Dan Luu
patreon
Why are you still working?
🕑 Added 2020-06-12 03:09:41 +0000 UTCSometimes, when I find out that someone has been at Google for 12+ years or is a managing director at a hedge fund and they've been unhappy with their job for years, I'll ask them why they're still working and they're not retired.
In one typical case where I asked this question, I knew a lot of the person's co-workers and had pretty good information that the person had been bored at work for many years and was just punching the clock.
I think the most common answers I've gotten are variants of:
* Huh? What do you mean? You gotta work
* How could I retire? I'm barely keeping up with my middle class lifestyle
* How could I retire? Kids are expensive
* What would I do if I retire? My life would have no meaning
I generally don't push on this, but if they say they need the money for some expensive thing and it's not personal, I'll sometimes ask what, the answers have been some variant of "my $3m+ house" or "raising kids is really expensive, no one with kids can retire".
A couple times, after I asked this question, the person actually retired within weeks or months of me asking the question (in one case, retirement meant starting an indie games startup that's likely to never make significant money). In those cases, I think it hadn't occurred to them to retire, and after they did the math, they realized they could've retired years ago, and then did so.
But otherwise, I don't really understand the answers. I could understand answers like "I enjoy collecting cars and spend $300k/yr on cars", "I enjoy extravagant meals and spend $1000 a day on food", "I'm an effective altruist and I believe the most effective way I can improve the world is to donate most of my income to charity", "I want to save $Y before I retire just in case", or "I prefer not to say for personal reasons [which might include medical expenses, supporting other people, etc.]", but I've never gotten any of these answers (to be fair, if I know someone is an EA who donates most of their income to charity, I won't ask the question, and I do know some people who fit that description).
I don't really get the house thing. Is living in a $3M-$10M house instead of a $2M house worth 40+ hours of unhappiness a week? I can't say that it's literally wrong if someone has that personal preference, but it seems a bit odd. Since this answer usually comes bundled with an explanation about how someone making $500k/yr is barely middle class nowadays due to house prices, I think this usually isn't a personal preference so much as the lack of ability to conceive of not spending money that's coming in on something.
I think the kids thing is actually wrong? I believe my median childhood friend was raised by a family making <= $30k/yr. If it's possible to raise children (and in the case of my friends usually multiple children) on a total budget $30k/yr (often much less), it must be possible for someone making BigCo tech income or hedge fund income to raise kids without breaking a sweat financially even if they "only" work for a decade before retiring.
Of course, if someone is living in NYC or the bay area, their childcare costs will be much greater than they were where I grew up. However, it's impossible that childcare costs must be so much higher that they consume, for example, most of $500k/yr (pre-tax). Also, I know people on pretty normal incomes in NYC and SF who have kids, it's clearly possible to have kids in those cities without even spending $50k/yr on kids because there are people who raise kids in those cities while making less than $50k/yr.
And as for the last one, "my life would have no meaning if I wasn't working for a big tech company or a hedge fund", isn't the meaning of life being working for a big tech company or a hedge fund more a more depressing thought than life having no meaning?
I don't have anything against people working because they enjoy work or because the money is buying them something they want, but I seem to meet a lot of people who are pretty unhappy with their jobs and are mostly still working not because they need the money but because they can't conceive of not working.
Comments
I think there isn't any deeper meaning: the "What would I do if I retire? My life would have no meaning" is just a reflexive rationalisation and most people haven't thought any harder about it than that. I do know of one person at Google who did retire, but got bored and then came back (as an IC).
One reason to stay is that a job gives you a context for everyday social interactions, and I guess it might matter for some (consciously or not).
