Bing, I am not one of the judgmental types; how ‘Ryan’ handles his family situation is his responsibility and his problem.

However, there is still a problem here. Cliff and Tim give an excellent job description of a trader. Why would anyone in their right mind take the job they described?

Fate? No. I think somewhere between the fifth grade and now he had a chance to pick a different line of work.

Fortune? to be a trader, ‘Ryan’ has to live in one of the highest cost of living areas in the country. He had to move to the ‘burbs to get by.

Fame? Tim referred to traders as ‘grunts’. They don’t spend much time in the spotlight.

The next time you see ‘Ryan’, ask him to give us an honest answer to these questions. Perhaps he can clear this up.

I’m willing to concede that there may be a few exceptional cases worldwide where people are actually working for 12+ or even 16+ hours straight. On the other hand, this Wall Street Journal article takes issue with the vast majority of these claims, equating a 70-80 hour work week to 50-55 hours of actual work.

Ryan may not see his family much now, but did it ever occur to anyone that he will probably make enough money as a trader to ‘retire’ from this job, take some time off, and coach his kids’ teams in a few years?

>>“Ryan’s” workday is not really a matter of individual choice for him, as many respondents seem to think.

Ryan chose to be a trader. Once he made that choice, a bunch of other choices were made for him.

How many people have a real choice as to where they work, how they work, whom they work for, and what they get paid for what they do?

Its been said that if you choose to quit your job, there wll be hundreds lined up to fill the vacancy you created!

Crazy bosses aren’t just created, they’re the reaction to chaotic employment demands.

In economics, supply and demand are the forces that instigates production capacities.

In employment, the clock or the “micro processor”, we’re born with determines how the “Peter Principle” plays out in our vocational lives.

There are those who know that 2+2=4 and hate it; then there are those who think that 2+2=3 and like it……hmmmm?

In my opinion, there is no amount of money worth going through what Ryan is going through. I would rather have a less stressful job and more time at home, even if it means less salary. I live in the Midwest where alot of people I know own their own companies, work hard, but still have time for family, friends, and leisure activities. They make a good living but by no means are considered wealthy. I think lifestyle choices are different for everybody, but sometimes people are afraid to make a change or can’t because of other obligations or limitations. I can only speak for myself that I have worked for the same company for 29 years and have been able to maintain a good work/life balance. I have been very lucky!

The title of the piece, Work or Life, is in itself an exercise in the fallacy of the false alternative. It has never been, nor is it now, nor will it ever be, one or the other.

This is, however, exactly how corporate America wants it seen.
And why wouldn’t it? It benefits immensely from from the willingness of its charges to stand up, lenmming like, and march into withering machine gun fire.

No thanks, I’ll pass. A dear friend of mine just died at 62 and nobody is asking how many hours were spent per week at the office.

Dead, is for a long damn time.

I wonder where exhaustion fits into Ryan’s life. I also wonder how much it affects his judgement, and how much he feels entitled to gouge his clients and company to compensate for his lack of free time.

There have been times when I felt my broker was “gaming me” for reasons unknown. Exhaustion could be one reason.

I was most interested in the extremely exact understanding of the workaholic day offered by our California commentor.

Maybe you should have ryan’s wife give a description of her day with the tots. Up a few hours before the kids, to catch up on the news. then list every though she has because it seems ryan’s job is a lot of ideas or simply descriptions of his job. everyone has many duties on their job. lastly, the wife works 16 hours plus is on duty the night shift, 7/364. i acknowledge ryan and other dad’s do this too. We could compare his daily duties with a field hand but the point that sits badly with people is when one man works 80 hours and earns 20 times more than another who works 60.

i think this is the heart of the matter, the huge disparity of worth. wall street wages are like hollywood wages, not even close to the spread of wages in most all other job areas. we americans are like that, we like equality and a fair measuring system.

all in all, ryan and family have a good life and they probably like it. except for the very poor, most of us do because money is not everything.

this is just a thought, do wall street traders have a streak of paranoia? i mean looking at numbers all night to connect some magical dots? its like reading the phone book for hidden patterns.

I guess I think of this differently. If I was given the option to work like “Ryan” for the next 10 years and then have enough money to retire if I wanted to vs. working for the next 30 years hoping not to get laid off, it really would be something to think about.

Constantly seeing your peers in their mid-40s and 50s getting laid off makes you really think.

Why would anyone become a trader?

I suppose it has to do with wanting to be in the game, and wanting to play that game at the highest level. I think that for most, it is more about the game than a desire for money that starts one down that path.

The trick is to be able to know when to let go of that which no longer serves you, and has made you serve it.

I met this MBA student once. He was the calmest guy ever. Couldn’t get worked up by anything. I had to ask him why. He said, he had been a currency trader in Chicago. His work involved $10-$100million decisions every 10 seconds (or was it: in 10 seconds, I’m not sure now). So, he couldn’t be bothered anymore by small things, like missing his plane.

However, the type of trader described by Cliff Tan has to be different, if he has time and energy to read and study all that material mentioned. between trades, I suppose.

I certainly couldn’t do that. Once I start reading the bing-blog, and all the nice comments, too, it takes me a long time to drift back to work ….

Move on people, Ryan choose that life and he must face the consequences, he is the one who wants that job and that house and his kids to go to that private school, he has to pay. He is the one who accepts that, obviously his wife is more interested in the money and what brings than in his quality of life, otherwise she would not let him do that, so cheers for them, a materialistic greedy couple, I do not feel sorry for Ryan, I feel sorry for the kids, y’all know what happens when the father figure is absent from a home.

All I can say is that I am a trader..not working for an institution, but I trade my own private account. Trading is like flying a fighter jet — I am a technical trader, so I don’t care for all the little news items, just the major reports. You have to be glued to the charts, you have to keep track of all the news, you have to know what happened before…you are tracking 1 million things at once and watching VERY CLOSELY your position. I have been to the CBOT and watched the traders in the pits..Trading is nerve wracking (at first) and after doing it for a while, you make a kid with ADHD look like the most calm, placid person alive. But damn, the adrenaline rush is worth it, and when you hit on a right move, to watch the chart rise, and your portfolio grow is beautiful. I guess at some point it comes down to priorities…True you could have the family, and friends, and FREE time, but then, your progress is limited. Alternatively, you could be a HIPPY and live FREE, and end your life having accomplished NOTHING. My Balance revolves around sports (playing not watching), trading, work, music (composing and playing) and women…that to me is BALANCE enough.

The likelihood of Ryan (or someone in similar circumstances) of successfuly executing a plan to rake in some big bucks for a few years so he can retire to spend quality time with his family is between nil and negligible. A family’s appetite for necessities/luxuries is endless, finding a safe place to park the acquired fortune so that it generates a solid ROI troublesome, and the prospect of attempting to reenter the job market (should the fortune turn south) make such a bold step unlikely….except for the most foolishly optimistic.

I have known a few good earners manage to pull that sort of thing off, but they have either been confirmed loners, or childless dual earning married couples, with an almost pathological sense of frugality. And I’ve even seen of few in that category that found out the fortune didn’t quite last as long as anticipated.

Wait til Ryan faces financing his children’s way through some ivy league bastion….they’re certainly not going to find old State U acceptable after the early life they’ve led. He’s gonna have to add even more hours to that hectic worklife, to finally be discarded like the husk of an old pupa. Throw in an ex-wife or two, several mixed families to support, and he might find a heart attack the preferred alternative.

But you know me, always upbeat!

It’s quite simple:

“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy sh*t we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars.”

Bing – it comes down to choices. How you want to do what you need to do. I know the prior life before the career was definitely a push into the directions one chooses. Work rich Life poor or vice versa. The balance needs to be found, if you can’t then prepare for implosion especially if you are with a family. Some define themselves by their career other call it their lively hood, Keep in mind during “The Blessed Hellride” (Black Label Society) we give up pieces of ourselves to achieve what we call the “optimum solution”. I work 70 hours to give my wife and kids…fill in the blanks. I work 80 hours to give my husband and kids… fill in the blanks. Here is my point ask your wife husband and kids what if we went with out that and this and i was around more, you might be shocked at the answer..
I recently blogged the “smelling the pasture” and said:

“had pleseant conversations with the wife and family, played with the kids and had a family experience that brought me back to my youth…yeah that was what it was like before email, cell phones and hand held communication devices that you wear like a ball and chain in prison…Wow that felt good…”

I have been torn by competition, desire to achieve and goal orientated to make X salary by age X, and the best thing I have done truely that makes me feel on top of the world career and family… 100% commited to getting them and me as much of both cakes as possible with out losing either one. That is called directing-controlling and-managing.

That’s a solid job description for a trader. The only thing missing is the unremitting, stomach churning stress.

Floor guys typically have better hours than screen traders. My info is a little dated, but in Chicago the guys trading beans at CBOT only had to work from 9 to 1:30 (plus about an hour before the open and an hour to close out). The financial pits were open from 7:20 to 2:00.

That said, a lot of the guys from the grain room still looked like they had gone a few rounds with Sonny Liston by the time they went home at the end of the day.

Work should be fun or at least interesting, long hours mean nothing if you enjoy what you are doing.

People say they have no choices so they stay in the rut.

People are inherently afraid of change……..wrong….change is great….new oppertunities, new adventures and probably more free time and money…

In any job or endeavor attitude is everything. I never play for the money I always play for the game, more fun that way and good fortune always seems to come along.

Bing. Great stuff.

Of course you can have both but work and life balance is never 50/50. I moved from the Bay Area years ago to take a step back and and take life a bit slower. I am still at the office on average 55 hours a week and I feel I have a pretty good balance.

Today is a manager or company man ever really “away from the office”? I think you would all agree that work has overflowed into our “life”. I think the way to get balance is to let “life” overflow into work. Take that 10 minute break and call your kids. Meet them for lunch (take a lunch once in a while). Send them a text about the boring presentation and the funny little man presenting it. Take off an hour at 10AM to get to the school program then make it up by staying a bit late (worth the tradeoff).

There still are weeks once in a while when I see my kids just in time to kiss them goodnight. We just have to battle and do the best we can and remember that we always have a choice.

It has been a while since I visited your blog and this is fantastic stuff Bing. Keep it rolling.

Mike from Spokane and Family Guy: Could not agree more, choices, choices, nobody pushes us into whatever track we are in right now, the fact that we can figure out possible consequences from our decisions is supposed to be the difference between humans and animals. I was a flying star on a Fortune 500 company, the only problem was that my professional success was in indirect proportion to my success (on a 1 to 2 ratio!!) as friend, son, husband and parent. I had to put the brakes and slow down, at one point in time I was responsible of a division with a $1.5 billion budget and 700 people, I now manage a very small, not even Fortune 10000, operation, $10 million size with 50 people making two thirds of what I was making before: I have never feel happier and so in control of my life like right now, and more important: I’m involved in the life of my teenager daughter and my little boy,,, wife is happy, life is good.

Thanks, Dude!

After reading Cliff’s response and all the stuff that goes into a traders morning/day, etc…it just makes me think about our financial markets and how we’ve allowed them to get out of control and require all these systems in the first place.

Think of the billions blown on ‘quants’ and traders…moving around worthless paper , pretending to understand risk and asset value. Assumptions built upon assumptions, built upon bundles of rubbish peddled by pin-striped felons. And we’re paying them additional fortunes to straighten out the mess they created. The very worst criminals aren’t housed in our prisons, they’re running our corporations.

Work or Life? Are you kidding me? Anybody foolish enough to accept these two choices doesn’t deserve to have a job or to live.

The only work/life balance that makes any sense is to make as much money as possible with as little effort as possible.

I respect welfare recipients more than I do the middle class. The middle class run around like fools pretending they have the world figured out. But all I ever hear from them is complaints about work, family, and money. If being middle class is the “American Dream”, then what all of the complaining for?

The truth is that being middle class is for losers. The middle class loses because they have all of the responsibility but no authority. They work hard to keep the country going but do not have any power over how their money gets spent. The middle class works harder and harder, but receives less and less protection and benefits.

This is why the rich and poor can continuously get by in life with little repercussions. They are not busy trying to improve the system. The rich and poor are only interested in getting all of they can out of the system. Being poor is no picnic, but I hear much less complaining from poor people than I do middle class people.

Jeez Bing I just logged in (I know your ego won’t be dented knowing some of your fans batch up to catch up) and now somehow I feel slightly embarrassed.

The discussions in this thread – who knows, maybe there’ll be someone who is in the midst of one of these work/life balance decisions who will benefit from reading about the various choices made?

After my earlier post a couple of other images popped into my head: 1) a hypothetical 32-year-old still playing single-A ball in hopes of making The Show; and, 2) I read in my local paper a few days ago about an influential local indie band whose latest CD (out on their own label) is probably their last hurrah if they want to stay full-time musicians, after 15 or so years. What do we think about folks like that? (Yes I think there is a connection to traders.)

Btw, I’m in California – not quite ready to buy that Florida house overlooking the fairway, not just yet

Cheers

I have seen it both extremes, but on the extreme of complete absorption into work, while there may be financial rewards, the cost is extremely high. I have met 40 year olds who, as guys, are simply not fun anymore, no golf, no happy hours, no video games. I have been very blessed by my position, I am good salary, time for my family and time for hobbies. If got offered double or triple my salary but lose my family time and my hobby time, I would not take it. I think that the goals of progressive leaders should be to get people to perform at the highest level and also have time to relax, exercise. Would you want someone doing a doublebypass on you who did not sleep in 24 hours? How about a truck driver in a major interstate whit little sleep? Why are white collar workers allowed to work those hours is beyond me? In that respect, there should be a law or regulation.

OK…..so maybe Ryan needs to just put a goal out there.

By “this date” I will have “this much money” and will be able to pay off my house, cars, etc, etc.

When that is done, he could be free to pursue other more self rewarding goals.

His choice…either he has an end game goal in mind..or he continues running in the gerbil wheel….

PS…
A good friend of mine in the midwest is a Millionaire through lawncare and selling landscape jobs and materials. Hits it hard for 5 months out of the year.

All he wants, he has.

Money is all over the US….its just a matter of where you go and how you want to find it….

Cliff’s words ring very true. As the wife of a corporate bond trader I have done my fair share of both supporting his crazy work schedule and demanding a better percent of his attention for myself and our 2yr old daughter. I would like to say that the ‘take responsibility for balance’ comments rang true for me but they did not. I know why he gets up at 5am to be on the desk by 6- to catch up on news and events that took place in Asia and Europe. Why doesn’t he come home before 6 each night- because he has to follow up on the trades of the day, manage his inventory and participate in conference calls. Would I prefer that he had a more “normal” 9-5 (do those even really exsist?) position? Nope. It isn’t for the money – which being employed outside of the big 3 (NYC,NJ,Chicago) means it isn’t that large. It is because the markets are his passion. He loves what he does for a job and if someone has a passion for what puts a roof over the head of their family more power to them. We do not lead an extravagant lifestyle and our daughter is not on the road to attention starvation. I also work in the financial sector so I may have more compassion or empathy for what he goes through daily but really is that necessary? Ryan is working to the bone hard and he has made his choices just the same as someone else who decided that everyday they were going to stand up and walk out the front door without an another thought as to what will transpire overnight to the global economy. Passion for your job is rare, what would any of us do to feel passionately about our work everyday? It makes the madness tolerable.