Homeless boy studying under a McDonald’s light
One of the side effects of reading a personal finance site is that you might end up getting a lot of anxiety, or FOMO, as the younger generation likes to call it. You read how much some folks are saving, how much they are making, and how early they’ve retired and fear you’re not doing enough!
It’s kind of like the advice from the sunscreen song, “Don’t read beauty magazines, they’ll only make you feel ugly.”
Well, I’d love for you to keep reading Financial Samurai, and I’d hate for you to feel bad for not doing enough with your finances. It’s part of the reason why I’ve got a specific category on Motivation to help encourage people to keep going. Just spending time reading a personal finance site is more than 98.5% of the population out there!
I was going to write a more empathetic article about how I understand it’s tough to get ahead. To not worry if you can’t max out your 401k because you’re unwilling to live more frugally. Or to just relax if you’re unwilling to work more than 40 hours a week to supercharge your wealth because life is meant to be enjoyed. Working on side hustles is hard!
But after going through a first draft of this article, I’ve changed my mind. Because we live in a first world country, I don’t understand why we complain so much.
Suffering Is A Rite Of Passage
The picture at the top of this post hits home for me because I could have easily been this nine year old Filipino boy named Daniel Cabrera. It takes discipline to sit under a street light at night to do your homework. I’d probably just want to play.
I was born in Manila, not to homeless parents, but to American foreign service officers who were housed in comfortable digs. Daniel’s father died in prison and Daniel now lives with his mother and brother. If he is given the right opportunities, opportunities many of us take for granted, I’ll happily bet that Daniel will make a damn good doctor or policeman one day.
Practically everybody I know worked a minimum wage job while growing up. So my experience working at McDonald’s, moving furniture, or licking envelopes for eight hours a day isn’t special. In fact, I question whether anybody can truly appreciate the value of hard work and money if they haven’t gone through the pain of working a minimum wage service job.
The New York Times article highlighting how Amazon is a tough place to work reminded me of two things.
The first thing is that journalists have an agenda, so be careful when speaking to the media. You might think you’re telling them about how you love fluffy Siberian cats. But when the article gets printed, it might be a completely different story about how you are a heartless bastard! Jodi and David’s agenda was to portray Amazon as an evil empire by telling only the worst stories shared to them by the workforce. Surely, there are some happy people who love working at Amazon as well?
The second thing I was reminded of is that at any competitive organization, killing yourself at work is not unique.
Seriously, who hasn’t cried at work? Who hasn’t pulled an all-nighter? Who hasn’t worked so many hours one week that their eyeballs felt like they’d fall out? Who hasn’t faced a critical boss or a backstabbing colleague? Who hasn’t gotten passed over for a raise or a promotion?
If seeing nearly everybody cry at work is one of the biggest atrocities at Amazon, no wonder Bo Olson, a 26 year old UC Boulder graduate, couldn’t last more more than two years.
When Did We Get So Soft?
When I worked at Goldman Sachs in the Equities department, getting in by 5:30am and leaving after 7pm was the norm. Getting chewed out by my seniors was a rite of passage that happened every single day. It would have felt odd if I didn’t get a daily reprimand because I didn’t know shit and needed to learn.
Every junior employee knew how the game was played because this is what happens at every organization. If you choose to join a fraternity, sorority, military, dance troop, sports team, or company, you are also choosing to subject yourself to the customs of that organization. If you accept the job offer that pays you more than 95% of the world’s population and teaches you skills to become a better person, there’s nothing to complain about.
If you don’t like the organization you’ve joined, QUIT. That’s what I did when I took up an offer to join a competitor in San Francisco. There are no steel bars locking you in at night. I know because I’ve been there. To complain to your colleagues or rat out your company to the media is shameful. A day job is a walk in the park compared to entrepreneurship! The sooner every complaining person out there who’s never had to manage anybody or never had to build a profitable business from the ground up knows this, the better.
Military Personnel and Athletes
The reason why many companies love hiring ex-military personnel and athletes is because they understand how to get through difficult situations. Everybody has the image of a drill Sergeant yelling in a private’s face during basic training. Get through training, and you become a stronger person. Outside of work, the private and the Sergeant are just two respectful fellas who might grab a beer and talk story. One isn’t better than the other.
Athletes develop the same desirable traits of teamwork, perseverance, and adaptation as military personnel develop. Competition is fierce at the top. The skills learned in competitive sports are completely relevant when you’re working 80 hours a week to land that next deal. Playing through injuries is a rite of passage. Assisting a teammate in a score is all part of the process while humbly diffusing any credit.
With the latest movement liberating junior employees from formerly required working weekends, Wall Street is going soft in an attempt to retain talent against the lure of Silicon Valley. Don’t these young people realize these lavish perks are simply designed to keep them happy while working long hours literally for peanuts? At least the banks now realize they shouldn’t work their employees to death.
But I bet every single startup CEO who is working 100 hours a week wishes all his or her employees worked just as many hours to make the company a success.
If you have doubts about what I’m saying, please candidly ask the following people these questions:
Athlete: Have you ever trained so hard that you threw up, passed out, or cramped up?
Military officer: Have you ever been chewed out by a commanding officer?
Law firm associate: Have you ever pulled multiple all nighters on a big case or new deal?
Management consultant: Have you ever had to take a red-eye to a client’s office across the country and do back-to-back meetings all day?
Banker: Have you ever slept in the office, got a new assignment at midnight, or worked 80 hour weeks?
Startup founders and employees: Have you ever worked a 12 hour day at home, and then worked another four hours after dinner, every day for months?
I’m sure they’ll share with you plenty of stories about times when they just wanted to quit, but kept on going. I don’t know anybody who hasn’t had a very difficult stretch of work before.
Suck It Up Already
While you were complaining how much work you have…
The upside to what the ex-Amazonians have done is make Jeff Bezos and his management team take notice there are areas for improvement at their workplace. Hopefully those existing employees who were too afraid to speak up now don’t have to .
I’m empathetic to those who’ve been dealt a bad hand. The parental leave policies at Amazon sound horrendous and need to be changed. But for goodness sake, we’re playing in Disney World, where the baseline standard is a pretty good life. Even if your hole cards are the dreaded seven deuce, you can still drink clean water, get a free education, and work towards a brighter future.
If you’re a complainer, the solutions to gain more perspective are simple:
- Travel to a developing country to see what real poverty looks like.
- Find another job, instead of spreading a virus within your firm.
- Create your own company to experience how difficult it is to create something from nothing.
- Take up a minimum wage side job to remind yourself how millions of your fellow Americans are trying to get by.
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Start Your Own Website, Be Your Own Boss: If you think you’re getting the short end of the stick, then you might as well start your own website on the side. Own your brand online and earn extra income on the side. Why should LinkedIn, FB, and Twitter pop up when someone Google’s your name? With your own website you can connect with potentially millions of people online, sell a product, sell some else’s product, make passive income and find a lot of new consulting and FT work opportunities.
Updated for 2019 and beyond.
I re-read this post to help me come to my senses. I’ve become too soft compared to my work ethic when I was younger and had less. I don’t want to go back to the extreme days when I was a workaholic and was stressed 24/7, but I need to step up my sense of urgency. Perhaps part of my problem is I’m not competitive enough so I haven’t been constantly pushing myself forward. I hope I’m not too old to change! You bring up a lot of great points in this article and I’m determined to get more done. Thanks for your encouraging motivation!
I have thought for some time that the reason that China and India are effectively having our economic lunch is because American kids have indeed become “soft”, while the kids in those countries are still HUNGRY. America is a victim of its own success. The generation that suffered through the Great Depression still knew what it meant to work hard without any guarantee of success and an easy life. Subsequent generations have had it so good and so (relatively) easy that they have no clue what real hardship is. There is a starry-eyed assumption that we as Americans can take our relatively high standard of living for granted.
I completely agree, Sam, that more people need to visit the Third World to get a sense of perspective. I haven’t had the opportunity to do so myself, but my substitute for the Third World experience is being a keen student of human history. We in 21st century America are really not all that far removed from a much more primitive and tenuous existence…. but very few young people today are truly aware of that fact.
Oh yes, the Chinese and Indians are hungry for a better life. They watch American TV and see what’s possible.
Next trip, check out India, Cambodia, or Vietnam!
Yes!! There is always perspective to be had… When the ac doesn’t work, when you have to take the stairs instead of the elevator and when you get a smaller bonus than you thought. It’s easy for some to see and really difficult for others. I started working at a failing company in 2008 and bought the failing company in 2011, now it is far from a failing company. I could have easily gone elsewhere and complained about how hard life is, but instead I read 20+ business books and poured my heart into the comapny. People are entitled and they don’t even realize it.
14 years in defense. Also – I’d like to say I regretted my comment as soon as I hit confirm because I think it came across as mean. Sorry.
Howdy Virginia,
I wrote a post in response to your comment. Thanks for the inspiration!
Should I Work On Wall Street? The Positives Of Working In Finance
I kind of feel like you “ratted” out your company because you are constantly saying how awful it was working on wallstreet.
You are right in a way. I am an industry rat who is seeking financial freedom. I’ve warned people in my writing that working in finance can be lucrative, and requires a lot of hard work and a thick skin.
But do you not agree there is a difference between specifying a specific firm, vs an industry? I’ve written working in finance is hard, but I didn’t complain. I just left and did my own business.
Do you mind if I use your comment and your background in a new post highlight why working on WS is awesome?
How about you? What industry are you in and how long have you been working?
No worries. I’m used to tough / mean/upsetting etc comments. It’s part of being a blogger. You open yourself up to lots of criticism, and you’ve just got to suck it up if you want to make it. Not being able to deal with criticism is why so many blogs shut down within a year.
What is Defense? What exactly do you do to earn income and how much longer do you plan to do it?
I would like to make two comments
1) Working long hours does not equate with money and financial success. Finishing projects and excellent outcomes determine success. Just because a worker is willing to work 100 hours a week does not mean he is a good worker. Time management and an excellent outcome is the measure of a good worker. You just had a home improvement to your house. Which contractor do you want a) the contractor who works in your house from 7:30AM to 7:30 PM 6 days a week to complete a project interrupting your mornings and dinner for 4 weeks or b) the contractor who works in works 8AM to 5 PM for 5 days a week for 4 weeks who does disrupt your life. Working long hours can indicator of an inefficient worker.
2)I think that you can work hard and receive little money as well for big money. The reality of life’s situation is that most people will not be rich. There are necessary jobs which are low pay which provides services that everyone enjoys. For example, maintenance workers, maids and janitors provide services that everyone enjoys. Someone has to be willing to do this work. It is honest hard work and the people who performs these jobs are not lazy.
No doubt. Hence, if you don’t want to work long hours, or do extra to get ahead like your colleagues who do, don’t complain.
As I mentioned before, working long hours does not equate with financial success or good outcomes. I would like to mention another example. Doctors and medical residents years ago used to work 100 hours or more a week. It was possible to work a 24 hour call with 2-3 hours sleep and the next morning perform a major surgical procedure for hours on a patient. If the medical resident complained, he/she was told that they “didn’t have what it takes”. It was discovered that the medical error rate was very high and one of the causes was sleep deprivation. Now the most a medical resident can work is 80 hours/week. All of these hours can’t be patient contact hours. Hospital errors are the 3rd leading cause of death in the US.
If you are performing repetitious tasks then working long hours may not have a high error rate. Most financial highly compensated workers however are performing complex tasks. The error or efficiency rate will increase with exceedingly long work hours. The idea that working long hours should equal financial success is erroneous. Good or excellent outcomes on the job should be the measure of financial success. I think that outcomes are not used as a measurement because an employer can not measure an outcome but they came measure hours
I agree. Everything is rational. Oft here’s no desire to work as hard as your colleagues, no sweat not getting paid or as promoted as fast. Everything is relative. Making excuses doesn’t help.