. (in high school, I was the one who corrected the teacher , and the material sucks totally -- it makes you think mechanically instead of logically). Heck, I helped one of my friends (I made a program for his project) who was in college regarding this stuff (I didn't go to programming college yet, and might as well not)
There's also Open Source software, which can amplify this "hobby" stuff
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JollyJoker
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posted January 15, 2009 08:29 AM |
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Some people won't like what I write now, but it's true nonetheless - if you don't believe it, wait and see what happens.
There is a giant writing on the wall that everyone can see, but many averting their eyes from, chosing to ignore it instead: Two things in life are definitely NOT compatible.
1) An interesting, intelligent job you have fun with, demanding, high payment, high responsibility, frequent overtime (or no strict office hours), maybe involving frequent business trips, weekend work and so on.
2) A family; a wife is bad enough. Children make it infinitely worse.
In this constellation one will suffer. Inevitably. The only thing that would work here, if both husband and wife are working together in some way to share what would otherwise be the biggest part in only one person's life.
You can't serve two masters, not to mention four:
a) your job
b) your wife
c) your children
d) your other hobbies
If you want 1) you SHOULDN'T go for 2), except with your partner at work, but that's rare and may still fail for other reasons.
If you want 2) you can't have 1), not all of it. You may still have an interesting and demanding job, but you can't work too many hours then, you shouldn't be on business trips often and so on.
The crux of it is the following (and if you don't believe me just open your eyes and ask yourself the simple question why so many marriages fail; you know enough of them, probably, take a look at their circumstances).
As soon as you really "settle down", meaning, getting your first child, thinking about a house, generally needing a lot of money to pay the bills, you'll automatically go for more work. Higher payment, more workload, more responsibility, more stress, more problems to take home with you, more work at home, late in the evening, dates with banks and tax specialists, credits bla bla bla.
And that's basically it: work has priority. After all, as soon as you have moved into your shiny new cage and made it comfy for yourselves there, you can't just stop it. You just have to go on to "pay the bills". At that stage it may cross your mind that the life you have now wasn't what made you want to "have a family"; that was when you spent a lot of time with what is now your wife and mother of your two children, had fun, shared a common life.
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Doomforge
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posted January 15, 2009 01:12 PM |
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very wise words, JJ..
Corribus: It's not that easy, you see. Let me explain.
Take a few hobbies of mine. Warships, for instance. I'm crazed about them and spend a lot of time reading. So, what can you do with such a hobby.. design warships.. yeah, who needs warship designers nowadays when a new ship "happens" once per 5 years, and mostly in US or China, which already have the best men for the job around.. not to mention you have to be really brilliant in mechanics to design anything, not only for the army, but for civilians too.. And I never went past understanding what mohr's circle is really about. And such things are rudiments. And there is just one shipyard in Poland, and it struggles not to bankrupt. I could try elsewhere, of course, but - technical language is a big factor. I may have decent English, but I don't know a damn thing about English technical language. So - fail. What else can I do, be a historian? Well, I kinda already am one in that field, and what can I do with it? teach in elementary schools? One, it's 400$ per month, two, you have to be good in all parts of history, not just sea. What else can you do as a historian? Nothing, really. Not to mention that you have to study all the fields of history, not just one. And some are really boring. Yeah, fail again.
How about phenomenology? I would literally sell my soul to be able to do those documentaries for discovery world about all those mysterious things our world offers us. But, yeah, how. How on earth can you get there? Not a damn idea. And think about how many people would want such a job too, that actually CAN do it because of, idk, journalistic experience. That's a cut-throat competition and you can't really win unless you dedicate your life to that.. and you still can fail. Pretty risky, if you ask me. And it's too late for that anyway. I am past the point when you can dedicate your life to something. It should happen before you end high school. Later on, you have just too big mess in your life to change things.
I have a couple more things I enjoy or even love, but the conclusion is always the same: It's not enough. it's just not enough to enjoy something because to eventually do something related to it, you have to get through the whole grid of related things, like learning expert mechanics, for instance, which I simply can't do.
So, as I face the truth - I at least try to make my hour count as small as possible. If I can't do what I like, I have to do what bores me. But make it short, at least.
And that's why I think 8 hours per day and 2 weeks of leave per year is too much and too little, respectively. With so little spare time, you spend most of your life doing petty jobs and dreaming about a better future. One kind of life nobody really wants. Nihilistic again?  Well, sorry.
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Moonlith
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posted January 16, 2009 01:59 AM |
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Edited by Moonlith at 02:10, 16 Jan 2009.
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8 hours per day is too much.
I actually thought this thread was about masturbation  Sorry. -scuttles away-
Hmr, on a more serious note though, say, how about instead of laying people off of work when they introduce machines to the production, how about instead of firing people, we reduce the working hours of ALL employees?
yeaah, say, when you employ 5 people, each working 5 days, and you introduce a machine that does 1 person's work, instead of firing a person, you cut production work of ALL employees by 20%.
Yes, that might work? And instead of sticking the saved money into their backpockets, perhaps the producers could lower the price of their products, as intended, so the employees can still afford the products?
Yes, this wo-- Oh, wait, lol, sorry, my bad, I forgot for a moment we live in a corrupt world where everyone serves only himself, and everything's about money.
@ Corribus:
Maybe you should learn how to ride a bike. "OMG I GOT NO MONEY FOR ANYTHING, but we do have two cars..." Sheesh, stop complaining.
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Corribus
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posted January 16, 2009 03:05 AM |
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Dude you don't know anything about my situation, such as the fact that we need two cars because we both work at different places, many miles away, or that one of my cars needs a lot of transmission work and if it dies I'm not sure how I'm going to get to my job. Get a bike? How are you supposed to get an infant to daycare 17 miles away riding a bike? So why don't you hold off the idiotic criticism for 5 miniutes, m'kay?
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mvassilev
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posted January 16, 2009 04:02 AM |
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Moonlith:
Employers do lower the prices of their products. They're in competition - they have to in order to survive.
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Doomforge
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posted January 16, 2009 09:20 AM |
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My dad told me yesterday that one of his mates (lecturer with PhD equivalent) will have 4 hours per week in the next semester, because the number of students is smaller and there is not much work.
4 HOURS PER WEEK!!! for his normal wage (~1000$ per month)
God, I feel extra motivated 
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Asheera
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posted January 16, 2009 02:06 PM |
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4 hours per week? Not per day? For 1000$ a month?
That's just... 
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mvassilev
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posted January 16, 2009 02:58 PM |
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A thousand a month is barely anything, though. A guy getting minimum wage would get that much here in the US (although working more than 4 hours a week, obviously).
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Asheera
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posted January 16, 2009 03:09 PM |
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The key word is the US. Here in Romania (and Poland, from where Doomforge is) 1000$ is a lot above average.
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del_diablo
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posted January 16, 2009 03:56 PM |
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A thousand a month is barely anything, though. A guy getting minimum wage would get that much here in the US (although working more than 4 hours a week, obviously).
Currency difference. And the fact that 1000 Euros is not 1000 Dollars
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TheDeath
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posted January 16, 2009 04:22 PM |
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A thousand a month is barely anything, though.
LMAO. For 4 hours a week? 
And americans dare to say why we pirate games 
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Doomforge
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posted January 16, 2009 06:03 PM |
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A thousand a month is barely anything, though. A guy getting minimum wage would get that much here in the US (although working more than 4 hours a week, obviously).
1000$ is way above average payment in Poland. We are a very poor country, mind you 
and with so little work hours, you can teach on two universities. or three. 3000$ for ~20 hours peer week sounds better? Hell yes, and it's still half the "normal" worktime.
Of course it's just a special occasion that he has 4 hours per week, normally he has 220 mandatory hours per semester which translates to ~12 hours per week. But, still, it often happens that they only work 10 or 8 hours, all depends on how many students there is.
1000$ for 4 hours per week is of course extreme situation, still, worth mentioning, I guess
But hey, after so many years of learning STUPID stuff by rote (type of cranes, with detailed tech info about each type.. GOD, it took me three days @_o), I think those guys deserve to work less.
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mvassilev
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posted January 16, 2009 10:36 PM |
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So does he usually get paid $1000 a month, or is it just this month since he's working less?
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Vlaad
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posted January 16, 2009 11:33 PM |
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I worked as a teacher for four years, 20 hours per week - although it was usually closer to 30, when one includes all the duties performed outside the classroom. It was nine months per year but I still experienced high levels of burnout.
@ Corribus
You must have had a lousy adviser. LOL Seriuosly though, although my wife works less than 20 hours a week as a research assistant, I understand your experience is more common.
Not sure why some people work more than what they signed for though.
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