Thu 20 Dec 2007
What would the expected gain need to be for it to be worth it to you to agree to take a job that separated you completely from friends and family for an extended period of time?
(example: a 24 month posting at an arctic research facility with no outside contact)
Posted by dyslexia16 answers so far!
I’d need Fuck You Money to make it worthwhile. Giving up X (where X is sufficiently small) amount of time with my family is worth it only if I get to spend Y (where Y is sufficiently large) amount of time dedicated to them after X is over. So, for example, if X were a month, I’d expect Y to be six months. It increases geometrically from there. In your example, if X were 2 years, I’d expect Y to be the rest of my life.
Paul Graham commented in one of his essays (that I can’t locate ATM) that, paraphrased, a startup is like trying to fit 40 years worth of work into 2 years. What he meant is that trying to make it rich with a startup is like trying to cram 40 years worth of the average worker’s economic productivity into a few years of completely focused time. You give up a few years of your life by dedicating yourself completely to the startup, and in exchange, you hope to come out of it with the equivalent retirement savings of someone who slaved away 9-5 for 40 years.
Getting to walk on Mars.
If it were for something I was passionate about (say apprenticing under a master cook in the Italian countryside), I’d do it just for the life experience. Of course, it would be highly dependent on the time … 1-2 years, probably. Anything longer would be a harder decision.
Two things:
1. No outside contact? As in, no internet? Recipe for madness. Or I’d get some writing done, I suppose.
2. Actually, this’d have to be a pretty extraordinary offer before I’d seriously consider it. Making stacks of money isn’t at the top of my priority list—I enjoy spending time with my wife, having ample free time, being more or less comfortable in my day to day life—and so for money to be a compelling offer, it’d have to be damned compelling. Something both of us could get on board with. I suppose that’s dbl’s Fuck You Money principle, but it’s something I’m less ready to embrace as a goal/possibility.
huh.
I missed the “no outside contact” clause. I assumed that I’d get email/phone, even an occasional weekend visit, as part of the deal. That would be a deal breaker.
It’s also personally interesting to me that I focused entirely on the money side of things. Granted, the money is a means to the end of being able to completely focus on family for the rest of my life - to be able to always be there and do anything we wanted to together. The concept of the act itself being valuable in its own right didn’t really occur to me. I wouldn’t really consider doing something I absolutely hated for 2 years, ever, no matter what the reward.
Over the years, I’ve gone through phases of considering doing some kind of work akin to missionary or Peace Corp activities, but I’d want to take my family with me on such excursions. Granted, we’d be cut off from extended family and friends, but that’s less of a sacrifice for me. I’d be much more willing to move away from extended family and social circles for a lot less return if I could take my immediate family with me.
For me this isn’t a conditional.
I do it because I enjoy seeing other parts of the world, learning new languages and cultures, and meeting new women. Teaching people how to teach is satisfying work, and the pay is acceptable if not excellent. Being away from Canadian friends and family for the last 15 years, and then away from Polish friends and family for 10, and then Kyrgyz friends and family for 5, is bittersweet… But hey, there are new friends and family waiting in any place you choose to hang your hat for an extended period of time!
In about six months I’m going to Africa for two years with the Peace Corps. It’s not NO contact, there’s a chance I’ll have occasional internet access, and I could use the mail system, though that would be months between my sending the mail and someone receiving it, and vice versa. My motivation is pretty similar to Meatbomb’s - learning a new language, immersing in a new culture. And teaching is pretty fulfilling anywhere (I’ll be teaching science). If they’d told me that I wouldn’t even have mail or the chance of internet…I’d probably still do it.
Is it wrong, or in some way elitist, of me to assume that this is an easier decision for those who aren’t married w/ children? Meatbomb and solotoro seem to be coming from a completely different frame of reference than I. I wouldn’t abandon my wife and kids for two years to pick up the Inuit language, for instance.
Two things would be necessary for me:
Fuck you money as already mentioned and an unbelievable experience (such as walking on Mars, going to Jupiter, meeting an alien, etc).
Without both of these, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t leave my family.
Oh, in my case you’re totally right, dbl. I wouldn’t have even considered it while I was married. And if I had kids, I probably wouldn’t do it. When I talk about family, I’m talking about siblings and ancestors. If I had descendants I probably wouldn’t do it, and if I were married I definitely wouldn’t do it. At least not for the same reasons. I suppose I might still consider it if I were going to be part of some world-changing discovery, like if it were the first test of faster-than-light travel or something, but no, I wouldn’t just leave for two years to experience a new culture if I were married.
Oh I’ll do anything for enough money. If we’re talking about no prestige, no special stimulation, just working in a cubicle with no outside contact whatsoever, no internet, no tv, just loner entertainments… I’d say a cool $850 per day (net) up to 30 days could work for me. More than that and I’d die of hysteria. What? That can happen!
Right now there’s nothing positive I can think of they could pay/give me to not see the next two years of my daughter’s life. I could imagine they could threaten her life or my wife’s life and drive me away for that length of time though.
If it were something that was personally fulfilling and would leave us set for life, my husband would be the first to push me out the door.
Say, for instance, I went back to school for art or botany, and turned out to be a wunderkind. Then I was offered a chance to study art in Paris or to travel to the rainforest to search for medicinal plants. It would all have to be ethical and on the up and up and chances are, if it were Paris, he’d be tagging along with me.
Also, they use satellite phones on Mt. Everest, why couldn’t I use one in the rainforest?
No to the Arctic Circle, I already live in Maine. No to outer space, seen too many movies with scenes of depressurization. A thousand times no to anything having to do with sitting in an office cubicle!
If extended meant more than maybe a week max, I can think of no price that would make me do it. Completely without contact seems like an unlikely situation, in this day and age. Does that include mail?
The difference here is because I’m married. Our culture encourages a certain amount of separation from family members (ancestors and siblings)as part of growing up- so that seems normal, even in your normal life you probably go weeks sometimes without talking to relatives.
Required gain: an opportunity of a lifetime. I could totally do the arctic research thing. Nowadays there’s not really such a thing as a situation without any contact at all, though. There would need to be a good community of people at the site, and that’d shift from critical to absolutely necessary if there actually was no contact with the outside.
This makes me think of the antarctic researcher who performed her own biopsies for breast cancer and was diagnosed long distance with a delay of months before she could be evacuated. At one point she was discussing the possibility of performing surgery on herself with cancer specialists over the internet– they were describing what it would take to pull it off. Can you imagine being her family or friend and hearing those kinds of updates long distance? Must have been really hard.
I couldn’t do it.