
The Incalculable Value of Finding a Job You Love - sonabinu
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/upshot/first-rule-of-the-job-hunt-find-something-you-love-to-do.html
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devonkim
Wasn't the original paper not that happiness decreases after $75k but that you
get diminishing returns drastically afterward? For example, more than 50% of
billionaires would be more satisfied with their lives while around 75k only
about 42% would be and that at 35k it's 20%.

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tim333
Yeah I think it's diminishing returns. Also the $75k depends on the living
costs where you are. It'd probably be nearer $150k for the bay area
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/17/map-happiness-
bench...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/17/map-happiness-
benchmark_n_5592194.html)

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clueless123
Looong time ago, as a recent graduate I had my ideal job doing research at the
university, It was challenging, lots of fun and actually paid quite good..
(~$60K from 20 years ago) then I got the offer to join a new hot .COM, doing a
boring, meaningless (technical sales support) job for four years and then not
_have_ to work for the rest of my life!

Two years after, with close to a million bucks on stock options, the whole
market crashed and left me (Financially) about where I would he been, had I
not left at all..

Would I do it again? Sure!.. Why? The experience made me much more marketable
for higher paid positions from there on..

Work is work.. Not life. Go to work to make money, so then you can get _out_
of work and do what ever you truly love to do..

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ux-app
> Work is work.. Not life

except that you're trading the very best hours of the day (and best years of
your life) for the money you're earning. Considering the sheer number of hours
you are at work, work is a big chunk of life.

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whamlastxmas
Really nothing here that most HN readers don't already know about. The TLDR is
that money has diminishing value after a point (around 75k for regular cost of
living area last I looked) and doing work you find interesting is more likely
to get you in the "flow" mindset, which means you'll get better at your job.
Nothing else is really said in article.

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seibelj
Or you can earn $150k a year, put the excess into savings, and retire N years
earlier. Which is part of the reason I find the "once you hit $75k a year
money doesn't make you happy" arguments meaningless. Please, anyone with too
much income, shoot me an email.

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whamlastxmas
You're missing the point. You're happier at a job making $75k than $150k.
Having more money in a bank account doesn't offset the unhappiness caused by
the $150k job. Human brains are like that.

The total NET happiness over a lifetime might be higher with the $150k,
because like you said you could retire much earlier. However, happiness is an
odd topic, and overwhelmingly people always have a baseline happiness they
return to. And the $75k figure is sort of the number that allows you to have
that baseline happiness (i.e. no overbearing negatives in your life due to
money). So I would think it'd very probable your lifetime happiness would be
higher with the $75k job.

Everything in this comment is a generalization and obviously doesn't apply to
every single person. Really smart people working at Google don't necessarily
fall into the generalizations of numbers like these because on the large scale
(billions of people) Google engineers are outliers.

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seibelj
I just disagree with the entire argument. What is "baseline"? I would be so
much happier if I had a private sushi chef who made me dinner every night. I
would be so much happier if I had a personal trainer who gave me a workout
twice a day, every day. I would be so much happier if I had enough money to
only work on topics that interested me, and quit anytime I feel like it. I
would be so much happier if I could pay for college for everyone in my city so
that everyone had equal access to higher education.

My answer to "how much money would make you happy" is infinite. There will
_always_ be something I spend money on to make myself happier.

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nucleardog
The finding of the research (which is abundant and disagrees with you, as
others have mentioned) basically boils down to:

Yes. Getting a private sushi chef will make you happy. But after your 1,000th
straight day of having your own personal sushi chef make you meals, it starts
to become mundane and no longer provides much of a net positive effect on
happiness.

What _will_ significantly effect your happiness long term is negative things
happening to you. Not being able to pay your bills, not knowing if you're
going to lose your home next month, eating ramen because it's all you could
afford - these sorts of things eat at you.

The $75k figure people throw around is the point where, supposedly, you're
making enough money that you will avoid most of the stresses/negatives of not
having enough money so there's nothing dragging you down from "baseline".
Adding more money after that will allow you to make marginal increases in your
happiness, but nothing significant relative to removing those negatives.

