What do you do to pass the time at work when there is no work to be performed? I’m in a role where face time is valued. For whatever reason, the longer you work, the better you look as an employee in the eyes of superiors. People love to brag about sht like, “I was here until 12:30 AM, why did you leave at 9:00 PM?” I’m playing the game and putting in 11-13 hour days. However, there is not enough work to perform during this timeframe.
I know I’m not the only one in a role like this. For those who feel my pain, how do you ‘work’ when you’re really not working. I’m tempted to take on a pet project for my own benefit so I have work related material on my desk yet it will soley benefit me. For now, here is a list of things I do when I’m frontin at the office.
Pay my bills.
Read financial news.
Post sht on AF.
Peak at FatWallet for deals/free money.
Check out personal mail on my phone.
Etc.
I want to find a way to double dip, ie earn a few bucks on the side while I’m at work. Any ideas?
Before the fingers start pointing at how I’m unethical/lazy/disloyal/typical black guy/etc, rest assured that I complete all of my obligations, help my team, and do what I can to push for progress. I just can’t stand how valued ‘face time’ is around here. Furthermore, I’m rather good at Excel while many of my teammates are not, whom are also unwilling to learn or adopt new ways of completing their tasks. I’ve witnessed some sinfully painful ways of evaluating data manually when a simple Excel formula could do the same thing human error free.
I’m in a somewhat similar position. Just had some big projects end, and have not really ramped up on anything else for the moment. I’m enjoying it for a minute and just taking a breather, but I could see how it would wear on me after a while to not have enough work (I’m a workaholic and enjoy what I do).
It depends on your goals, but if I were you, I would use the time to read or otherwise improve your skillset with the idea of advancing into something better in your company or making a move somewhere else. I have a small library in my office and am always reading books to help me move up the curve no matter how busy I am – gotta keep learning and advancing. I figure the company owes me a continuous training program, even if it is self-directed and at my expense to purchase the books, because it benefits the company. Therefore, the company should provide some time for me to keep learning (even if they don’t know they are doing that). I am not sure that would work at another firm, but I am totally autonomous at this point – I just do whatever I want at any time, though strangely, people freak out if I leave early. Granted, that only works because my stock picks are killing it.
I’ve looked at side projects I could bring to work to help me make extra money, but nothing pencils for me from an NPV perspective. Investing is the highest paid profession in the world, so for me, it only really makes sense to keep investing in myself and learning the trade.
I’m not sure. If you take the top 1% of financiers (which is probably comparable to the top 1% of athletes in terms of achievement / ability – high finance is basically the professional sports of business), then I assume the financiers make way more. In a good year on Wall Street (which we have not had for some time), guys like Lebron and Kobe aren’t even on the list – you need to personally make $100 million JUST TO CRACK THE TOP 100. That’s insane. And that doesn’t count smaller fund managers making $1 - 10M, of which there are a good number. Not thousands, but you can definitely make it to that level even if making it to the top of the heap is unlikely. Add to that the fact that you can play this game for your entire life instead of only until age 35-40, and the fact that if you are good, you can compound the money, and I think it’s hard to argue against finance.
That’s why I explicitly said “not including outliers”. The top 100 of people in finance are like the top 0.001%. In other words, they are statistically insignificant - you and I are not going to be the next George Soros.
The average salary for an NBA player is $5.5 million. $1 million compensation, as you cited above as a low range, is much higher than what an average finance person makes. Even if NBA players have short careers, they have much higher expected total compensation than finance people. Furthermore, athletes earn money early in their careers, so you could argue that the present value of their compensation is even higher.
Furthermore, if the category is “professions”, you cannot use the example of “1% of athletes” if “athletes” includes non-professional athletes. Just because I can play basketball does not mean I am comparable to Kobe Bryant. Similarly, if some random dude can make trades on Scottrade, it doesn’t mean he is comparable to Warren Buffet. If you choose to use NBA players as the “top 1% of athletes” in your comparison, you must assume that “finance people” includes all people who participate at all in investments - grandmas, random dude, etc.
I have to question whether the top 1% in finance also represents the top 1% in ability in a pure meritocracy sense. In professional sports there’s no luck, no nepotism, no racism, it’s pure ability – for the most part the best players are compensated fairly according to their ability.
In finance it’s a completely different story. There are plenty examples of people who got in at the right time, meet the right person, blah, blah, blah and were able to make it big time. Not to discount their ability but there’s the fact is there are people who are nowhere near the top 1% in earning in finance who could be had they made the right moves early in their careers; as there are people in the top 1% who wouldn’t have been there had they not caught a lucky break at some point. This is clearly not the case in professional sports i.e. kobe didn’t meet MJ at a CFA luncheon and get a junior position with the lakers.
I just read online that the average NBA career is 4 or 5 years. If that’s true, then finance is definitely substantially better for the reasons I cited. Even if the average salary is $5.5. The reason is that the compounding of the $1M salary (which is low as discussed below) over decades beats the larger up front payments of the $5.5M. It’s true that the NBA player could hire an investment adviser and compound as well, but most don’t – being able to compound your savings is a major selling point of a career in finance.
And it’s very likely that the $1M would grow over time. Even if you “only” run a book of $100M (nothing in hedge fund terms) with 15% average returns, that’s $5M a year pre-tax and before expenses (which probably eats up most of the 2% in the fee structure, so call it $3M pre-tax).
Point is, in a high-end hedge fund or private equity job, $1M is not “that much” anyway – many comp packages are much higher than that.
I used the 1% example because that is what pro athletes represent. There are tons of farm league baseball players earning $30K a year, just as there are tons of people that work at Fidelity, bulge bracket banks, etc. but aren’t really in the big leagues. They are in “finance jobs” but not “fund management” jobs. I was specifically only referring to people playing at the highest levels which is the only comparison that makes sense. If anything, finance is still better in that regard, because even if you don’t make it to the top 1%, you are at least reasonably guaranteed of a high paying job (unlike people in the farm league who make it to 30, never crack the big leagues, and become high school gym teachers – I know two people like that from my high school, and they don’t have much to fall back on).
I think there is a cognitive bias because people have seen NBA players on TV and think, “Yeah, that happens, even if I couldn’t do it” whereas most people don’t personally know successful fund managers that consistently outperform and make gobs of money. My bias is the reverse since I personally know several people like that and believe it can be done through the application of consistent hardwork and the correct approach (unlike most, I don’t believe you have to be a genius to make it to that level).
Agreed. Maybe sometimes friends, peers, and family put a tremendous pressure on most of our decisions. We want to do something really meaningful, but what if those who are important in our lives disagree? Would you recommend to play their game, the System’s game … or just follow our dreams regardless anybody else’s opinion, even if that may become a very lonely, uncertain path?