Originally Posted by Dude
Originally Posted by Bostonian
Originally Posted by JonLaw
It's pretty much the BigLaw system for elite school undergrads.

It's an insane inhuman system for the simple reason that it's an insane inhuman system.
I don't think it's "insane". If you want to make a lot of money in your early 20s, you usually need to make some sacrifices, and employers know it.

If "make a lot of money" is so highly ranked among your priorities that you're willing to accept the kinds of trades they're asking for (and which you've presumably already made in the achievement arms race required to get the job in the first place), then insanity has already been achieved.

It's all about inter-temporal consumption smoothing and the attendant subjective discount rates people attach to consumption now vs. later, be it for leisure, products, or what have you. I wouldn't say one set is "better" or "worse", just that they're different and filtered through different subjective lenses. Just as people vary in risk appetite, so too they vary in intertemporal "patience".

Personally, while I wouldn't want to pull the kind of hours now that I did in the past, I'm grateful I had the opportunity to do so early on. In a few years I gained the experience that people in in-house corporate roles would have had to slog through decades of work to see. Those time economies were definitely worthwhile, and I think they often get overlooked in the work-life balance calculus.