Best-Educated Americans are Most Stressed at Work

Andy Nguyen

Andy Nguyen

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Interesting study. It found people with PhD are most stressed at work, followed by Master holders.

These workers, who have become known as "knowledge workers" and the "creative class," are the people on whom companies typically depend most. Even so, they harbor the most concerns about job security, as well as having the resources to do their jobs effectively and maintaining a work/life balance.

The five industries with the most-engaged (stressed) employees were:
  • Construction
  • Professional services
  • Business services
  • Information technology
  • Public utilities
Disengagement — that is, employees not caring about their jobs or companies — was reported highest in:
  • The retail sector
  • Real estate
  • Public administration
  • Education
  • Manufacturing
Source http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience...ducatedamericansexperiencethemoststressatwork
 
The five industries with the most-engaged (stressed) employees were:
  • Construction
  • Professional services
  • Business services
  • Information technology
  • Public utilities
Click to expand...

PhD in ... construction? :confused:
 
How about military engineers? Shouldn't they be most stressed in any country?! Being in the center of interest for intelligence officials...
 
In a normal functioning group or society, in order to get things produced, people must "pay" something (ie. incur a cost).

When we agree to work for an organization as an "employee", we agree to be paid more or less a fixed price, for an unspecified type and amount of labor.

In the workplace, people who ask us to do things (ie. coworker, boss) do not actually pay us directly for completing that work.

Due to the above, we are frequently asked to:
- do things that are inefficient
- do things that are repetitive
- do things that are not well thought out
- do things at a moment's notice

This is because asking people to do these things is "free" for the asker, so the short and long term "costs", in time, do not need to be factored into the decision to ask for the work. What this means is that we, as employees, do not own our time. As a result, employees who are able to do more things, more capably, will be penalized for their abilities. This type of workplace stress is defined as "time slavery".

I hold these as self evident truths.
 
CPO said:
In the workplace, people who ask us to do things (ie. coworker, boss) do not actually pay us directly for completing that work.

Due to the above, we are frequently asked to:
- do things that are inefficient
- do things that are repetitive
- do things that are not well thought out
- do things at a moment's notice

This is because asking people to do these things is "free" for the asker, so the short and long term "costs", in time, do not need to be factored into the decision to ask for the work. What this means is that we, as employees, do not own our time. As a result, employees who are able to do more things, more capably, will be penalized for their abilities. This type of workplace stress is defined as "time slavery".

I hold these as self evident truths.
Click to expand...

That's why the wage and benefits package is known as "compensation" -- compensation for giving up your time and free will. The wage slavery is often euphemistically referred to as a "career" but -- hehe -- don't kid yourself.
 
Hence the idea that young people go into finance to "strike it big and be millionaire by 30" then they can retire and do something they truly enjoy. Sadly, that remains a pipe dream.
 
Finance is not a good field to go into if you want a lottery ticket imo. The 20 year old multi millionaires come from the facebook, myspace, twitter, etc. crowd.
 
Agree with Alexxei. The millionaire finance people are super star traders who have a big year and quit. Working in finance gives you an above average paycheck with above average grief.
 
Anthony DeAngelis said:
Agree with Alexxei. The millionaire finance people are super star traders who have a big year and quit. Working in finance gives you an above average paycheck with above average grief.
Click to expand...

What if you work in your career to get to the point where you have your own book/funding. The process to becoming an elite trader isn't at all like the one to coming up with a lucrative internet idea. Mean salaries are way higher and finance and the high outliers are still there. Also a lot of these internet millionaires were somewhat lucky; their ideas succeeded when near-substitutes failed.

What Alexei said was pretty naive. Not many people go into the internet industry with the intention to get rich quick, and for good reason.
 
I occasionally get called as an expert witness for certain aspects of work and technology in banking and had to explain to a lay audience how stressful it was to work on a trading floor as a quant. I decided to use the example of a case where I had to write quite tricky code with no help for an undocumented interface that handled impressive amounts of money whilst occasionally people kicked a football at my head.
 
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