Drawing the line between work & non-work life has become an arduous task. With telecommuting and changing job responsibilities/expectations, the two complement and clash with each other in a multitude of ways. It is hard to define since different people react to different situations in completely different manners.
Chapter 6 mentions how increased work hours have limited the available free time for many employees. My first job in Silicon Valley was this way. I was excited to have a good job and become a salaried man at IBM. I was very proud of my new role and it was only moderately difficult for moderate pay. I worked about 45 hours a week and was generally pretty happy. I spent a lot of time out with friends and would travel on weekend getaways frequently.
Soon, I had an opportunity to take a new job with a 15K raise! I was ecstatic. A couple months into the new job, I found myself working 60-70hr weeks. I never went out during weekdays anymore. I rarely saw my friends. I never traveled. When I calculated it... I made considerably less per hour compared to my old job... but I stuck with it because I thought I was moving up the ladder.
As the book mentions, Hochschild reports that some employees use work to escape from home stress. At my new job, I was miserable... but I had an office-mate who loved every minute of it. He joked with some seriousness that his wife and kids drive him nuts... and work was the one place where he could get away. He wasn't a particularly good employee, but would be the first to the office and the last to leave.
Streaning Star Trek: Insurrection Full Movie
6 years ago
2 comments:
As you point out, decisions about work involve more than how much you get paid. There have been several times in my working life when I have reassessed my priorities and stepped down from a well paying job, in order to pursue my goals. Most recently was in June of this year when I took a clerical job in order to focus on completing my masters. There are many things to consider when making such a change; first of course, is whether you can afford to take a cut in pay. Less obvious questions are how you will feel telling your friends, family, and coworkers that you are taking a job with less status and presige than your previous occupation.
There is a joke that my MBA professor told me back in Spring. I don’t remember all the exact details, but here is the gist of it:
So there is a middle-aged business man strolling along the coast of Mexico very early in the morning when he spots a fisherman with a modest catch heading back to the village. He stops the fisherman and asked: “It’s still early, how come you are heading back already?”
Fisherman: “Well, sir, I have already caught enough fish to sell at the market and feed my family for today. I can then go home, relax, and spend time with my family.”
The business man shakes his head and says: “No, no, no, you got it all wrong. You should go back out there and catch as much fish as you can then sell as many as you can at the market.”
Fisherman: “And then what?”
Business man: “And then you use the extra money you earned to buy a bigger boat to catch even more fish and earn even more money”
Fisherman: “And then what?”
Business man: “Then you hire some people to come work for you and you can multiply the efficiency of catching fish”
Fisherman: “And then what?”
Business man: “Then you buy more boats and hire more people so that your company is number one and you become very very rich”
Fisherman: “And then what?”
Business man: “Then you can retire when you are about 50 years old and take your family to Mexico so that you can spend more time together and relax by strolling along the beach.
Sometimes I think we get so caught up in working hard, earning money, and climbing the corporate ladder that we lose sight of what we are striving towards in the very first place.
Post a Comment