FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog
November 27, 2006
Keeping Up With the Vanderbilts
From the obvious headline department: a piece in today's New York Times called "Lure of Great Wealth Affects Career Choices."
It's an article about people who grew up dreaming of, and attending graduate school with the purpose of, becoming doctors and professors. Once they reached these positions, however, they decided that low six-figure salaries just weren't high enough. One man went from a $200,000 per year hematology-oncology practice to a seven-figure biotech consulting job at Merrill Lynch. A Dartmouth business professor left academia for multimillion-dollar positions in Wall Street firms.
Everything's all well and good if these people happen to love consulting and equity firms. But the problem here is that the Times' particular subjects don't especially love their jobs, or at least they don't say they do. They love medicine and education. The doctor still does hospital rounds on his free weekends and the former professor squeezes in one adjunct class a semester.
What do you think of the trade off? How much does one really need to earn? What would it take to make you quit your career for a more lucrative one?
Posted by Josie Swindler at November 27, 2006 12:10 PM | Category: culture |
4 Comments
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How much money is enough? When do you reach the top of the money tree? Bruce Willis said that he has enough money to throw rocks in the river the rest of his life...then, why doesn't he? I would.
And why don't you? Sucking on the nipple of ego, the thrill of one more victory, one more power tripping control over something, proves making the money is more important than the money itself.
How empty.
meaningful topic. I think this is more obvious in under developed regions.
The basic problem USA finds itself in is that we have not put our money where our mouth is and that misalignment is our current struggle. We value minds (nobel, other intellectual awards) but those people do not make money. Many come to USA to attend university-- we value that as a nation and they value that, too. However, university professors do not make much money. Teachers do not make much money. USA feels their medical doctors are to be held in high regard, but a football player or Athletic Director at a university makes more money than first year doctors. Until we place our paychecks behind our most valued servants-- we will struggle with recruiting and unequal pay.
I very much agree EK. The flashy jobs like wall street traders, athletes and movie stars are what we see on tv and what we begin to secretly crave. More flash, more money and a certain number of Americans want that. So enough is never enough, because...what about THOSE guys? They have what I don't have...gotta get that. While our children fall lower and lower on the global education ranks and more people in the Nation's capital have permanent sleepovers on frozen benches at night. I'm working on it...