[kamaal]

>>"shit careers" how? Because they don't pay well? You won't get rich?

Contrary to whatever you think 'getting rich' is very important. Its also fun to be rich. Its fun to know you don't have to worry getting up early in the morning and do all you have to to in a hurry just to hit the work desk. Its also fun to not come home tired wanting to do something you love but not having energy or the time to do it. Its also fun to not worry about saving some pennies every month just so that you would want to buy a new phone/tablet or whatever six months later. Its also fun to send your kids to the best institutions out there to get them educated. Its fun to drive the Ferrari, Its fun to go on unlimited vacations in Europe. I can go on and on. Trust me if you have money life is really 'fun'.

I mean the real fun. Not the make believe fun, they tell you in books and articles about fun while sweating at work.

>>A job that you GENUINELY enjoy should ALWAYS be taken over a job that pays big bucks.

Big bucks are more genuinely enjoyable, actually.

>>We are EXTREMELY fortunate that the jobs we enjoy doing ALSO pay very well

No, programming jobs pay marginally well. But that's still not sufficient for what one would call an awesome life.

>>if I got paid a fraction of what I do I would continue to do it over a job that I did not find interetsing but paid well.

I respect your choice, but I wouldn't. The concept of life is to live. And you need to money to live, which in turn requires work. But if you consider work as life. Then priorities all get messed up.

>>Do what you love - as long as you are above the poverty line you'll be happy. And most jobs will allow you to live above the poverty line :)

There is hardly any glory in poverty. And even if you are the best janitor in the whole world. You still won't be able to send your kids to a good university. You won't have a good home, car or whatever. None of that can keep you happy.

[ryanmolden]

>Contrary to whatever you think 'getting rich' is very important.

To you. Just like the GP is projecting his view of the world as the view everyone should have, so are you. People are different (gasp) and that means their rankings of most any list of things you can come up with will be different.

>And even if you are the best janitor in the whole world. You still won't be able to send your kids to a good university

Maybe it is the grouch in me but perhaps your kids could get scholarships, or (gasp again) pay some portion of their own school bill. The idea that a parent is a failure if they can't pay 4 years or more of Harvard tuition in cash seems silly, to me anyhow. Also, anecdotally, everyone I met in college whose parents were footing the bill were kind of deplorable people to be honest. I am sure there are nice people whose parents picked up the whole cost of their college education, I have just never met any.

[krakensden]

Getting rich is too much, but wanting financial security is not. There are few things more stressful and destructive than being too broke for too long.

[kamaal]

I agree.

But I put a few things as they are because sometimes they are necessary to be put it that way.

Look at this way. These articles try to paint a picture that its OK to sacrifice your financial well being if you are faced with an option that offers perceived happiness. In reality this is rarely true.

Work is just one requirement of life. Of the many requirements which start from brushing your teeth in the morning to mosquito repellant in the night. You need money for nearly everything these days. And anybody who gives you an advice that doesn't account for this thing isn't just getting the point.

A millennium back all you would need is horse and ability to climb a tree. And you could do anything in the world, by just riding the horse and eating fruits plucked from the tree. These days you need money for everything.

If you feel you can be 'happy' by just doing work. Then sure you will be happy doing work. But you won't be happy doing everything else without money. And that everything else makes up a very big part of your life.

Sooner or later everybody realizes this.

[Jach]

The studies on happiness I've seen tend to conclude with "money doesn't buy happiness but lack of it does buy misery." The specific amount of lacking depends on the relative poverty line and in the US decreases as income approaches ~$75k/yr USD. But there's a lot of individual factors involved with happiness even if on average money has a measurable effect. Some people are really cheerful living below the poverty line but for most it's not a great place to be. Others make do with what they have and are content. Others use credit cards to inflate their income by $2k-$50k. There are also plenty of manically depressed millionaires, so cash alone is not sufficient for some. There are lots of blissful stupid people. I think the better question in these discussions is "what's the optimal happiness a human can achieve, and what can I achieve in the near future?" Since we can measure it I agree with you that money is an important factor, perhaps the dominating one for some individuals, but not the only one.

[soup10]

How do you explain people that are financially secure but work anyway?

Working is part of life. Ferraris and vacations to Europe are fun, but there's plenty of more affordable entertainment that is just as fun. It just depends on your perspective and personality. Some people will never be satisfied with what they have, and no amount of money will change that.

If I had to choose between working 40 hours a week at a job I hate and driving a Ferrari vs 40 hours a week at a job I love and driving a Camry. I'd choose the Camry every time. (Obviously these aren't the only options in real life)

There are millions of ways to make money, and there are millions of ways to spend it. Being focused on 'getting rich' can easily make you blind to the big picture.

[kamaal]

>>How do you explain people that are financially secure but work anyway?

Working on what? I pity the person who has all the money in the world to take a permanent holiday, but is still a MegaCorp slave. Who works from 9-5 every day. I can understand if you are working on a curious problem. But if you have a financial leg to stand on and you are still on a day to day job. You need to seriously rethink your life and how you are spending your time.

>>Working is part of life.

Part, yes. But not your whole life. That's the whole point.

>>Ferraris and vacations to Europe are fun, but there's plenty of more affordable entertainment that is just as fun.

Being happy with little isn't the same as having experiences bought by big money. At most, being happy with little is only a indication of compromise, you show when you resign to trying no more.

[lotharbot]

> "that's still not sufficient for what one would call an awesome life."

For what who would call an awesome life?

I stay at home with my family. We get up when we want to get up. My wife does contract work, enough to pay the bills and put a bit away at considerably less than full time, and she does it from the next room. My son has me as a dedicated full-time caretaker and educator. We don't go to Europe, but we can go to the park, grandma's house, or the mountains whenever we feel like it.

The concept of life is to live, and you need money to live, but how much money depends on what you want to do with your life. It depends on what "do what you love" leads you to, whether you need a high income to sustain what you love or whether you live for peanuts (and whether you can earn those peanuts doing something else you love.) You can take your Ferrari on the Autobahn; I'll be out playing in the dirt with my kid.

[kamaal]

>>You can take your Ferrari on the Autobahn; I'll be out playing in the dirt with my kid.

Most people would be OK with that, the problem only starts when you start comparing the Ferrari guy and play-in-the-dirt-with-kid guy.

Objectively everyone is happy, subjectively they are not. And no human ever exists in isolation.

[spacemanaki]

I downvoted a few of your comments in this thread and all for similar reasons, but I'll just reply to this one.

You're putting forth your ideas about money buying happiness as if they were facts that you have proven or that have been proven elsewhere. But human happiness is much more complicated than you think it is, and I think the spirit of most of the replies are merely suggesting that things are not as black and white as you have made them out to be.

> the problem only starts when you start comparing the Ferrari guy and play-in-the-dirt-with-kid guy.

That seems to be what you're doing, is introducing this "problem" by comparing these two situations, or comparing some other abstract ideal rich life with the life of middle class or "normal" lives, when in fact comparing them and trying to find out who is happier is very hard.

Here's another one to compare: I hate driving, so I think I would rather ride a bicycle than drive a Ferrari. But that's just me; I can't even articulate why I dislike driving. I would never suggest that someone else isn't happy driving a Ferrari and would be happier on a bike, because it's a senseless comparison. Same with the dad and his kid playing in the dirt.

[mnutt]

While wanting a ferrari as a kid may or may not make you unhappy, I don't personally know anyone who was given a ferrari as a kid and was ultimately happy. They usually tended to end up less happy than children who weren't spoiled by their parents.

[jacobr]

> Its fun to know you don't have to worry getting up early in the morning and do all you have to to in a hurry just to hit the work desk. Its also fun to not come home tired wanting to do something you love but not having energy or the time to do it.

You can also accomplish this by cutting expenses and reducing your working hours.

I guess it depends on your definition of "rich", but it's very easy to increase your spending to the level where your freedom is not necessarily much bigger than before.

[potatolicious]

> "You can also accomplish this by cutting expenses and reducing your working hours."

This is so easy for people like us to say. We're the ones pulling in 6-figure salaries, where I could conceivably work half-time and still pay the bills. Hell, I could work a quarter-time and pay the bills without experiencing a poverty lifestyle.

Try giving your advice to your local burger jockey, shoe salesman, and janitor. 50% of households in this country make <$37K a year. Where should these families cut their working hours?

Oh, the presumptuousness of the rich. We hear this topic a lot in this community because, let's face it, we're all making (in relation to the general population) ludicrous sums of money, living in absolute excess (not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that). To presume that most people have a lot of "fat" to trim from their lifestyles is severely misguided.

[creamyhorror]

I agree with your response, but would like to point out that it's primarily a US phenomenon. Programmers in Asia don't get mega bucks, and even those who attempt to do startups mostly don't either (there just isn't a big consumer market and big bubbly stock market, excepting China and maybe India). They still enjoy their coding, though, even if it's just another mediocrely-paid job. You usually get less here as a programmer than a grad entering finance, law, or any MNC does (unless you're coding for an MNC).

[kamaal]

>>(there just isn't a big consumer market and big bubbly stock market, excepting China and maybe India)

I am from India. And start up scenario in India is not very great. And programmer salaries are average no matter where you work.