Other Professionals Make the Same Trade Off (Score 1)

In criticizing those who choose to put in obnoxious hours, it's easy to forget that other professionals are often in the same spot. Young attorneys, for example, often start out in positions where they have to bill 40 hours per week. You can only "bill" an hour (or a six minute increment, more accurately) if you've spent that time doing work directly attributable to a client (which doesn't include lunch, coffee breaks, required legal education, strategy meetings, and other assorted stuff you have to do for the firm). Sometimes the partners can cut your hours down if they think they are "unreasonable" (as in "it shouldn't have taken you x to do that"). Of course to bill 40, particularly as a new attorney, you're going to have to put in at least 60, maybe more, and with a relatively small firm, you might get paid as little as $30,000. (No kidding, I've seen the offer.) Factoring in law school loans, it's only a few steps above indentured servitude, with the hope of maybe making partner in seven or eight years. And the newbie attorneys, I might add, aren't getting free snacks and sodas. Definitely not for me.

It all depends on your attitudes about work though. Personally, I'd much prefer to have a life. But many of my friends who work insane hours, including some who are in the 12+ hours/day category, say their work is their life, and they like it that way. Isn't it all about what you personally like better? So who am I to judge??