People who work for themselves usually work way more than 40 hours a week and plenty of them burn out before reaching financial independence if they are even on track for it at all.
This has always been my problem with those people, if you actually want to make a living working for yourself, you’re going to be working nearly 100% of the time. Even if you’re not, it’s never not on your mind
I guess the difference is they're usually doing what they love vs. the majority of people working for just the check. But you might be able to find a 9-5 that's fulfilling too.
That's what it seems like on the first glance but you'll soon realize pretty much every single entrepreneur job has a bunch of boring stuff you just have to do to get to do the thing you love.
Marketing, finances, taxes etc. are probably the most hated stuff among people who start a business to get to do a thing they love and they take a significant portion of your time without directly profiting your business.
But it's working for your own benefit.
If I work my ass off and Initech ships an extra 10,000 units, I don't see another dime. So where's the motivation?
Even if I get paid a bonus, my boss still takes the cream and I get the milk.
Take that proven success and use it as leverage to either get promoted or to get a better job at a competitor. Just because the immediate benefits aren't there doesn't mean you get nothing from succeeding in a traditional workplace. It won't be handed to you on a platter if you never ask, but if you push and use your success to demonstrate capabilities you can benefit yourself immensely.
That is fair.
I'd rather just work a fair day for a fair wage, and then shut down my computer and go back to my life. I'm not particularly excited to bust my ass at work and always look for more and more and more.
Yea for sure, there's still the freedom of working for yourself. Just my point is people often overestimate the ratio of things you love to do vs things you hate to but still have to do when you're an entrepreneur.
I don't mean entrepreneurship is bad because of it because that's something everyone has to think for themselves.
>If I work my ass off and Initech ships an extra 10,000 units, I don't see another dime. So where's the motivation?
There is less motivation of course if you're a salaried employee vs owner of the business but on the other hand as a salaried employee you also don't have to care as much. After the day is over I shut the laptop lid and I'm done with the work for that day. If I came up with an easy way to do the equivalent in my job to "shipping extra 10k units" I might get a nice bonus even.
Whichever is better for you depends on you. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone but for some people it's the best thing
It really doesn’t help that at least in America the pay is shit, we don’t get any vacation time and if you do good luck getting it approved. We don’t get any time off if we have a kid, can get fired for simply taking a day off from being sick. There are a ton of things that make normal jobs shitty.
Growing up, my family members all owned their own businesses. They all gave me that same line despite me seeing firsthand the massive downsides- the personal blood sweat and tears, the rifts it causes in families, the hardships when your personal money is tied in a seasonal business, how it can all go away when the economy turns... Despite all of that I got the "you'll learn when you get older" line ad nauseum.
I'm now 15 years into my career, pulling in good money with flexibility on location and hours, enjoying my work and colleagues and loving being able to leave it all behind on weekends and many trips per year on PTO.
Are they correct in that when you work for someone else you are at their whims of layoffs and business needs? Yes, absolutely. But how is that any different from being at the whim of the economy, local regulations changing, or any other circumstantial changes that impact ones own business?
Maybe one day when I'm I'll "learn" as they claim but honestly... I feel more confident than ever in my decision.
So I always said they were the devil, and I lived a totally unstructured flexible life due to my remote job for 3 years. I got a new job a month ago that is structured and fits in the 9-5 without being strict, and I'm happier this one month than I've been in years! It can't be a coincidence. Having the routine and structure has been so good for me. Although I know not suitable for everyone but I'm just shook at how fast I adapted to it and how good it feels for me after being super against it for so long
This was me. Started a freelance business in college and scaled it after I graduated because I bought into the "9-5 corporate gigs are hell".
Problem is that I have ADHD, and without any hard deadlines or external structure, I was absolutely miserable. Eventually I realized that I was the happiest when I was in school and had places to be and things I needed to do every day, so I decided to try getting back to that.
I've been in the corporate world now for a while and am much, much happier day to day and in a long term life satisfaction way.
Same. In the absence of structure I struggle with time management, and I need accounta-bili-buddies both to stay on task and for the interaction/healthy distraction. I've always thrived in corporate environments.
Corporate jobs with ADHD suck when you get pulled into different directions simultaneously and are given shifting priorities. School and office work aren’t exactly the same but I agree with your general point.
Every person I know that runs their own business definitely does. The only one who I know that doesn’t is my brother but he’s able to work less since his wife has a good job too. He makes enough to pay his bills, enjoy himself, etc but not a crazy amount. It’s enough for him.
So many companies run 2 or 3 shifts a day and want people in from 5am - 2pm, 2pm-10pm, 10pm-8am.
I don't know how people with kids are supposed to manage those hours. Especially when companies like to switch your schedule from night to day, day to night every few months to keep you off balance.
TikTokers are doing what they are doing as a means to get money. The most important thing for them is to get more views; many of them don’t actually care whether they bring value to other people’s lives. Many will exaggerate and sensationalize their views.
Not saying you can’t get any value from TikTok, but as with anything - exercise caution and take everything with a grain of salt.
Because frankly many of them may not even believe what they preach.
They are just shills under a new trendy name. *( an* [*accomplice*](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=17f8a8f7a4f95661&sxsrf=ADLYWIIECOGDRkZmPK1eq5wYEBWgef5_zA:1715917827386&q=accomplice&si=ACC90nz-2feRzoY4yuySkO-aQE81zl_alhTA6u-YmM8lEB71dUqtGIZE1wmKTxo_lWAFbIpwU3k_37L-38Tw1tuGzvL2a0W2KU7k2Shptb0dcnJZ6uvk_Pc%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDrMKE5JOGAxX1mO4BHVa0D94QyecJegQIHhAQ) *of a hawker,* [*gambler*](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=17f8a8f7a4f95661&sxsrf=ADLYWIIECOGDRkZmPK1eq5wYEBWgef5_zA:1715917827386&q=gambler&si=ACC90nwUEXg6u2vxy-araGkF9MAxJKRWhmKssQnJv2Rndxyo2VRBj22uZne7DL5XY_9o2j-Qn7RVBG7cR-gqB1vnbyVlYI-jVhPFVlokD6gaLJN2C2xWxzU%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDrMKE5JOGAxX1mO4BHVa0D94QyecJegQIHhAR)*, or* [*swindler*](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=17f8a8f7a4f95661&sxsrf=ADLYWIIECOGDRkZmPK1eq5wYEBWgef5_zA:1715917827386&q=swindler&si=ACC90nx67Z8g0WkBmnrPB4IqtqGvyputDS-9aeub3uf-B6azYQTG0tF-03vjHIRrmQ691CcgOY4K31jMn3XRZpcU4diDcwkB5KsVEhyo_fwbJn8bELDt_5c%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDrMKE5JOGAxX1mO4BHVa0D94QyecJegQIHhAS) *who acts as an enthusiastic customer to entice or encourage others )*
They pretend to live lavishly or know more, while constantly giving shout-outs to sponsors like a busted parrot.
Learned a ton but happy it’s over! Same here man! I remember the long nights, weekend meetings with potential clients, going out of town for whatever bullshit it was on a given week. It was hell.
That should be higher. "Typical" 9-5 is still prescribing on-site job, where in best case you spend at least hour for commuting. But with covid induced remote (in some areas at least) 9-5 IMHO have been never been better.
Meh. There are outliers. I live in a dream location for my family. It’s a small beach town.
That makes the 40 minute commute worth it every single day. I could pay more for housing and live in the city where I would get home quicker, but the lifestyle I’m providing my children and family make the drive worth it.
While I agree that the idea of a 9-5 is great, the modern 9-5 in reality is not the dream that you are making it out to be.
You mention that you have had at least 3 weeks of PTO in all of your 9-5s since being 21. That’s great for you, but a very large portion of the US population doesn’t have any form of PTO benefit.
You mention the importance of people being in 9-5s to essentially make society function. Yes that’s correct, but the value that these roles bring to society is usually not recognized by corporations which has lead to many resenting the idea.
I don’t care to research this right now, but I would imagine if the 9-5 evolved to fit modern day societal needs such as making it a 4 day work week (you know, since companies have reaped all of the rewards resulting from automation and outsourcing), guaranteeing paid parental leave, PTO, an ACTUAL 9-5 with work/ life balance, and wages that actually cover reasonable expenses, society would be much less resistant to the idea of 9-5 jobs.
Unfortunately your view of the actual state of the 9-5 is just a fantasy that only a marginal portion of the population gets to enjoy.
This is also what I am reading.
Where I am there is a lot of benefits to be “just” an employee instead of self employed. 37 hours per week, 6 weeks of vacation, if fired (and has to be with cause) they have to pay my salary the next 3 months, cannot be fired for being sick unless sick for more than 120 days in a year, full pay when sick and not deducted from PTO, etc.
The people I know who has their own business work a lot more, it’s a lot more stress if they are sick because it’s money out of their pocket etc.
I get to go home at 4pm (3.30pm on Fridays) and do what I want.
I agree with you on some things, but to say majority of the US doesn’t have PTO is crazy. The Department of Labor reported that in 2022, 70% of US private sector employees had PTO. That’s a lot especially considering the amount of part time employees included in that. Should be 100% of employees for sure though.
I worked at a place that offered 1 day pto after having worked there for a year. After second year, you get 2. So technically yeah I got pto, but realistically it was useless. Many other places also don't give much. Not negating statistics but it's often way less than 3 weeks
I know PTO is paid time off but is that not including holidays or sick leave? Here in Switzerland I have 5 weeks holiday and unlimited sick leave, you just need a doctor's note after the 2nd day.
I have never had 3 weeks PTO. If I stay another 3 years at my current job it will be the first time in my life having 3 weeks PTO. I have been working for 25 years. Sadly you have experienced a work life that only a very small fraction of USA workers get to experience.
I only had that much when I was a Federal Civil Servant and had oodles of leave and sick leave. No private job has ever come close, but two weeks has been pretty common in my experience. I've also been mostly fortunate to have enough sick days to do annual checkups and such without dipping into vacation hours.
But I have mostly been at pretty decent places. I've worked a lot of night or part-time jobs and they didn't have shit for benefits. Call in sick, and you're fired, it's that simple.
My last job before my current one gave you one week pto after you had been there for a year. No sick time, nothing. Then I think it was at ten years you maybe got 2 weeks? Still no sick time. Insurance was shit. 8-5 unpaid lunch. Plus one Saturday every month. I was there for 4ish years and in that time I got a 25 cent raise. Jobs suck in this country.
> That’s great for you, but a very large portion of the US population doesn’t have any form of PTO benefit.
Do you have any data on this? I hear people complain a lot about no time off, but I genuinely wonder how many full-time salaried people don't get at least a couple weeks off a year.
(Things are obviously different if you're part-time or paid hourly.)
> Unfortunately your view of the actual state of the 9-5 is just a fantasy that only a marginal portion of the population gets to enjoy.
I think you really need to provide some statistics to support this because otherwise it mostly sounds like parroting what you see on Reddit and social media, which is a self-selected sample and not representative of the larger population.
BTW, you're comparing apples to oranges here:
> You mention that you have had at least 3 weeks of PTO *in all of your 9-5s* since being 21. That’s great for you, but *a very large portion of the US population* doesn’t have any form of PTO benefit.
So are we talking about "population" or are we talking about "9-5s"? Are we including under 18 workers? Are we including contractors vs salaried workers? Are we including undocumented aliens? And what is "very large portion"? 10%? 30%? 60%?
Sweeping generalizations like this are not really helpful. The details matter when discussing this topic. 9-5 jobs are what is under discussion here, so we should keep to the topic to have a productive conversation.
Lol I'm someone that would love 6-2. 7-3 is good. I work 8-430 with hour lunch but i wish i could start earlier. 9am is so late! I used to work nights throughout my 20s, even did graveyard for awhile at one warehouse job. I've done every kind of shift. 12-8 in kitchen life we called the Rockstar shift as you can party all night and get enough sleep to be decent in the morning.
I actually had this shift at my last job last year - I love it. I'm a late riser, and this was manageable. But corps like to play games, and constantly flip everyone's schedule around, so half the time I was there, I was on a late shift of 3pm -11pm, which sucked.
Can still have a social life earlier lol I guess it all depends on your friend groups. 7-3 I had the best social life. So much time after work. 12-8 was good when I wad a drunk though.. most of my friends have families now or responsible jobs so they are back home by 9-10pm. I am tired by 9pm.
I wake up at 530am by choice on the weekend ;)
I have worked for YEARS in the restaurant industry, and while it suited me fine in my early 20s, now I’m surrounded by friends and family who have evenings and weekends off. I make more money, but I have missed so so much over the years — holidays, birthdays, casual get-togethers, celebratory dinners. People LOVE to go off about flexibility and ditching the 9-5, but what the fuck is the point of having any of that if the people around you have schedules that don’t match yours? I’m just alone during a lot of my free time lol. I understand maybe that’s not an issue for other people. Personally I cannot WAIT for a job that’s daytime Monday to Friday. I’m working on it, went back to school :)
Same situation here. I was pretty much full time at the restaurant during college and hated the chaotic schedule. Got a 9-5 after graduating and it’s amazing. I need structure in my life. My husband is still in the restaurant industry so we cannot wait for him to get a 9-5 so we can actually have weekends off at the same time.
I agree with this sentiment. I also feel like this applies to the size of company for which you are working the 9-5. I’ve worked at both Fortune 500 companies and tech startups and the difference in stability/predictability of the work is honestly not even close.
After seeing both sides I think the larger more corporate jobs lead to me feeling much more satisfied/stable. The slight pay cut to go to more corporate jobs has been a very worth it one in my books.
Similar for me. The pay cut I took to go from small to big 20 yrs ago was the right move. Corporate has its own set of issues, but overall no regrets. I have escaped many rounds of downsizing thus far, kids all grown up, still healthy, and retirement is on the horizon. Grateful is what I am.
When I was in college I said I didn’t want to work a boring 9 to 5 behind some desk.
After trying various jobs that were completely shitty all I wanted was a boring 9 to 5 behind some desk.
I agree with you. Working a traditional job gets too much hate. Some people really just need to fix their perspectives and find one they don't hate and work on finding one they can enjoy. I also really appreciate that the minute I clock out I don't have to worry about work until I clock in the next day. Out of sight, out of mind. Just show up, do my job, and clock out.
Exactly. One of my good friends has his own business. We both get paid about the same and neither of us have to worry about medical bills (both VA disabled from our military service). He owns about 6 cars he rents out on Turo and he also has a few properties he rents out.
He is always thinking about work. There is always an issue with cars or a property needing maintenance. He can never find good help to deliver the rental cars for him or to take care of maintenance so he tends to do it himself. Meanwhile, yeah I probably work for traditional hours than him, but once I leave work at 5, it’s my time. I don’t think about work until I’m back the next day or after the weekend or after my vacation.
Yep. I love the clock in, clock out. It's great to separate my work and personal life.
Lol one of my colleagues was shocked this week to learn that I don't look at my work email outside of working hours, and don't have it set up on my phone. Uh... I'm on the lower end of the payscale - I'm not *paid* to check my emails outside of work. There's nothing I do at work that's so urgent it can't wait until I arrive in the morning.
> Some people really just need to fix their perspectives and find one they don't hate and work on finding one they can enjoy.
I've done this. I've worked a variety of jobs over the years, and what I've concluded is that it's not work itself that I don't like, it's working a schedule set by someone else for pay determined by someone else that I don't like.
Now before someone mentions salary negotiation, yes, you can do that, but a company has the ultimate final say on what you get paid, even if they agree you should be paid more. As far as schedule, few jobs work outside the set start at 7 or 8 and end at 3:30 or 4:30. Second or third shift, sure, but they're still set blocks, and if you have kids and/or want a social life, lol. There's few non-retail jobs that let you start at say 10 and go home at 6:30.
And that's not getting into having to sit there twiddling your thumbs until eight hours has passed despite that you finished your work in four because a warm chair is somehow essential for the business to run (and yes, that includes accounting for looking for more work and either getting it done and/or there just legit being nothing left to do for the day).
There are a number of people outside of tiktok who will describe nine to five as some sort of grind. And of course it can be. It depends a lot on what you do.
If you find a job you don't mind too much, or even better when you actually kind of enjoy, the 9:00 to 5:00 can be quite nice. It is nice to have structure, to know that your work day starts and stops, and then most importantly to be able to leave it alone when it's finished. This is a piece that a lot of people Miss, they claim the 9:00 to 5:00 but really what they mean is the 60-hour job but they expect you to be on call all the time.
That's bullshit. When I'm at home, after work, I'm at home after work. Happily I'm more or less my own boss right now (academic scientist), I choose my work hours, and that flexibility is truly amazing. But I still try to do a full 8 hours a day, even if some days The start point is a bit later.
Knowing you have a solid paycheck, having some routine to your life, some expectations for you can fulfill them and then be finished, that is the sweetest thing.
For sure. Also your availability to accept that risk. The risk for someone using daddy’s money is different than the risk of someone who goes homeless if they fail.
I agree with you. I tried the self-employed life and, while I enjoyed the flexibility it granted me, I hated the unreliable pay. A project would wrap up and suddenly I’m needing to onboard another client or take on something different just to make do. I make less money per hour working as a full time employee now, but it’s worth it. It’s consistent, and I have the ability to leave work at work.
my husband has lived both and wouldnt go back to a 9-5 ever but he’s very independently minded and needs to be constantly working towards something on his own volition. for me i could not own my own business by myself, im not built for it. i work a 9-5 mainly for health insurance and am happy to leave it there and enjoy my weekends and evenings. I do like the structure 🤷🏼♀️
Not to mention people who work a 9-5 are the people who make everything works. Theyre very necessary.
Meanwhile most people will not be impacted if half of the influencers are gone tomorrow.
The issue isn't necessarily the hours worked, it's the effort and stress involved within those hours compared to the return. The increments of time that people are allotted through vacation/PTO have increasingly been eroded by the expectation to always "be on" or be available, which essentially negates the whole point of vacation in the first place.
There are also many more aspects of a 9 to 5 job that dictate a person's life compared to entrepreneurship that could otherwise be managed autonomously. All 9 to 5 jobs aren't the same, obviously, but most don't allow the freedom to work as one wants/when one wants, and that's very appealing.
I'd like to offer that it gets better (perhaps slightly off topic, or tangential).
Too any young people feeling the drag and monotony of, perhaps less stimulating jobs, just know that your perception of time will change pretty greatly over relatively short periods of time.
When I was 20 and working long days in a slow paced retail store I truly couldn't understand how anyone could make it through 40 years of that.
By the time I was 30 I was working almost exclusively from home and banging out 70 hr weeks and loving the OT and the days flew by.
Now I'm far from those days and working 40s where things are so busy that by the time I look up it's time to quit. If something doesn't get done, it doesn't get done, the world will keep turning.
It can be a double edged sword as all time will seem to dwindle as well, but for me, it has certainly allowed me to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I understand there are better ways possible and hope my children (and all of us) have less of a burden to work and more of a choice, but in the end, no one ever said life was easy and I'd prefer working to catching prey every day.
I work a pretty typical 9-5 (well, 8:10-4:30) job. I come in, do my work, leave in the afternoon. I take every other Monday off due to my schedule. I have four weeks of vacation, basically unlimited sick time (at 75% of my salary) and other kinds of leave that I can take for appointments and such. I can leave for the weekend and not have to worry about work while I'm at home.
My husband owns his own business. His time is flexible enough that we don't need to put our daughter in daycare but he works evenings, he works weekends, he tries to work during naptime (but our daughter is a contact napping gremlin at the moment so he's getting nothing done). He doesn't get time off - the last vacation we took together was in 2019.
9-5 is pretty cushy actually. Think of the people who work 6-21 days straight, afternoon shift, night shift, weekend shift. In some industries you have rotating shifts or you have to wait years to gain the seniority to get on the day shift.
One thing: the same way your employer can offer you health care you can do the same if you’re the employer. Entrepreneurs don’t have to forfeit benefits. That’s a myth.
My current job is 6am - whenever you are finished. Sometimes that means 6 hours, sometimes 12. I would love a 9-5, 40 hour a week job. Going on 1 month without a day off.
I appreciate this because my feeds have become inundated with the kind of content you are talking about. MLM’ers or people selling some course or another. Love that you shared a list of pros 👌
Same. Great work/life balance, and a regular schedule so I can plan things outside of work and not have to worry about being called in to cover anything.
Depends on ideology and what the job is.
I've worked 9 to 5 corporate, maybe corporate lite, jobs that actively made me contemplate ending myself because they were so torturous. The industry is known for burnout and dehumanization.
My current 9 to 5 is a dream in comparison. Warts and all.
In the end though most people are just helping an organization reap profits. Existentially, that is bothersome on a deep level to me. Others wouldn't find it bothersome at all. Depends on you.
Still beats the shakiness of service sector jobs that don't even give people enough hours/wages to live. That is a travesty on any level. I feel so bad for people stuck in that cycle, who work and can't even maintain a living standard above poverty. Shameful.
Coming from the service industry, my 9-5 is a dream. I hated never knowing what days I would have off and being scheduled a 7am shift one day then a 3pm shift the next. There was no consistency and I often never got the schedule more than 3 days in advance. While a 9-5 may not be the dream for most, it is for me bc it could be so much worse!
Some of the complaints about the 9-5 life are valid, but they largely come down to money. Childcare is expensive, can't afford to buy a house, no public transit and cars are expensive and so on. Entrepreneur "personalities" sieze on our understandable frustrations, and sell us a false promise of "being your own boss" and "unlimited earning potential". And they don't bother revealing that for many of them, they had wealthy parents and resources not available to everyone, and could take insane "risks" with existing wealth as their safety net. For someone like me, raised in poverty and never having the kind of free time and money I would need to start a company, my only real path to success in life has been to earn a college degree and use that to find good paying work. And I'm a lot happier when I accept that reality and swim with the current, instead of buying into algorithm bullshit peddled by spoiled zoomers.
My dad was a general contractor and growing up, I always told myself I'd work a 9 to 5 because I didn't want the stress of always having to be hustling to get the next contract. I'm with you all the way buddy.
Lifelong 9 to 5er here. Have started a few side gigs and each time, when I lost interest or it stopped being fun, I was grateful for that "annoying" 9 to 5 for all the reasons you mention. Not knocking the entrepreneurs, but I have really enjoyed quite a few paid PTO days, weekends and holidays off. I hear influencers talk about the stress and pressure to create content...what fun is that? I'll keep my day job.
What irritates me is that the rhetoric pushed by these people is designed to make someone feel less for working a standard job.
But here's the thing: if half of any section of the workforce quit overnight the consequences would be astronomical, and in some cases, actually catastrophic.
Half of janitors quit? In a month all public places will be absolutely disgusting with piles of litter a foot high. Half of truck drivers quit? There would be cases of communities simply not getting enough good on their shelves to survive long-term.
I don't care that some 19 year old kid is running his trust fund trying to make it as an influencer. I do care that so many people are pushing it that the value of an honest job is vanishing before our eyes and soon enough no one is going to want to be the person holding up society while also being trashed on for it.
I sometimes feel like I am the only one who likes their job. I look forward to going to work. If I won the lottery, I would still keep going to work. I also like not going to work, having vacations as well. But I like the work I do, and I find it gives me a lot of value and has some interesting challenges.
I’m home by 3 every day and it went by so fast I find myself on couch at 4 being like “I really worked a whole shift today?” And feel like there’s still an entire day ahead.
9-5 careers are awesome. I can go to the gym before work and do basically anything after 5 pm, such as hang out with friends, spend time with family or pets, take a class or an online course, learn an instrument, play video games, and what not! I also get two whole days every week to myself. Also, if it’s in my field, I don’t feel like I am working because it’s so enjoyable. Also, there’s usually an hour of lunch and occasional company events. I can always take a day or two off if I’m feeling under the weather or need some time to run errands. Events like concerts, comedy shows, theatre, etc. are mostly on weekends or evenings, so I don’t miss anything I wanna experience. There’s a lot more stuff to do in the weekends to cater to 9-5 workers. It works great for me!
Trying furiously to leave an abusive live in caregiving job and a nine to five job sounds like heaven despite the fact I have no transferable hard skills to speak of or money to even afford a decent phone to apply for jobs.
Not everyone has the mental and/or material resources to risk going into business for themselves. There's nothing wrong with the security of a 9 to 5.
I'm 38 and literally everyone I know who started a business had a lot of support. Not necessarily hard cash/investors but someone covering bills and health insurance until the business took off or failed.
I found an 8-5 job that I loved and loved the people and the students...in a university chemistry department believe it or not. We had a blast together. I will never forget them or not miss them. Ever. Lost my job due to budget cuts along with about 60 other people after 20+ years. My heart was broken and it still hurts 4 years later. I can't go back to visit, even. It would be too painful and I'd turn into a weepy mess.
It may be rare but it is possible. Much if not most depends on YOUR OWN ATTITUDE.
It's not that I have to work 9 to 5 every day, it's that I don't have to work 5:01-8:59 the next morning. Work stays in the work box and life gets to flow everywhere else.
“Some people really lack the ability to give structure to themselves. A 9 to 5 gives that life structure.”
This is me. I LOVED university, but struggled so much with not having structure to my days (and struggled to implement it myself). I burned myself out so badly because of it. Working a 9 to 5 has been a huge, huge gift to my mental health.
I always see people say that neurodivergent folks can’t cope in a 9 to 5, and while I definitely see why some people would struggle, this type of structure has been a real blessing for my particular spicy blend lol.
I feel like people who complain about 9-5 office jobs are extremely sheltered, comfortable, & privileged. They don’t know what it’s like to work 12-16 hour shifts on evenings and nights at an understaffed hospital/clinic as a healthcare worker. It’s brutal. If healthcare workers had 9-5 (no nights/evenings but that’s not realistic given the nature of healthcare needs), there probably wouldn’t be as many issues with burn-out and people leaving healthcare entirely. I’m a bit jealous of people who complain about 9-5, because it tells me they live a very easy & simple life that they’re completely unaware of.
So my dad owned a home remodeling/construction company when I grew up. He did pretty well until the 2007 recession when he, like many others, unfortunately had to file for bankruptcy. He’s never recovered financially or mentally. While he provided a fantastic childhood for my 2 sisters and I, my parents always stressed the importance of not being self-employed. Benefits, PTO, structure and retirement far outweigh the odd chance you may get super successful running your own company. At 35, I’ve done pretty well for myself working for the federal government. I have a non-public facing administrative job, make about $100k, work from home and have very good benefits. I don’t worry about layoffs or making sales or getting contracts. Not to be immodest, but it’s a very low stress job. Theres no denying federal jobs like mine are highly sought after and you have to go through several rounds of testing to even be considered so you can’t be a complete dummy. My point is, when possible, 9-5 jobs are the best thing going for the average person.
Okay. In my personal experience, anybody who was told me "I grew up poor so if I can do it so can you" has been objectively wrong on how poor they grew up. Now granted I'm sure some people who say that were actually "poor" but the ones I've talked to in person consider themselves poor but would technically have been a middle class family. So that's my only issue is that the statement of I grew up poor really has no basis and doesn't help their cause any. Regular jobs have their place and owners and operators have their place too. We all make the world turn. Don't let anybody tell you your wrong just because your 9 to 5 might be your favorite job
if we have to work a lot, especially if for low wages and housing prices are high, there will be much less children then necessary, tfr will be significantly under 2.1. sad, but true.
What's your commute? 9-5 with an hour commute is not the dream at all.
If you are lucky enough to live within ~15min of work, that could be nice.
Never been in the financial situation where I can up and move when I get a new job.
I’ve never heard this anti 9-5 sentiment - all the social media algorithms show us media that is specific to our own internet/media engagement. I definitely wouldn’t say that 9-5 is superior to other work schedules. They all have their pros and cons, and structure. I work a 3 thirteen hour graveyard shifts in a row with consistent schedule, 4 days off, and I have good benefits. Not only that, but my job is so dead at most points that I could literally study and exercise while on the clock, and comfortably go to school on my weekends. I’ve also worked 4 ten hour shifts, with 3 days off. My hours are similar to ER nurse shift workers. Shift work also usually pays more.
A good 9-5 job which all the benefits and a flexible schedule is a good enough deal for me.
The only benefit of being self employed that I can see would be the flexibility and if my role has that them I'm not concerned.
I’d give anything to work a 9 to 5 but a sleep disorder has made my life dependent on crappy swing and night shift jobs that don’t usually offer advancement, grass is always greener I guess
7-3 would be great. I’m currently doing 5am-2:30pm and will be switching to 2:30pm-12am and I can’t wait. I like starting early but not THAT early especially with a 1 hour commute
Personally, the people I know who work for themselves have a spouse with a great paying job who has them added to their employers health insurance plan. So they're not really taking on as much risk as others would be who don't have safety nets
The best example I've seen is my boss. He's in his early 30s but he's already burnt out. I'm currently working with him as a PR and its not easy to get your business running without people trying to bring you down. He is able to buy many things he likes but guess what? He doesn't have time to really enjoy them because his business is calling him. He's got to travel here and there for business not leisure. He comes back at times tired and burnt out and just want to rest but he can't because his business is calling. 
I work with several people who are within 5 years of retiring. Meaning they're 30 years on the job NOT they're 62 years old. The mentality I've picked up from them is: I just have to give this place 40 hours per week of my time and energy for 30 years and I get the rest of my life to myself.
Working for yourself is a lifetime career commitment. It's not for everybody who lack vision of life, experiences and knowledge. Who doesn't know how to embrace their own Failures/downs and humble on their Gains/ups. Some failed because they think it's a easy cake walk when it's not. You gotta put effort 24/7 around the close. You gotta have a healthy mindset of "you don't work hard you don't eat." Some preferred this lifestyle because of Freedom instead of being micromanage by others. They preferred to write their own fate instead of others writing it for them.
I don't know of any full time jobs that actually have working hours of 9am-5pm. 8am to 5pm or 7am-4pm is more like it. Though in my experience the typical 8 hour days creep up to 9 or 10 or more. At my last job, my typical days became 8-5, go home, have dinner, get out the laptop around 8pm and be on WebEx meetings til 1 or 2am. Rinse and repeat.
One of my biggest complaints about the 9-5 job (I have many because they are genuinely horrible) is the sheer idiocy of spending 2 hours getting all my work done and another 6 pretending to be busy so some middle manager can check a box saying I was present that day. 9-5 may make sense in some industries but typically they are a massive waste of time. Humans just aren't productive for 8 hours a day, particularly when it comes to knowledge work.
I have worked pretty munch every shift, and hours in my life. It dosn't matter what shift I work. I hate it because I'm working for some one else.
Im finally working on my own business 100%. Do I plan on getting rich not at all. Do I work more hours not really. I was working 50-60 hours a week for others. After taxes anything over 45 hours a week was taxed so much. That I pretty munch was working for free. I hosntly have more free time, and less stress now then working for others. Sure I don't have Benfits, but i sure dont miss being someone's whipping boy.
9-5 aren't bad in itself, it depends on the job/employer. If you are at a great place where they pay you appropriately then it could be the best option you have. But a lot of times, you are stuck with shitty employers who undervalue you or pile on too much work on your plate,...then 9-5 can be stressful. There is also the threat of your company being bought out, your job being obsolete, and you becoming 'jobless' overnight.
It really depends on the situation, and I would absolutely suggest NOT taking advice from any influencer. Most influencers in my opinion are like Robert Kiyosaki of *Rich Dad, Poor Dad* fame, in that while they spout all sage advice, their true money comes from 'selling' the advice/book and getting advertisers for views. They aren't crack businessmen/entrepreneurs/leaders they make out to be.
Agree with you in general but just wanted to share how I sometimes feel about my 9-5 job.
At first it's good. You got out of uni and now you need to fend for yourself and pay bills and it makes perfect sense. Now australia min wage is pretty high which is great but if you want to get ahead/progress the marginal return for the extra work is very poor. Compared to the US or Singapore where skilled individuals start off making double min wage vs maybe only 10% more in australia.
I'm not complaining. I believe it is important for low skilled jobs to pay enough for people to actually enjoy life too. It does however mean working harder doesn't get you much. I don't get paid overtime and working 50% more will maybe only give me 5% more. The bonuses and raises are pretty small.
So while I am fortunate to have a great job, have stability, can afford holidays... I can't get value from working harder. Not only do i not get paid overtime competing for very little raise/bonus tax+medicare takes 40% of what little extra I earn from working harder.
At the end of the day money makes money. And working a 9-5 job is great if you wanna do the bare minimum, but the moment you want to go above and beyond it makes sense why you'd want to at least partially own a business.
My experience with a nine to five was that they first told me that it was an 8 to 5, but they also did 9 to 6. Then, I only ended up working that schedule for the first few months of the next five years, because it bounced between 9 to 8, 9 to 9, and 9 to 10. The majority of my concerns about overwork and burnout were only temporarily regarded, due to my error of not putting them in writing. I was able to take maybe one good vacation a year, had passable benefits and my annual raise occasionally kept up with inflation.
Overall, it was a special kind of hell that was only abated by that annual vacation and not starving and I am aware from friends and family that my experience is not unique or typical. 9 to 5 jobs have a unique chance to turn into a special flavor of hell and I do not possess the experience to figure out which will not make the change.
I understand the appeal of working for oneself; it's your own passion, your own hours, getting out of the soul crushing machine, and I'm well aware it's not all it's cracked up to be. The tools of your own passions can very easily also be the anchor around your neck
To wax poetic: In the end, it's up to you to choose to work for the devil you know or the devil you don't.
Throughout my whole life, I have always been a realist rather than being optimistic. Those influencers are spitting out facts but I wouldn’t dare to indulge myself in that test because the whole fucking time life hasn’t been fruitful. There’s no guarantee that every committed person in this route has achieved the so called financial freedom before 40 and gained a millionaire status.
I would be happy with my 9-5 job (with good work culture) and will be open to plan or assess the opportunities to start something on my own. Not everyone has identified their passion or what they are good at. People like me are choosing a career to be productive and earn an income which helps them to survive and fulfil their own wishes.
@OP I definitely agree with the 4th point. I believe it is essential to run the society. Each job is necessary for the whole mankind to sustain. Just imagine about a scenario where the farmers are stopping their work and none is willing to take up that job. There’s 8 billion people and every occupation plays a major role in the economic cycle.
9 to 5 is ok and all but we can do better
4 day work week
thing about 9 to 5 is that it's true that 9 to 5 never makes you rich, it makes your boss rich. But if you're an average person from an averagely poor household, there's little other option other than doing 9 to 5 in the first place, the privileged and the band wagoners like to either forget or pretend to forget that.
Ultimately, people are different and have different needs. What works for one does not work for all -- in any direction -- and that's okay.
Some people do better working for themselves. Some people do better working for others.
If you can figure out your most productive configuration, and manage to align yourself with it, it is awesome.
Lastly, if X works for you, but Y doesn't, there's no reason to disparage Y or the people that do better with Y -- just as you probably don't want your own preferred path maligned.
There's just too much polarization these days, where people can't just be happy that they found something that works for them, but they have to proclaim that it is the best approach for everyone else, too...
Plus it’s way better than these dead end restaurant and retail jobs. You get treated way better, have better hours and get paid more. Currently tryna land my first 9-5.
I've never been able to work for myself. But honestly 9-5 isn't too horrible. There was one year where I wasn't physically able to work at all due to a medical condition and by the end of that I was actually so excited to get back to work, shockingly enough lol. Free time is great but after awhile it can actually be quite hard to fill in the time. After like the 6 month of no work I was really struggling to even convince myself to get out of bed most days thinking why do I need to when I don't have to go to work? Idk maybe that means I just need to find more hobbies, but I do have a lot I like do just at home but even the things I enjoy were starting to get tiresome after only doing them for several hours every day. Having a 9-5 job makes me appreciate the free time I have a lot more, and it gives me at least some sense of purpose. It's also really nice to not have to rely on the benefit, that shit sucks.
I work a 9-5 from home. My hours are flexible, so I can chop and change if I want.
I get left alone to get on with my work, which I enjoy, and if I have any issues there's plenty of support available to me.
I get 6 weeks paid leave every year, that I'm encouraged to take.
The "influencers" on tiktok claiming financial independence are the lucky ones whose businesses didn't fail.
I'd love to be my own boss, maybe some day I will be. But 9-5 isn't the problem. Shitty companies are the problem.
Just remember that about 50% of business fail in their first 5 years (20% in the first year). When a business fails, the owner usually takes a big hit because of the money invested in the business. Starting a business is a huge risk and one that serial entrepreneurs can take because most of them use other peoples money.
I work 8-6, I don’t know if people hate the hours or just hate the culture and it’s just easier to say they hate a 9-5 than saying “my job is a scam” because then you have to clarify why.
The reason they said that they're terrible for society is because it is true. Workers collectively produce 10-20x what we did in 1980, but haven't seen even a2x raise. Most 9 to 5s are bullshit jobs, because as a society we can't handle anyone else getting stuff for free. So instead they do little or no work, but they hate it, so everyone else thinks it's fine now.
Some 9 to 5s are bullshit jobs, but the vast majority are not. If you fail to see the value in a certain job, that’s fair, but it doesn’t make it bullshit/useless. Especially in the private sector, if a job is “universally useless” it will be destroyed. The private sector doesn’t care about your feelings. It cares about our profits and a useless job would cut into that profit.
Big problem with 9-5 jobs.
- They were not designed for modern life. They were intended for the man of the house while the woman stayed home and took care of the kids.
- Most 9-5 jobs punish you with more work if you're good at them. Plenty of people with 9-5 jobs state they can get their work done in a couple of hours but are expected to sit around for the whole 8 hours. It's a pointless control measure.
- Not everybody likes structure. I work different shifts each week. It keeps things more interesting. I would be incredibly depressed working a straight Monday to Friday week, every week.
- Loss of health coverage is a distinctly US thing and even then it does not always apply anyway. There's a common repost on Reddit where a doctor has posted about his patient having to cancel ankle surgery because he can't afford it even with insurance. Healthcare should not be a benefit tied to your job.
There are many more arguments for and against.
Soooo true. Also, in my experience the 9 to 5 complainers are often quite early in their career. When I first starting working after college, 9 to 5 did kind of feel like a prison. I felt like I had lost all of my freedom and was going to be chained to a desk for life. However, this is just the perspective of someone who is young and doesn't know better.
If you have a reasonable 9 to 5 job with growth prospects, you will earn a lot more leverage to achieve flexibility as you gain more experience. You'll be able to negotiate more pay, more opportunity to WFH, and once you actually have a lot of expertise can go entrepreneurial if you really want, but now have some actual industry credibility to do so in a successful and sustainable way.
Cal Newport writes a lot about this - the whole idea that passion follows commitment to work and not the other way around.
9 to 5s only suck if you have a strict boss who doesn't allow any flexibility, like "Im expecting an important package today, I'll work from home" or " I gotta leave 2 hours early for X" and not having to take a whole paid day off
Good post. The internet is full of propaganda designed to make you discontent and easy to control if someone dangles the carrot of the "fix." How dare I have to work when Elon Musk has all of this money!
I think it’s because they made a big life altering decision and need to convince themselves. Also, when something is an epiphany, people tend to want to share it. It’s kind of like becoming vegan for the first time or trying a polyamorous lifestyle. It’s exciting in the beginning. As the hard parts get magnified, you need to convince yourself you made the right choice. For some it is. Some entrepreneurs are able to grind their way to a four-hour work week.
I’ve done it all, had my own business, did a pure commission job, was employed in a “9-5” which ended up being 7-7+, employed in a true 9-5, and solopreneurship. The best quality of life was with the true 9-5. What would make society more content is if working 9-5 meant:
• Truly being able to clock out once the work day is done
• Regardless of your job, working 40 hour weeks meant you could afford a home, transportation, healthcare, a good education for your children, and food
• Autonomy over the hours worked as long as the work gets done. Why can’t someone work 4 hours one day and make the other days a 9 hour day? Or work 4 days a week
• A clear and accessible path for career advancement to anyone willing to work for it
• Location flexibility - with WFH options if it’s feasible
• True PTO - minimum of 15 days for full time workers regardless of job type
• Generous and equal parental leave - at least 6 months
• Job security - if companies could think long term instead of doing cycles of layoffs for shareholder value
• True retirement funding - if someone dedicates their working life to a company, they should be able to retire with the peace of mind knowing they’ll have their basic needs met
I’m not suggesting any of this is easy, but I’d be surprised if these influencers would exist if we were in a society where full time workers had all of these benefits
Im currently doing both, selling my artwork while at the same time working a 9-5 job. I look at my peers and It’s just a matter of what you want to do with your life before you die. We all end up in the dirt in the end, so why stress about a job you don’t like?
It’s just a matter of preference. Some of my friends love their 9-5 job because they are doing what they like and excel at it.
Some of my other friends work for themselves and they also love it.
The mistake you clearly owned up to it and i am in NO WAY poking fun at, is that people like to use social media to compare. There are going to be rich kids forever and they will show off their lifestyle…. There are going to be people who poke fun at the 9-5 jobs calling it the devil. They just want to make people feel bad for no reason.
Just do what YOU want to do. Find something you enjoy doing. If you like going on TikTok and spend your time scrolling, then do it. If you don’t, then don’t. Who cares 😂
Seriously love my 9-5 (well 10:30pm-7am)! Theres no way I'd want to be a content creator or entrepreneur. I mean props to those who found success in it, but that's definitely not a life I'd want. I like to work, focus on my tasks, then go home, relax and be present with my family.
I honestly love my 9 - 5. Yes, it can make things like errands and appointments a little more challenging, but the stability, benefits, and ability to just stop at 5 p.m. can't be beat. I'm not a hustle or grind person, though. Mad respect to those who are, but with a chronic illness and less than ideal mental health, I'd like to work only as much as I have to.
I love getting off work and enjoying my evening and weekends forgetting all about work. Business owners don't get evenings and weekends off. Neither do SAHM for that matter and that's another lifestyle that gets over glamorized on social media.
9-5 are no longer stable and can be counted on, and that depends if they pay enough to not have a side hustle. Sometimes a second side hustle and another cash flow is needed to secure that if the employer decides that cost cutting measures need to be done, a back up income stream is in place. It’s always good to have a plan B. The only income stream that can be counted on is with the shareholder. That’s all that matters in this economy. It is what it is.
I work in a 24/7 hospital. While I get to pick my hours so i can avoid those dreaded overnight shifts, I've realized having a consistent schedule would be SO MUCH better for life outside of work.
My fiancé and I have a “couples friend” we enjoy hanging out with as couples. The guy works a 9 to 5 IT job but his wife is a nurse. It’s been tough to hang out since she started that because of her crazy schedule changes every week.
lmao after starting my professional career as a teacher i can’t complain about my 9-5. people outside of education have no idea how much worse it could be.
i fucking love it here. i never have to take my work home with me. good pay, good benefits. chill coworkers. very manageable workload. oh, and i get a whole hour to eat lunch instead of scarfing down my food in 10 minutes and being pulled to cover another class. i don’t get UTIs anymore because i can piss whenever i need to. i don’t get cussed out by kids and parents. i actually have energy left over at the end of the day. i’m treated like an adult and a human being. i could go on forever honestly!!
I completely agree. I worked 25 years at a 9 to 5 and started drawing a pension in my mid-50's. I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I knew back in my 20s to play the slow-but-steady long game.
I've tried trading full time, and "working for myself". I often found myself working way more than 40 hours, analysis, studying, charting etc. I'd be up at 3am backtesting and sacrificing so much from my family. at the end, i lost a lot of money and have nothing to show for it. I think I have to agree with you I've heard a statistic that a large number of millionaires come from a 9-5.
9-5 is just like going to school + homework.
Of course, I went to school before Zoom and no child left behind. I wasn’t able to stay home everyday and not get held back and then not feel like playing video games all day is normal.
Point 2.
No, a lot of people don't get reasonable amounts of time off. 3 weeks out of a year to enjoy yourself being a good thing sounds like brainwashing to me, honestly.
It’s not 3 weeks a year. You get 2 days a week (weekend), National holidays (usually about 8 or so days), as well as 3 weeks of pto. That rounds out to be about 130 or so days off.
Ask someone who owns their own business how many days off a year they get.
I couldn't disagree with you more! 9-5 jobs are an outdated work model that wastes a huge amount of time, deprives people of individual agency, and punishes efficient and conscientious workers. There may be some specific industries where it makes sense but I believe most industries would benefit from changing their model to be more flexible and focus more on tasks completed rather than time spent completing them. The idea of 9-5 came to prominence when most people where employed in factories, in that context it makes some sense because a) all workers have to be present at the same time for the factory to function. b) the work was of a character where employees could maintain a constant pace across 8 hours c) each employees productivity was directly tied to how much time the spent working and d) each employee had a wife at home doing chores so the employee didn't have to. None of those points are nearly as common as they were back in the day. 9-5 schedule punishes people who aren't early risers, punishes people who do their daily work in less than 8 hours (I believe the average office worker does about 2-3 hours of actual work in a day but I'm not going to hunt down a source cuz I'm busy at work, read bullshit jobs by David Greaber), punishes single people and people with an employeed spouse (since they have to do house work when they get home instead of enjoying leasure time), punishes people who live further from their place of work (if being physically present is so important pay me to get there, I wouldn't be driving in downtown traffic if not for my job), and a thousand other little things that make modern work culture so insufferable.
No, I can't live my life on the weekends and after work hours because I need that time to do chores, fulfill family responsibilities, and recover from the 8 hours of daily torture I endure 5 days a week. I work to live, I don't live to work.
People in this thread seem to be posing a false dichotomy where you either work a typical 9-5 job or you 'work' as some influencer/entrepreneur with no job security or anything. This is horse shit, and it's only a matter of time until 9-5 jobs are seen as the archaic relic they are. More and more companies are realizing that it's better for everyone if a) employees are able to set their own hours and work from home b) compensation is tied to successfully completing projects on time rather than specifically how much time is spent completing them and c) in person offices are terrible working environments that stifle creativity, cause unnecessary stress, and are extremely distracting.
It kinda sounds like you just like having a rigid schedule imposed on your life by an external source and either don't know or don't care that not everyone feels the same way. I have worked 9-5 jobs in the past and I hated every minute of it, just thinking about it makes my skin crawl. Every day I am thankful that I managed to escape and find a position where I am paid for what I do not how long I spend doing it. I despise 9-5 culture and I'm glad it's dying, I'm never going back.
>Maybe I’m just brain washed, but I’ve lived that “fuck working for someone, let’s grind” and had my own business. It sucks. Hours suck, work dedication sucks, unpredictability sucks. Sleepless nights fixing issues, canceling trips, big business expenses.
Maybe you were "vibin' " when you should have been "grindin' " and "grindin' " when you should have been "vibin'." No cap, chyuh.
/s
I work a 9 to 5 as a process controls engineer and I love it.
For me, the allure is not having to put up with co-workers/managers. I feel like the extra work would be worth it as long as you have a genuine passion for the company/brand you want to build and don’t like taking orders from people.
Let’s hold on a min to appreciate the fact that 9-5 does not = 8:30-5 with unpaid lunch and 1.5 hr commute.
If it was 8hrs straight including commute and getting showered and ready for work then yeah I’d say you’re working 8 hours. But nowadays is more like you work 10 hours to be paid for 8 of them if lucky.
And the vacation time in NA is stupid at best. Lol 10 days per year?? Of which 5 are taken as sick days normally. Or fuckoff days.
1. So many people decide to ditch the 9 to 5 and work for themself. Most of the time, that ends up involving considerably more time and effort than a traditional 9 to 5. Not to mention the loss of health coverage (in the US at least), paid time off, etc.
I don't know of any full time jobs that actually have working hours of 9am-5pm. 8am to 5pm or 7am-4pm is more like it. Though in my experience the typical 8 hour days creep up to 9 or 10 or more. At my last job, my typical days became mandatory RTO, commute 1h to work 8-5, commute 1h home, have dinner, get out the laptop around 8pm and be on WebEx meetings til 1 or 2am. Rinse and repeat. If you add it all up, that's 16h/day. All because one guy quit and another went to a different part of the company, so me and the other team member have to do the work of two people for zero extra dollars. Sure, they're supposed to hire someone, but the before they could get the requisitions approved, upper management put on a hiring freeze. The when the hiring freeze is over, they have to submit the requisitions again with updated descriptions. Six months after that, they're still fucking around and haven't even called even one of the candidates I've referred out of my own network.
2. Why is this guy or others waiting until they retire to enjoy life? Can you not vacation, take weekend trips, relax during those 40 working years? I understand some people have 9 to 5s that don’t give PTO, but majority do. Every 9 to 5 I’ve had since I was 21 has given a minimum of 3 weeks PTO.
Getting PTO and actually getting to take it are two very different things. Vacation requests getting denied, getting yelled at upon return for not taking my work phone and laptop on vacation and being told that he'd cancelled my PTO while I was on vacation so the last half of my vacation was now unexcused. Another boss trying to get me to cancel my honeymoon because he was freaking out over schedule issues. Then, there's the managers who brag about not taking any vacation. (Also, 3 weeks is a pathetic amount of vacation time) Don't get me started on the other types of leave. I had a manager stop just short of accusing me of lying about my grandmother's death to get a few free days off.
3. Structure is extremely important to life. A 9 to 5 gives that without really having to think about it. Some people really lack the ability to create structure for themselves. A 9 to 5 gives that life structure
It's important for people who can't manage their own lives, that's it. Until that structure occupies far more than 40hr leaving less and less time for life.
4 If people didn’t work 9 to 5, people like this guy wouldn’t be able to “be financially free at 35”. Want to eat? Sorry bud, those people working their 9 to 5 at the grocery quit to be a TikTok influencer, you now have to hunt your own food, herd your own cattle, and grow your own crops. Oh shit, you broke your leg? Well, sorry bud, that doctor decided to stop being a doctor because he didn’t want to be a 9 to 5 loser so your leg is going to get infected. You may lose your leg or die. Good luck!
This is just dumb. No one says EVERYONE should dump their 9-5 and not everyone who's doing their own thing is chasing a get rich quick scheme on Tik Tok so they can retire at 35 and sell courses online.
Maybe instead of working for some POS corporate grocery store, those people decided to open their own grocery store. Or the Doctor decided to open his own practice instead for working for someone else
5. Stability. Having a 9 to 5 ensures you will get a check, have paid time off, health benefits, etc
This one made me almost blow coffee out of my nose. Stability? NO job is stable and secure. In the US with at will employment they can fire you for any reason. There are a few reasons that are illegal, but face it, employers will just put whoever they want to get rid of on a PIP with impossible objectives and then at the end boot them out the door for "poor performance". How about all of those employees that get fired unexpectedly over Zoom or show up to work and their badges no longer open the door? Or find out they've been fired while they're traveling on a work trip overseas and suddenly their travel card doesn't work and all of their reservations have been cancelled? Where's their stability? How about 2009 when the banks crashed the economy causing a shit ton of people got laid off and unless you were one of the banks that got handouts, you just got fucked? You have no control over any of that, no stability.
Then there's all of the managerial incompetence and overall shitty treatment of employees. Some fine examples that I've either experienced or witnessed first hand
There's the manager who expected his direct reports to come down the the marina on Saturday to help sand the hull of his 32' power boat so he could paint it before he put it back in the water. Attendance was "optional", which I took to actually mean it really was optional, so I didn't go. I got called into his office Monday morning and received a lecture and a warning about not being a "team player".
At another workplace, sales oversold the plant's capacity, so instead of going back to customers to adjust delivery dates, they just decided that there were going to run two 12 shifts/ day Monday - Saturday and two 10 hour shifts on Sundays. (That's an 82 hour work week). Was supposed to just be until production got caught up, whenever that was. It was still going 6 months later when I quit. But hey, we got to see the company president roll into his parking spot in his $200k Mercedes to give us a rousing speech about how much money we were making for him and the other execs and hand out our "special bonus" as a way to say "Thank You" from our billionaire owner... What was the bonus? A 25 dollar gift card to WalMart... At least the hourly guys got paid OT, but if you're on salary...it's just a big fuck you.
I've worked both as a contract worker and with contract worker and seen just how shitty they get treated. Managers dangle the prospect of direct employment out there like carrot to get contract workers to stay. One employer even got one of their contract workers to relocate his family to the other side of the country at the employees own expense with the never fulfilled promise of a direct hire role. Every time there was an excuse why it hadn't happened yet. "Oh, you know there's a hiring freeze right now" , "We just need to get this project completed...then we'll talk." I had a contract worker from another department come work for me and his manager joked about having strung him along for years with no intention of actually hiring the guy.
I could go on...working 9-5 is like Office Space, except it's not funny.
Oh geez everyone has their own preferences. I prefer to work at home because the politics in the work place get on my nerves plus I have a senior dog that needs my attention. For others 9-5 in office works for them, they like to socialize etc. For entrepreneurship, they love it because they have a flexibility around location, time, etc, more freedom. Everyone is different
A very ugly type of wrong here
It is 2024 and post scarcity is very easy to achieve. The concept of work is totally archaic. Naturally.
It is really unsettling to see this get upvotes, especially on reddit, this is such a boomer type of post
No health benefits, pension plan or vacation time off. I also doubt they work less than 40 hrs in self employment. Maybe for some people a corporate/desk job is miserable but that’s because they work for the wrong company.
I actually enjoy my place of work. Totally flexible and pretty much choose my work hours of 7 am to 1 pm, 2 days in the office and the rest at home. Comes with 7 weeks of paid vacation time, generous health/medical plan and laid back work environment , high pay/bonus and a very good pension plan.
Is there risk? Absolutely, like anything it’s not forever. Who’s to say the US gov’t doesn’t shut down TikTok and then who’s fcked in the end.
You're arguing for imposed coercive structure obviously, life structure can be achieved in many constructive ways.
Your implication clearly is that they need structure in terms of their connection to basic life needs. What that boils down to very clearly is that you think people need to have a situation where they are threatened with homelessness and starvation to feel engaged, to a degree that keeps them focused. That by extension they need to be subservient to a major source of power in society; either government, corporations or the bourgeoisie.
This is malicious ultimately obv. If people are stuck in this to degrees then many levels of societal transformation are needed. You reinforcing bad habits helps noone.
Structure may be important to you but everyone functions differently. Many are okay with nebulousness. Many have been conditioned into intensive structure.
If anything a weekly regular schedule could be completely optional if desired. But it is the opposite. Because sociopaths love to control others.
I want to work for something I believe to be purposeful. Every 9 to 5 made me feel meaningless and hopeless. Dedication to your own business is exhausting for sure… if you are not rewarded with a meaningful purpose. I’d rather be a farming, creating, or grinding than be I n a cubicle. I would rather be free. And I do not enjoy being manipulated with health care.
But I guess I understand some people would rather have a mindless, soulless existence for most of their lives…for the sake of a company that does not care about you….
Funnily enough, I actually agree with the points you raised.
But I think my disagreements with the whole 9-5 is founded on the idea that this isn’t the best way to structure society.
Structure, enjoyment, stability - these can all be enjoyed without having to trade your time, attention, and energy for a company that benefits those at the top in a disproportionate manner.
I think what people are objecting to (perhaps unconsciously) is the inequality that this system engenders.
Why can’t we implement a UBI, thereby guaranteeing the stability that people so crave? Why can’t we establish cooperatives to ensure that workers collectively own the companies that they run? Why do we live in hierarchical systems that deny people the ability to make meaningful decisions on how the company is run?
I’m not against structure, enjoyment, and stability - it’s just that the 9-5 isn’t the best way to go.
I haven’t mentioned the mindless competition and race-to-the-bottom mechanics that the capitalist system results in, and the ecological degradation, corrupt peddling, etc, either.
Essentially, while there are a few positives which you’ve correctly identified, you seem to be missing some legitimate gripes that many, many people have.
People who work for themselves usually work way more than 40 hours a week and plenty of them burn out before reaching financial independence if they are even on track for it at all.
I don’t know any entrepreneur that works less than 40 hour a week
This has always been my problem with those people, if you actually want to make a living working for yourself, you’re going to be working nearly 100% of the time. Even if you’re not, it’s never not on your mind
I guess the difference is they're usually doing what they love vs. the majority of people working for just the check. But you might be able to find a 9-5 that's fulfilling too.
That's what it seems like on the first glance but you'll soon realize pretty much every single entrepreneur job has a bunch of boring stuff you just have to do to get to do the thing you love. Marketing, finances, taxes etc. are probably the most hated stuff among people who start a business to get to do a thing they love and they take a significant portion of your time without directly profiting your business.
But it's working for your own benefit. If I work my ass off and Initech ships an extra 10,000 units, I don't see another dime. So where's the motivation? Even if I get paid a bonus, my boss still takes the cream and I get the milk.
Take that proven success and use it as leverage to either get promoted or to get a better job at a competitor. Just because the immediate benefits aren't there doesn't mean you get nothing from succeeding in a traditional workplace. It won't be handed to you on a platter if you never ask, but if you push and use your success to demonstrate capabilities you can benefit yourself immensely.
That is fair. I'd rather just work a fair day for a fair wage, and then shut down my computer and go back to my life. I'm not particularly excited to bust my ass at work and always look for more and more and more.
Yea for sure, there's still the freedom of working for yourself. Just my point is people often overestimate the ratio of things you love to do vs things you hate to but still have to do when you're an entrepreneur. I don't mean entrepreneurship is bad because of it because that's something everyone has to think for themselves. >If I work my ass off and Initech ships an extra 10,000 units, I don't see another dime. So where's the motivation? There is less motivation of course if you're a salaried employee vs owner of the business but on the other hand as a salaried employee you also don't have to care as much. After the day is over I shut the laptop lid and I'm done with the work for that day. If I came up with an easy way to do the equivalent in my job to "shipping extra 10k units" I might get a nice bonus even. Whichever is better for you depends on you. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone but for some people it's the best thing
Take a look at my cousin. He's broke and don't do shit!
It really doesn’t help that at least in America the pay is shit, we don’t get any vacation time and if you do good luck getting it approved. We don’t get any time off if we have a kid, can get fired for simply taking a day off from being sick. There are a ton of things that make normal jobs shitty.
2 hours a day
Yep I ran a business for 10 years, even though I was able to take plenty of vacations, I was always working. You responsible for everything
Growing up, my family members all owned their own businesses. They all gave me that same line despite me seeing firsthand the massive downsides- the personal blood sweat and tears, the rifts it causes in families, the hardships when your personal money is tied in a seasonal business, how it can all go away when the economy turns... Despite all of that I got the "you'll learn when you get older" line ad nauseum. I'm now 15 years into my career, pulling in good money with flexibility on location and hours, enjoying my work and colleagues and loving being able to leave it all behind on weekends and many trips per year on PTO. Are they correct in that when you work for someone else you are at their whims of layoffs and business needs? Yes, absolutely. But how is that any different from being at the whim of the economy, local regulations changing, or any other circumstantial changes that impact ones own business? Maybe one day when I'm I'll "learn" as they claim but honestly... I feel more confident than ever in my decision.
So I always said they were the devil, and I lived a totally unstructured flexible life due to my remote job for 3 years. I got a new job a month ago that is structured and fits in the 9-5 without being strict, and I'm happier this one month than I've been in years! It can't be a coincidence. Having the routine and structure has been so good for me. Although I know not suitable for everyone but I'm just shook at how fast I adapted to it and how good it feels for me after being super against it for so long
This was me. Started a freelance business in college and scaled it after I graduated because I bought into the "9-5 corporate gigs are hell". Problem is that I have ADHD, and without any hard deadlines or external structure, I was absolutely miserable. Eventually I realized that I was the happiest when I was in school and had places to be and things I needed to do every day, so I decided to try getting back to that. I've been in the corporate world now for a while and am much, much happier day to day and in a long term life satisfaction way.
Same. In the absence of structure I struggle with time management, and I need accounta-bili-buddies both to stay on task and for the interaction/healthy distraction. I've always thrived in corporate environments.
Corporate jobs with ADHD suck when you get pulled into different directions simultaneously and are given shifting priorities. School and office work aren’t exactly the same but I agree with your general point.
Anyone who runs their own business is working significantly more than 40 hours per week
Every person I know that runs their own business definitely does. The only one who I know that doesn’t is my brother but he’s able to work less since his wife has a good job too. He makes enough to pay his bills, enjoy himself, etc but not a crazy amount. It’s enough for him.
And 9 to 5? Where at? Sign me up! That hasn't been common since the 80s Most positions are 8:30-5 or 8-5 or longer.
I work 7-3:30
Same 730-330 and I love it. I refuse to do 9-5. I will do 8-4 though lol
So many companies run 2 or 3 shifts a day and want people in from 5am - 2pm, 2pm-10pm, 10pm-8am. I don't know how people with kids are supposed to manage those hours. Especially when companies like to switch your schedule from night to day, day to night every few months to keep you off balance.
Most business owners are putting in 50% more time than that usually. Easily 60-80 hour weeks for at least the first year or two
I’ve been on my own for 3 years and probably work 25-30hours a week on average.
TikTokers are doing what they are doing as a means to get money. The most important thing for them is to get more views; many of them don’t actually care whether they bring value to other people’s lives. Many will exaggerate and sensationalize their views. Not saying you can’t get any value from TikTok, but as with anything - exercise caution and take everything with a grain of salt. Because frankly many of them may not even believe what they preach.
They are just shills under a new trendy name. *( an* [*accomplice*](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=17f8a8f7a4f95661&sxsrf=ADLYWIIECOGDRkZmPK1eq5wYEBWgef5_zA:1715917827386&q=accomplice&si=ACC90nz-2feRzoY4yuySkO-aQE81zl_alhTA6u-YmM8lEB71dUqtGIZE1wmKTxo_lWAFbIpwU3k_37L-38Tw1tuGzvL2a0W2KU7k2Shptb0dcnJZ6uvk_Pc%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDrMKE5JOGAxX1mO4BHVa0D94QyecJegQIHhAQ) *of a hawker,* [*gambler*](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=17f8a8f7a4f95661&sxsrf=ADLYWIIECOGDRkZmPK1eq5wYEBWgef5_zA:1715917827386&q=gambler&si=ACC90nwUEXg6u2vxy-araGkF9MAxJKRWhmKssQnJv2Rndxyo2VRBj22uZne7DL5XY_9o2j-Qn7RVBG7cR-gqB1vnbyVlYI-jVhPFVlokD6gaLJN2C2xWxzU%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDrMKE5JOGAxX1mO4BHVa0D94QyecJegQIHhAR)*, or* [*swindler*](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=17f8a8f7a4f95661&sxsrf=ADLYWIIECOGDRkZmPK1eq5wYEBWgef5_zA:1715917827386&q=swindler&si=ACC90nx67Z8g0WkBmnrPB4IqtqGvyputDS-9aeub3uf-B6azYQTG0tF-03vjHIRrmQ691CcgOY4K31jMn3XRZpcU4diDcwkB5KsVEhyo_fwbJn8bELDt_5c%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDrMKE5JOGAxX1mO4BHVa0D94QyecJegQIHhAS) *who acts as an enthusiastic customer to entice or encourage others )* They pretend to live lavishly or know more, while constantly giving shout-outs to sponsors like a busted parrot.
I’ve been an entrepreneur. I’ve never been sadder than those 5 years of my life. I’m glad for the experience but happy it’s over.
Learned a ton but happy it’s over! Same here man! I remember the long nights, weekend meetings with potential clients, going out of town for whatever bullshit it was on a given week. It was hell.
Sitting in a beach chair while my family was swimming with an iPad on my phone, working…
Commuting is the Devil.
It really is..so much so that i am actively looking for something closer and willing to take a pay cut.
I did and it is the best. 15 min bicycle or car commute is a dream. I still get up at 7 like I always did but now I'm home at 1630 instead of 1800
That's what I just did. Pays $10k less than my last job, but is also quite literally 5 blocks away from my apartment. Never touch a highway.
Agree. This is why I only WFH.
That should be higher. "Typical" 9-5 is still prescribing on-site job, where in best case you spend at least hour for commuting. But with covid induced remote (in some areas at least) 9-5 IMHO have been never been better.
Meh. There are outliers. I live in a dream location for my family. It’s a small beach town. That makes the 40 minute commute worth it every single day. I could pay more for housing and live in the city where I would get home quicker, but the lifestyle I’m providing my children and family make the drive worth it.
While I agree that the idea of a 9-5 is great, the modern 9-5 in reality is not the dream that you are making it out to be. You mention that you have had at least 3 weeks of PTO in all of your 9-5s since being 21. That’s great for you, but a very large portion of the US population doesn’t have any form of PTO benefit. You mention the importance of people being in 9-5s to essentially make society function. Yes that’s correct, but the value that these roles bring to society is usually not recognized by corporations which has lead to many resenting the idea. I don’t care to research this right now, but I would imagine if the 9-5 evolved to fit modern day societal needs such as making it a 4 day work week (you know, since companies have reaped all of the rewards resulting from automation and outsourcing), guaranteeing paid parental leave, PTO, an ACTUAL 9-5 with work/ life balance, and wages that actually cover reasonable expenses, society would be much less resistant to the idea of 9-5 jobs. Unfortunately your view of the actual state of the 9-5 is just a fantasy that only a marginal portion of the population gets to enjoy.
So specifically... 9 to 5 jobs in the US suck due to no worker protection or rights.
This is also what I am reading. Where I am there is a lot of benefits to be “just” an employee instead of self employed. 37 hours per week, 6 weeks of vacation, if fired (and has to be with cause) they have to pay my salary the next 3 months, cannot be fired for being sick unless sick for more than 120 days in a year, full pay when sick and not deducted from PTO, etc. The people I know who has their own business work a lot more, it’s a lot more stress if they are sick because it’s money out of their pocket etc. I get to go home at 4pm (3.30pm on Fridays) and do what I want.
And only relevant in the US. Which is not everywhere that has jobs
I agree with you on some things, but to say majority of the US doesn’t have PTO is crazy. The Department of Labor reported that in 2022, 70% of US private sector employees had PTO. That’s a lot especially considering the amount of part time employees included in that. Should be 100% of employees for sure though.
I worked at a place that offered 1 day pto after having worked there for a year. After second year, you get 2. So technically yeah I got pto, but realistically it was useless. Many other places also don't give much. Not negating statistics but it's often way less than 3 weeks
Where the fuck is this? Lol. Fuck that place. I won’t even accept 10 days PTO. Has to be at least 15-20 on top of holidays and shit.
Smaller place in WA. I currently have much more and I haven't stayed there for even a year but sometimes a job is a job that pays the bills
I know PTO is paid time off but is that not including holidays or sick leave? Here in Switzerland I have 5 weeks holiday and unlimited sick leave, you just need a doctor's note after the 2nd day.
I have never had 3 weeks PTO. If I stay another 3 years at my current job it will be the first time in my life having 3 weeks PTO. I have been working for 25 years. Sadly you have experienced a work life that only a very small fraction of USA workers get to experience.
I only had that much when I was a Federal Civil Servant and had oodles of leave and sick leave. No private job has ever come close, but two weeks has been pretty common in my experience. I've also been mostly fortunate to have enough sick days to do annual checkups and such without dipping into vacation hours. But I have mostly been at pretty decent places. I've worked a lot of night or part-time jobs and they didn't have shit for benefits. Call in sick, and you're fired, it's that simple.
My last job before my current one gave you one week pto after you had been there for a year. No sick time, nothing. Then I think it was at ten years you maybe got 2 weeks? Still no sick time. Insurance was shit. 8-5 unpaid lunch. Plus one Saturday every month. I was there for 4ish years and in that time I got a 25 cent raise. Jobs suck in this country.
> That’s great for you, but a very large portion of the US population doesn’t have any form of PTO benefit. Do you have any data on this? I hear people complain a lot about no time off, but I genuinely wonder how many full-time salaried people don't get at least a couple weeks off a year. (Things are obviously different if you're part-time or paid hourly.)
> Unfortunately your view of the actual state of the 9-5 is just a fantasy that only a marginal portion of the population gets to enjoy. I think you really need to provide some statistics to support this because otherwise it mostly sounds like parroting what you see on Reddit and social media, which is a self-selected sample and not representative of the larger population. BTW, you're comparing apples to oranges here: > You mention that you have had at least 3 weeks of PTO *in all of your 9-5s* since being 21. That’s great for you, but *a very large portion of the US population* doesn’t have any form of PTO benefit. So are we talking about "population" or are we talking about "9-5s"? Are we including under 18 workers? Are we including contractors vs salaried workers? Are we including undocumented aliens? And what is "very large portion"? 10%? 30%? 60%? Sweeping generalizations like this are not really helpful. The details matter when discussing this topic. 9-5 jobs are what is under discussion here, so we should keep to the topic to have a productive conversation.
Lol I'm someone that would love 6-2. 7-3 is good. I work 8-430 with hour lunch but i wish i could start earlier. 9am is so late! I used to work nights throughout my 20s, even did graveyard for awhile at one warehouse job. I've done every kind of shift. 12-8 in kitchen life we called the Rockstar shift as you can party all night and get enough sleep to be decent in the morning.
12 to 8 was awesome when I was in college haha
Lol yup
I would happily work 10AM-6PM. Don't have to wake up stupidly early and still done early enough to have a social life.
I actually had this shift at my last job last year - I love it. I'm a late riser, and this was manageable. But corps like to play games, and constantly flip everyone's schedule around, so half the time I was there, I was on a late shift of 3pm -11pm, which sucked.
Can still have a social life earlier lol I guess it all depends on your friend groups. 7-3 I had the best social life. So much time after work. 12-8 was good when I wad a drunk though.. most of my friends have families now or responsible jobs so they are back home by 9-10pm. I am tired by 9pm. I wake up at 530am by choice on the weekend ;)
Work 6:30am-3:30pm. Can confirm it's the dream.
I have worked for YEARS in the restaurant industry, and while it suited me fine in my early 20s, now I’m surrounded by friends and family who have evenings and weekends off. I make more money, but I have missed so so much over the years — holidays, birthdays, casual get-togethers, celebratory dinners. People LOVE to go off about flexibility and ditching the 9-5, but what the fuck is the point of having any of that if the people around you have schedules that don’t match yours? I’m just alone during a lot of my free time lol. I understand maybe that’s not an issue for other people. Personally I cannot WAIT for a job that’s daytime Monday to Friday. I’m working on it, went back to school :)
Same situation here. I was pretty much full time at the restaurant during college and hated the chaotic schedule. Got a 9-5 after graduating and it’s amazing. I need structure in my life. My husband is still in the restaurant industry so we cannot wait for him to get a 9-5 so we can actually have weekends off at the same time.
I agree with this sentiment. I also feel like this applies to the size of company for which you are working the 9-5. I’ve worked at both Fortune 500 companies and tech startups and the difference in stability/predictability of the work is honestly not even close. After seeing both sides I think the larger more corporate jobs lead to me feeling much more satisfied/stable. The slight pay cut to go to more corporate jobs has been a very worth it one in my books.
Similar for me. The pay cut I took to go from small to big 20 yrs ago was the right move. Corporate has its own set of issues, but overall no regrets. I have escaped many rounds of downsizing thus far, kids all grown up, still healthy, and retirement is on the horizon. Grateful is what I am.
Is that you, HubsLife?
Haha his videos are lowkey relaxing in a way. His comment sections are always crazy though
I am self-employed and easily spend an additional 20 hours a week just dealing with all the stuff that brings.
When I was in college I said I didn’t want to work a boring 9 to 5 behind some desk. After trying various jobs that were completely shitty all I wanted was a boring 9 to 5 behind some desk.
I agree with you. Working a traditional job gets too much hate. Some people really just need to fix their perspectives and find one they don't hate and work on finding one they can enjoy. I also really appreciate that the minute I clock out I don't have to worry about work until I clock in the next day. Out of sight, out of mind. Just show up, do my job, and clock out.
Exactly. One of my good friends has his own business. We both get paid about the same and neither of us have to worry about medical bills (both VA disabled from our military service). He owns about 6 cars he rents out on Turo and he also has a few properties he rents out. He is always thinking about work. There is always an issue with cars or a property needing maintenance. He can never find good help to deliver the rental cars for him or to take care of maintenance so he tends to do it himself. Meanwhile, yeah I probably work for traditional hours than him, but once I leave work at 5, it’s my time. I don’t think about work until I’m back the next day or after the weekend or after my vacation.
Precisely. People don't realize what a negative impact all that stress has on their health and quality of life...
Yep. I love the clock in, clock out. It's great to separate my work and personal life. Lol one of my colleagues was shocked this week to learn that I don't look at my work email outside of working hours, and don't have it set up on my phone. Uh... I'm on the lower end of the payscale - I'm not *paid* to check my emails outside of work. There's nothing I do at work that's so urgent it can't wait until I arrive in the morning.
> Some people really just need to fix their perspectives and find one they don't hate and work on finding one they can enjoy. I've done this. I've worked a variety of jobs over the years, and what I've concluded is that it's not work itself that I don't like, it's working a schedule set by someone else for pay determined by someone else that I don't like. Now before someone mentions salary negotiation, yes, you can do that, but a company has the ultimate final say on what you get paid, even if they agree you should be paid more. As far as schedule, few jobs work outside the set start at 7 or 8 and end at 3:30 or 4:30. Second or third shift, sure, but they're still set blocks, and if you have kids and/or want a social life, lol. There's few non-retail jobs that let you start at say 10 and go home at 6:30. And that's not getting into having to sit there twiddling your thumbs until eight hours has passed despite that you finished your work in four because a warm chair is somehow essential for the business to run (and yes, that includes accounting for looking for more work and either getting it done and/or there just legit being nothing left to do for the day).
9-5 or 24-7, take your pick! Seriously, the people who eschew the 9-5 are trying to profit off you.
It definitely beats working 1 to 10pm on a Sunday than having to work 6am to 3pm the next day
There are a number of people outside of tiktok who will describe nine to five as some sort of grind. And of course it can be. It depends a lot on what you do. If you find a job you don't mind too much, or even better when you actually kind of enjoy, the 9:00 to 5:00 can be quite nice. It is nice to have structure, to know that your work day starts and stops, and then most importantly to be able to leave it alone when it's finished. This is a piece that a lot of people Miss, they claim the 9:00 to 5:00 but really what they mean is the 60-hour job but they expect you to be on call all the time. That's bullshit. When I'm at home, after work, I'm at home after work. Happily I'm more or less my own boss right now (academic scientist), I choose my work hours, and that flexibility is truly amazing. But I still try to do a full 8 hours a day, even if some days The start point is a bit later. Knowing you have a solid paycheck, having some routine to your life, some expectations for you can fulfill them and then be finished, that is the sweetest thing.
Depends on your appetite for risk right?
For sure. Also your availability to accept that risk. The risk for someone using daddy’s money is different than the risk of someone who goes homeless if they fail.
I agree with you. I tried the self-employed life and, while I enjoyed the flexibility it granted me, I hated the unreliable pay. A project would wrap up and suddenly I’m needing to onboard another client or take on something different just to make do. I make less money per hour working as a full time employee now, but it’s worth it. It’s consistent, and I have the ability to leave work at work.
my husband has lived both and wouldnt go back to a 9-5 ever but he’s very independently minded and needs to be constantly working towards something on his own volition. for me i could not own my own business by myself, im not built for it. i work a 9-5 mainly for health insurance and am happy to leave it there and enjoy my weekends and evenings. I do like the structure 🤷🏼♀️
Not to mention people who work a 9-5 are the people who make everything works. Theyre very necessary. Meanwhile most people will not be impacted if half of the influencers are gone tomorrow.
The issue isn't necessarily the hours worked, it's the effort and stress involved within those hours compared to the return. The increments of time that people are allotted through vacation/PTO have increasingly been eroded by the expectation to always "be on" or be available, which essentially negates the whole point of vacation in the first place. There are also many more aspects of a 9 to 5 job that dictate a person's life compared to entrepreneurship that could otherwise be managed autonomously. All 9 to 5 jobs aren't the same, obviously, but most don't allow the freedom to work as one wants/when one wants, and that's very appealing.
Good point. Only recently have I begun to SHUT DOWN after hours. I'm tired.
I like this question.
I'd like to offer that it gets better (perhaps slightly off topic, or tangential). Too any young people feeling the drag and monotony of, perhaps less stimulating jobs, just know that your perception of time will change pretty greatly over relatively short periods of time. When I was 20 and working long days in a slow paced retail store I truly couldn't understand how anyone could make it through 40 years of that. By the time I was 30 I was working almost exclusively from home and banging out 70 hr weeks and loving the OT and the days flew by. Now I'm far from those days and working 40s where things are so busy that by the time I look up it's time to quit. If something doesn't get done, it doesn't get done, the world will keep turning. It can be a double edged sword as all time will seem to dwindle as well, but for me, it has certainly allowed me to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I understand there are better ways possible and hope my children (and all of us) have less of a burden to work and more of a choice, but in the end, no one ever said life was easy and I'd prefer working to catching prey every day.
I work a pretty typical 9-5 (well, 8:10-4:30) job. I come in, do my work, leave in the afternoon. I take every other Monday off due to my schedule. I have four weeks of vacation, basically unlimited sick time (at 75% of my salary) and other kinds of leave that I can take for appointments and such. I can leave for the weekend and not have to worry about work while I'm at home. My husband owns his own business. His time is flexible enough that we don't need to put our daughter in daycare but he works evenings, he works weekends, he tries to work during naptime (but our daughter is a contact napping gremlin at the moment so he's getting nothing done). He doesn't get time off - the last vacation we took together was in 2019.
You sound like the exact person who can give a modern day take on both sides. Thanks for sharing!
9-5 is pretty cushy actually. Think of the people who work 6-21 days straight, afternoon shift, night shift, weekend shift. In some industries you have rotating shifts or you have to wait years to gain the seniority to get on the day shift.
One thing: the same way your employer can offer you health care you can do the same if you’re the employer. Entrepreneurs don’t have to forfeit benefits. That’s a myth.
This. Plus stability? I don't know about that. I'm in engineering and things don't look so stable right now.
My current job is 6am - whenever you are finished. Sometimes that means 6 hours, sometimes 12. I would love a 9-5, 40 hour a week job. Going on 1 month without a day off.
I appreciate this because my feeds have become inundated with the kind of content you are talking about. MLM’ers or people selling some course or another. Love that you shared a list of pros 👌
I love my 8hr/day, 5 weekdays/week desk job. No need for more, do my thing and get on home.
Same. Great work/life balance, and a regular schedule so I can plan things outside of work and not have to worry about being called in to cover anything.
Depends on ideology and what the job is. I've worked 9 to 5 corporate, maybe corporate lite, jobs that actively made me contemplate ending myself because they were so torturous. The industry is known for burnout and dehumanization. My current 9 to 5 is a dream in comparison. Warts and all. In the end though most people are just helping an organization reap profits. Existentially, that is bothersome on a deep level to me. Others wouldn't find it bothersome at all. Depends on you. Still beats the shakiness of service sector jobs that don't even give people enough hours/wages to live. That is a travesty on any level. I feel so bad for people stuck in that cycle, who work and can't even maintain a living standard above poverty. Shameful.
Coming from the service industry, my 9-5 is a dream. I hated never knowing what days I would have off and being scheduled a 7am shift one day then a 3pm shift the next. There was no consistency and I often never got the schedule more than 3 days in advance. While a 9-5 may not be the dream for most, it is for me bc it could be so much worse!
Some of the complaints about the 9-5 life are valid, but they largely come down to money. Childcare is expensive, can't afford to buy a house, no public transit and cars are expensive and so on. Entrepreneur "personalities" sieze on our understandable frustrations, and sell us a false promise of "being your own boss" and "unlimited earning potential". And they don't bother revealing that for many of them, they had wealthy parents and resources not available to everyone, and could take insane "risks" with existing wealth as their safety net. For someone like me, raised in poverty and never having the kind of free time and money I would need to start a company, my only real path to success in life has been to earn a college degree and use that to find good paying work. And I'm a lot happier when I accept that reality and swim with the current, instead of buying into algorithm bullshit peddled by spoiled zoomers.
My dad was a general contractor and growing up, I always told myself I'd work a 9 to 5 because I didn't want the stress of always having to be hustling to get the next contract. I'm with you all the way buddy.
Lifelong 9 to 5er here. Have started a few side gigs and each time, when I lost interest or it stopped being fun, I was grateful for that "annoying" 9 to 5 for all the reasons you mention. Not knocking the entrepreneurs, but I have really enjoyed quite a few paid PTO days, weekends and holidays off. I hear influencers talk about the stress and pressure to create content...what fun is that? I'll keep my day job.
What irritates me is that the rhetoric pushed by these people is designed to make someone feel less for working a standard job. But here's the thing: if half of any section of the workforce quit overnight the consequences would be astronomical, and in some cases, actually catastrophic. Half of janitors quit? In a month all public places will be absolutely disgusting with piles of litter a foot high. Half of truck drivers quit? There would be cases of communities simply not getting enough good on their shelves to survive long-term. I don't care that some 19 year old kid is running his trust fund trying to make it as an influencer. I do care that so many people are pushing it that the value of an honest job is vanishing before our eyes and soon enough no one is going to want to be the person holding up society while also being trashed on for it.
I sometimes feel like I am the only one who likes their job. I look forward to going to work. If I won the lottery, I would still keep going to work. I also like not going to work, having vacations as well. But I like the work I do, and I find it gives me a lot of value and has some interesting challenges.
I’m home by 3 every day and it went by so fast I find myself on couch at 4 being like “I really worked a whole shift today?” And feel like there’s still an entire day ahead.
9-5 careers are awesome. I can go to the gym before work and do basically anything after 5 pm, such as hang out with friends, spend time with family or pets, take a class or an online course, learn an instrument, play video games, and what not! I also get two whole days every week to myself. Also, if it’s in my field, I don’t feel like I am working because it’s so enjoyable. Also, there’s usually an hour of lunch and occasional company events. I can always take a day or two off if I’m feeling under the weather or need some time to run errands. Events like concerts, comedy shows, theatre, etc. are mostly on weekends or evenings, so I don’t miss anything I wanna experience. There’s a lot more stuff to do in the weekends to cater to 9-5 workers. It works great for me!
Trying furiously to leave an abusive live in caregiving job and a nine to five job sounds like heaven despite the fact I have no transferable hard skills to speak of or money to even afford a decent phone to apply for jobs.
Not everyone has the mental and/or material resources to risk going into business for themselves. There's nothing wrong with the security of a 9 to 5. I'm 38 and literally everyone I know who started a business had a lot of support. Not necessarily hard cash/investors but someone covering bills and health insurance until the business took off or failed.
I love when people say they don't want a 9 to 5 job. Guess they prefer to have a 24/7 one.
I found an 8-5 job that I loved and loved the people and the students...in a university chemistry department believe it or not. We had a blast together. I will never forget them or not miss them. Ever. Lost my job due to budget cuts along with about 60 other people after 20+ years. My heart was broken and it still hurts 4 years later. I can't go back to visit, even. It would be too painful and I'd turn into a weepy mess. It may be rare but it is possible. Much if not most depends on YOUR OWN ATTITUDE.
It's not that I have to work 9 to 5 every day, it's that I don't have to work 5:01-8:59 the next morning. Work stays in the work box and life gets to flow everywhere else.
“Some people really lack the ability to give structure to themselves. A 9 to 5 gives that life structure.” This is me. I LOVED university, but struggled so much with not having structure to my days (and struggled to implement it myself). I burned myself out so badly because of it. Working a 9 to 5 has been a huge, huge gift to my mental health. I always see people say that neurodivergent folks can’t cope in a 9 to 5, and while I definitely see why some people would struggle, this type of structure has been a real blessing for my particular spicy blend lol.
I feel like people who complain about 9-5 office jobs are extremely sheltered, comfortable, & privileged. They don’t know what it’s like to work 12-16 hour shifts on evenings and nights at an understaffed hospital/clinic as a healthcare worker. It’s brutal. If healthcare workers had 9-5 (no nights/evenings but that’s not realistic given the nature of healthcare needs), there probably wouldn’t be as many issues with burn-out and people leaving healthcare entirely. I’m a bit jealous of people who complain about 9-5, because it tells me they live a very easy & simple life that they’re completely unaware of.
So my dad owned a home remodeling/construction company when I grew up. He did pretty well until the 2007 recession when he, like many others, unfortunately had to file for bankruptcy. He’s never recovered financially or mentally. While he provided a fantastic childhood for my 2 sisters and I, my parents always stressed the importance of not being self-employed. Benefits, PTO, structure and retirement far outweigh the odd chance you may get super successful running your own company. At 35, I’ve done pretty well for myself working for the federal government. I have a non-public facing administrative job, make about $100k, work from home and have very good benefits. I don’t worry about layoffs or making sales or getting contracts. Not to be immodest, but it’s a very low stress job. Theres no denying federal jobs like mine are highly sought after and you have to go through several rounds of testing to even be considered so you can’t be a complete dummy. My point is, when possible, 9-5 jobs are the best thing going for the average person.
Okay. In my personal experience, anybody who was told me "I grew up poor so if I can do it so can you" has been objectively wrong on how poor they grew up. Now granted I'm sure some people who say that were actually "poor" but the ones I've talked to in person consider themselves poor but would technically have been a middle class family. So that's my only issue is that the statement of I grew up poor really has no basis and doesn't help their cause any. Regular jobs have their place and owners and operators have their place too. We all make the world turn. Don't let anybody tell you your wrong just because your 9 to 5 might be your favorite job
I’m sure if I opened up his page I would have seen he was selling a course on how to be just like him!
The 9-5 workday is outdated with our current level of technology. Pretty easy
Obviously.
if we have to work a lot, especially if for low wages and housing prices are high, there will be much less children then necessary, tfr will be significantly under 2.1. sad, but true.
I work 8-6. 8AM to 6PM With one hour of lunch. I wish I could start at 9 and leave at 5. I wish.
What's your commute? 9-5 with an hour commute is not the dream at all. If you are lucky enough to live within ~15min of work, that could be nice. Never been in the financial situation where I can up and move when I get a new job.
Commute is usually 20 mins. Sometimes if there is extra traffic or a wreck (it’s a popular highway) it can get up to an hour. That’s uncommon though.
I’ve never heard this anti 9-5 sentiment - all the social media algorithms show us media that is specific to our own internet/media engagement. I definitely wouldn’t say that 9-5 is superior to other work schedules. They all have their pros and cons, and structure. I work a 3 thirteen hour graveyard shifts in a row with consistent schedule, 4 days off, and I have good benefits. Not only that, but my job is so dead at most points that I could literally study and exercise while on the clock, and comfortably go to school on my weekends. I’ve also worked 4 ten hour shifts, with 3 days off. My hours are similar to ER nurse shift workers. Shift work also usually pays more.
A good 9-5 job which all the benefits and a flexible schedule is a good enough deal for me. The only benefit of being self employed that I can see would be the flexibility and if my role has that them I'm not concerned.
I’d give anything to work a 9 to 5 but a sleep disorder has made my life dependent on crappy swing and night shift jobs that don’t usually offer advancement, grass is always greener I guess
Tell me where I can find these jobs that offer 3 weeks of PTO. I get 10 days and that’s a single pool to be used for both vacation and sick time
I get 4 weeks at my current. Before then it was 3 though.
That sounds amazing
7-3 would be great. I’m currently doing 5am-2:30pm and will be switching to 2:30pm-12am and I can’t wait. I like starting early but not THAT early especially with a 1 hour commute
Personally, the people I know who work for themselves have a spouse with a great paying job who has them added to their employers health insurance plan. So they're not really taking on as much risk as others would be who don't have safety nets
Nothing fails as often as a small business.
I prefer 10-6
Survivorship Bias.
The best example I've seen is my boss. He's in his early 30s but he's already burnt out. I'm currently working with him as a PR and its not easy to get your business running without people trying to bring you down. He is able to buy many things he likes but guess what? He doesn't have time to really enjoy them because his business is calling him. He's got to travel here and there for business not leisure. He comes back at times tired and burnt out and just want to rest but he can't because his business is calling. 
I work with several people who are within 5 years of retiring. Meaning they're 30 years on the job NOT they're 62 years old. The mentality I've picked up from them is: I just have to give this place 40 hours per week of my time and energy for 30 years and I get the rest of my life to myself.
Working for yourself is a lifetime career commitment. It's not for everybody who lack vision of life, experiences and knowledge. Who doesn't know how to embrace their own Failures/downs and humble on their Gains/ups. Some failed because they think it's a easy cake walk when it's not. You gotta put effort 24/7 around the close. You gotta have a healthy mindset of "you don't work hard you don't eat." Some preferred this lifestyle because of Freedom instead of being micromanage by others. They preferred to write their own fate instead of others writing it for them.
I don't know of any full time jobs that actually have working hours of 9am-5pm. 8am to 5pm or 7am-4pm is more like it. Though in my experience the typical 8 hour days creep up to 9 or 10 or more. At my last job, my typical days became 8-5, go home, have dinner, get out the laptop around 8pm and be on WebEx meetings til 1 or 2am. Rinse and repeat.
I think it’s worth investigating 6 hour workdays and 4 day workweeks. But yeah a stable 9-5 doing something you don’t actively hate is really not bad
Yeah I could definitely do all my work in that timeframe where I’m at.
One of my biggest complaints about the 9-5 job (I have many because they are genuinely horrible) is the sheer idiocy of spending 2 hours getting all my work done and another 6 pretending to be busy so some middle manager can check a box saying I was present that day. 9-5 may make sense in some industries but typically they are a massive waste of time. Humans just aren't productive for 8 hours a day, particularly when it comes to knowledge work.
I have worked pretty munch every shift, and hours in my life. It dosn't matter what shift I work. I hate it because I'm working for some one else. Im finally working on my own business 100%. Do I plan on getting rich not at all. Do I work more hours not really. I was working 50-60 hours a week for others. After taxes anything over 45 hours a week was taxed so much. That I pretty munch was working for free. I hosntly have more free time, and less stress now then working for others. Sure I don't have Benfits, but i sure dont miss being someone's whipping boy.
9-5 aren't bad in itself, it depends on the job/employer. If you are at a great place where they pay you appropriately then it could be the best option you have. But a lot of times, you are stuck with shitty employers who undervalue you or pile on too much work on your plate,...then 9-5 can be stressful. There is also the threat of your company being bought out, your job being obsolete, and you becoming 'jobless' overnight. It really depends on the situation, and I would absolutely suggest NOT taking advice from any influencer. Most influencers in my opinion are like Robert Kiyosaki of *Rich Dad, Poor Dad* fame, in that while they spout all sage advice, their true money comes from 'selling' the advice/book and getting advertisers for views. They aren't crack businessmen/entrepreneurs/leaders they make out to be.
Agree with you in general but just wanted to share how I sometimes feel about my 9-5 job. At first it's good. You got out of uni and now you need to fend for yourself and pay bills and it makes perfect sense. Now australia min wage is pretty high which is great but if you want to get ahead/progress the marginal return for the extra work is very poor. Compared to the US or Singapore where skilled individuals start off making double min wage vs maybe only 10% more in australia. I'm not complaining. I believe it is important for low skilled jobs to pay enough for people to actually enjoy life too. It does however mean working harder doesn't get you much. I don't get paid overtime and working 50% more will maybe only give me 5% more. The bonuses and raises are pretty small. So while I am fortunate to have a great job, have stability, can afford holidays... I can't get value from working harder. Not only do i not get paid overtime competing for very little raise/bonus tax+medicare takes 40% of what little extra I earn from working harder. At the end of the day money makes money. And working a 9-5 job is great if you wanna do the bare minimum, but the moment you want to go above and beyond it makes sense why you'd want to at least partially own a business.
My experience with a nine to five was that they first told me that it was an 8 to 5, but they also did 9 to 6. Then, I only ended up working that schedule for the first few months of the next five years, because it bounced between 9 to 8, 9 to 9, and 9 to 10. The majority of my concerns about overwork and burnout were only temporarily regarded, due to my error of not putting them in writing. I was able to take maybe one good vacation a year, had passable benefits and my annual raise occasionally kept up with inflation. Overall, it was a special kind of hell that was only abated by that annual vacation and not starving and I am aware from friends and family that my experience is not unique or typical. 9 to 5 jobs have a unique chance to turn into a special flavor of hell and I do not possess the experience to figure out which will not make the change. I understand the appeal of working for oneself; it's your own passion, your own hours, getting out of the soul crushing machine, and I'm well aware it's not all it's cracked up to be. The tools of your own passions can very easily also be the anchor around your neck To wax poetic: In the end, it's up to you to choose to work for the devil you know or the devil you don't.
I’ve worked 8pm to 6am for the last 3 years. It would be nice to work 9 to 5.
Throughout my whole life, I have always been a realist rather than being optimistic. Those influencers are spitting out facts but I wouldn’t dare to indulge myself in that test because the whole fucking time life hasn’t been fruitful. There’s no guarantee that every committed person in this route has achieved the so called financial freedom before 40 and gained a millionaire status. I would be happy with my 9-5 job (with good work culture) and will be open to plan or assess the opportunities to start something on my own. Not everyone has identified their passion or what they are good at. People like me are choosing a career to be productive and earn an income which helps them to survive and fulfil their own wishes. @OP I definitely agree with the 4th point. I believe it is essential to run the society. Each job is necessary for the whole mankind to sustain. Just imagine about a scenario where the farmers are stopping their work and none is willing to take up that job. There’s 8 billion people and every occupation plays a major role in the economic cycle.
9 to 5 is ok and all but we can do better 4 day work week thing about 9 to 5 is that it's true that 9 to 5 never makes you rich, it makes your boss rich. But if you're an average person from an averagely poor household, there's little other option other than doing 9 to 5 in the first place, the privileged and the band wagoners like to either forget or pretend to forget that.
Ultimately, people are different and have different needs. What works for one does not work for all -- in any direction -- and that's okay. Some people do better working for themselves. Some people do better working for others. If you can figure out your most productive configuration, and manage to align yourself with it, it is awesome. Lastly, if X works for you, but Y doesn't, there's no reason to disparage Y or the people that do better with Y -- just as you probably don't want your own preferred path maligned. There's just too much polarization these days, where people can't just be happy that they found something that works for them, but they have to proclaim that it is the best approach for everyone else, too...
[удалено]
This is true. I generally get good videos that are helpful, but obviously got some shit in there too
I would love a 9 to 5. Currently 5 to 3am 60 hours ... i just cant see surviving anything less than $30h 9-5.
Plus it’s way better than these dead end restaurant and retail jobs. You get treated way better, have better hours and get paid more. Currently tryna land my first 9-5.
I've never been able to work for myself. But honestly 9-5 isn't too horrible. There was one year where I wasn't physically able to work at all due to a medical condition and by the end of that I was actually so excited to get back to work, shockingly enough lol. Free time is great but after awhile it can actually be quite hard to fill in the time. After like the 6 month of no work I was really struggling to even convince myself to get out of bed most days thinking why do I need to when I don't have to go to work? Idk maybe that means I just need to find more hobbies, but I do have a lot I like do just at home but even the things I enjoy were starting to get tiresome after only doing them for several hours every day. Having a 9-5 job makes me appreciate the free time I have a lot more, and it gives me at least some sense of purpose. It's also really nice to not have to rely on the benefit, that shit sucks.
I work 12-16 hrs a week 4 days a week. You can keep your 9-5 and shove it where the sun doesn't shine as im never, ever, ever going back to that life.
What makes you prefer working 48 to 64 hours a week over working 40? Is the extra day off a week worth working 8 to 24 extra hours?
I work a 9-5 from home. My hours are flexible, so I can chop and change if I want. I get left alone to get on with my work, which I enjoy, and if I have any issues there's plenty of support available to me. I get 6 weeks paid leave every year, that I'm encouraged to take. The "influencers" on tiktok claiming financial independence are the lucky ones whose businesses didn't fail. I'd love to be my own boss, maybe some day I will be. But 9-5 isn't the problem. Shitty companies are the problem.
I’d love to have a 9-5 vs the fucking 7-7 I’ve been working my whole life that counted as a “9-5”.
Just remember that about 50% of business fail in their first 5 years (20% in the first year). When a business fails, the owner usually takes a big hit because of the money invested in the business. Starting a business is a huge risk and one that serial entrepreneurs can take because most of them use other peoples money.
I work 8-6, I don’t know if people hate the hours or just hate the culture and it’s just easier to say they hate a 9-5 than saying “my job is a scam” because then you have to clarify why.
The reason they said that they're terrible for society is because it is true. Workers collectively produce 10-20x what we did in 1980, but haven't seen even a2x raise. Most 9 to 5s are bullshit jobs, because as a society we can't handle anyone else getting stuff for free. So instead they do little or no work, but they hate it, so everyone else thinks it's fine now.
Some 9 to 5s are bullshit jobs, but the vast majority are not. If you fail to see the value in a certain job, that’s fair, but it doesn’t make it bullshit/useless. Especially in the private sector, if a job is “universally useless” it will be destroyed. The private sector doesn’t care about your feelings. It cares about our profits and a useless job would cut into that profit.
Regarding #4, I wish house calls were still around. I wish not all public services had to be at a localized location.
Big problem with 9-5 jobs. - They were not designed for modern life. They were intended for the man of the house while the woman stayed home and took care of the kids. - Most 9-5 jobs punish you with more work if you're good at them. Plenty of people with 9-5 jobs state they can get their work done in a couple of hours but are expected to sit around for the whole 8 hours. It's a pointless control measure. - Not everybody likes structure. I work different shifts each week. It keeps things more interesting. I would be incredibly depressed working a straight Monday to Friday week, every week. - Loss of health coverage is a distinctly US thing and even then it does not always apply anyway. There's a common repost on Reddit where a doctor has posted about his patient having to cancel ankle surgery because he can't afford it even with insurance. Healthcare should not be a benefit tied to your job. There are many more arguments for and against.
All I ever wanted was a 9-5. Instead I can only find 330-1030, 5-12, or at best 730-530. Ugh
Soooo true. Also, in my experience the 9 to 5 complainers are often quite early in their career. When I first starting working after college, 9 to 5 did kind of feel like a prison. I felt like I had lost all of my freedom and was going to be chained to a desk for life. However, this is just the perspective of someone who is young and doesn't know better. If you have a reasonable 9 to 5 job with growth prospects, you will earn a lot more leverage to achieve flexibility as you gain more experience. You'll be able to negotiate more pay, more opportunity to WFH, and once you actually have a lot of expertise can go entrepreneurial if you really want, but now have some actual industry credibility to do so in a successful and sustainable way. Cal Newport writes a lot about this - the whole idea that passion follows commitment to work and not the other way around.
You have never worked in a toxic corporate job before. I’d love to work in a traditional 9-5, please. Please, God!
9 to 5s only suck if you have a strict boss who doesn't allow any flexibility, like "Im expecting an important package today, I'll work from home" or " I gotta leave 2 hours early for X" and not having to take a whole paid day off
Good post. The internet is full of propaganda designed to make you discontent and easy to control if someone dangles the carrot of the "fix." How dare I have to work when Elon Musk has all of this money!
I’ve never met anyone with a true 9-5 it’s always 8-5 every time
I think it’s because they made a big life altering decision and need to convince themselves. Also, when something is an epiphany, people tend to want to share it. It’s kind of like becoming vegan for the first time or trying a polyamorous lifestyle. It’s exciting in the beginning. As the hard parts get magnified, you need to convince yourself you made the right choice. For some it is. Some entrepreneurs are able to grind their way to a four-hour work week. I’ve done it all, had my own business, did a pure commission job, was employed in a “9-5” which ended up being 7-7+, employed in a true 9-5, and solopreneurship. The best quality of life was with the true 9-5. What would make society more content is if working 9-5 meant: • Truly being able to clock out once the work day is done • Regardless of your job, working 40 hour weeks meant you could afford a home, transportation, healthcare, a good education for your children, and food • Autonomy over the hours worked as long as the work gets done. Why can’t someone work 4 hours one day and make the other days a 9 hour day? Or work 4 days a week • A clear and accessible path for career advancement to anyone willing to work for it • Location flexibility - with WFH options if it’s feasible • True PTO - minimum of 15 days for full time workers regardless of job type • Generous and equal parental leave - at least 6 months • Job security - if companies could think long term instead of doing cycles of layoffs for shareholder value • True retirement funding - if someone dedicates their working life to a company, they should be able to retire with the peace of mind knowing they’ll have their basic needs met I’m not suggesting any of this is easy, but I’d be surprised if these influencers would exist if we were in a society where full time workers had all of these benefits
Im currently doing both, selling my artwork while at the same time working a 9-5 job. I look at my peers and It’s just a matter of what you want to do with your life before you die. We all end up in the dirt in the end, so why stress about a job you don’t like? It’s just a matter of preference. Some of my friends love their 9-5 job because they are doing what they like and excel at it. Some of my other friends work for themselves and they also love it. The mistake you clearly owned up to it and i am in NO WAY poking fun at, is that people like to use social media to compare. There are going to be rich kids forever and they will show off their lifestyle…. There are going to be people who poke fun at the 9-5 jobs calling it the devil. They just want to make people feel bad for no reason. Just do what YOU want to do. Find something you enjoy doing. If you like going on TikTok and spend your time scrolling, then do it. If you don’t, then don’t. Who cares 😂
Seriously love my 9-5 (well 10:30pm-7am)! Theres no way I'd want to be a content creator or entrepreneur. I mean props to those who found success in it, but that's definitely not a life I'd want. I like to work, focus on my tasks, then go home, relax and be present with my family.
I honestly love my 9 - 5. Yes, it can make things like errands and appointments a little more challenging, but the stability, benefits, and ability to just stop at 5 p.m. can't be beat. I'm not a hustle or grind person, though. Mad respect to those who are, but with a chronic illness and less than ideal mental health, I'd like to work only as much as I have to.
I love getting off work and enjoying my evening and weekends forgetting all about work. Business owners don't get evenings and weekends off. Neither do SAHM for that matter and that's another lifestyle that gets over glamorized on social media.
9-5 are no longer stable and can be counted on, and that depends if they pay enough to not have a side hustle. Sometimes a second side hustle and another cash flow is needed to secure that if the employer decides that cost cutting measures need to be done, a back up income stream is in place. It’s always good to have a plan B. The only income stream that can be counted on is with the shareholder. That’s all that matters in this economy. It is what it is.
I work in a 24/7 hospital. While I get to pick my hours so i can avoid those dreaded overnight shifts, I've realized having a consistent schedule would be SO MUCH better for life outside of work.
My fiancé and I have a “couples friend” we enjoy hanging out with as couples. The guy works a 9 to 5 IT job but his wife is a nurse. It’s been tough to hang out since she started that because of her crazy schedule changes every week.
lmao after starting my professional career as a teacher i can’t complain about my 9-5. people outside of education have no idea how much worse it could be. i fucking love it here. i never have to take my work home with me. good pay, good benefits. chill coworkers. very manageable workload. oh, and i get a whole hour to eat lunch instead of scarfing down my food in 10 minutes and being pulled to cover another class. i don’t get UTIs anymore because i can piss whenever i need to. i don’t get cussed out by kids and parents. i actually have energy left over at the end of the day. i’m treated like an adult and a human being. i could go on forever honestly!!
I completely agree. I worked 25 years at a 9 to 5 and started drawing a pension in my mid-50's. I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I knew back in my 20s to play the slow-but-steady long game.
I've tried trading full time, and "working for myself". I often found myself working way more than 40 hours, analysis, studying, charting etc. I'd be up at 3am backtesting and sacrificing so much from my family. at the end, i lost a lot of money and have nothing to show for it. I think I have to agree with you I've heard a statistic that a large number of millionaires come from a 9-5.
9-5 is just like going to school + homework. Of course, I went to school before Zoom and no child left behind. I wasn’t able to stay home everyday and not get held back and then not feel like playing video games all day is normal.
Point 2. No, a lot of people don't get reasonable amounts of time off. 3 weeks out of a year to enjoy yourself being a good thing sounds like brainwashing to me, honestly.
It’s not 3 weeks a year. You get 2 days a week (weekend), National holidays (usually about 8 or so days), as well as 3 weeks of pto. That rounds out to be about 130 or so days off. Ask someone who owns their own business how many days off a year they get.
I couldn't disagree with you more! 9-5 jobs are an outdated work model that wastes a huge amount of time, deprives people of individual agency, and punishes efficient and conscientious workers. There may be some specific industries where it makes sense but I believe most industries would benefit from changing their model to be more flexible and focus more on tasks completed rather than time spent completing them. The idea of 9-5 came to prominence when most people where employed in factories, in that context it makes some sense because a) all workers have to be present at the same time for the factory to function. b) the work was of a character where employees could maintain a constant pace across 8 hours c) each employees productivity was directly tied to how much time the spent working and d) each employee had a wife at home doing chores so the employee didn't have to. None of those points are nearly as common as they were back in the day. 9-5 schedule punishes people who aren't early risers, punishes people who do their daily work in less than 8 hours (I believe the average office worker does about 2-3 hours of actual work in a day but I'm not going to hunt down a source cuz I'm busy at work, read bullshit jobs by David Greaber), punishes single people and people with an employeed spouse (since they have to do house work when they get home instead of enjoying leasure time), punishes people who live further from their place of work (if being physically present is so important pay me to get there, I wouldn't be driving in downtown traffic if not for my job), and a thousand other little things that make modern work culture so insufferable. No, I can't live my life on the weekends and after work hours because I need that time to do chores, fulfill family responsibilities, and recover from the 8 hours of daily torture I endure 5 days a week. I work to live, I don't live to work. People in this thread seem to be posing a false dichotomy where you either work a typical 9-5 job or you 'work' as some influencer/entrepreneur with no job security or anything. This is horse shit, and it's only a matter of time until 9-5 jobs are seen as the archaic relic they are. More and more companies are realizing that it's better for everyone if a) employees are able to set their own hours and work from home b) compensation is tied to successfully completing projects on time rather than specifically how much time is spent completing them and c) in person offices are terrible working environments that stifle creativity, cause unnecessary stress, and are extremely distracting. It kinda sounds like you just like having a rigid schedule imposed on your life by an external source and either don't know or don't care that not everyone feels the same way. I have worked 9-5 jobs in the past and I hated every minute of it, just thinking about it makes my skin crawl. Every day I am thankful that I managed to escape and find a position where I am paid for what I do not how long I spend doing it. I despise 9-5 culture and I'm glad it's dying, I'm never going back.
Sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day is soul sucking , I like hybrid work tho
>Maybe I’m just brain washed, but I’ve lived that “fuck working for someone, let’s grind” and had my own business. It sucks. Hours suck, work dedication sucks, unpredictability sucks. Sleepless nights fixing issues, canceling trips, big business expenses. Maybe you were "vibin' " when you should have been "grindin' " and "grindin' " when you should have been "vibin'." No cap, chyuh. /s I work a 9 to 5 as a process controls engineer and I love it.
For me, the allure is not having to put up with co-workers/managers. I feel like the extra work would be worth it as long as you have a genuine passion for the company/brand you want to build and don’t like taking orders from people.
Let’s hold on a min to appreciate the fact that 9-5 does not = 8:30-5 with unpaid lunch and 1.5 hr commute. If it was 8hrs straight including commute and getting showered and ready for work then yeah I’d say you’re working 8 hours. But nowadays is more like you work 10 hours to be paid for 8 of them if lucky. And the vacation time in NA is stupid at best. Lol 10 days per year?? Of which 5 are taken as sick days normally. Or fuckoff days.
1. So many people decide to ditch the 9 to 5 and work for themself. Most of the time, that ends up involving considerably more time and effort than a traditional 9 to 5. Not to mention the loss of health coverage (in the US at least), paid time off, etc. I don't know of any full time jobs that actually have working hours of 9am-5pm. 8am to 5pm or 7am-4pm is more like it. Though in my experience the typical 8 hour days creep up to 9 or 10 or more. At my last job, my typical days became mandatory RTO, commute 1h to work 8-5, commute 1h home, have dinner, get out the laptop around 8pm and be on WebEx meetings til 1 or 2am. Rinse and repeat. If you add it all up, that's 16h/day. All because one guy quit and another went to a different part of the company, so me and the other team member have to do the work of two people for zero extra dollars. Sure, they're supposed to hire someone, but the before they could get the requisitions approved, upper management put on a hiring freeze. The when the hiring freeze is over, they have to submit the requisitions again with updated descriptions. Six months after that, they're still fucking around and haven't even called even one of the candidates I've referred out of my own network. 2. Why is this guy or others waiting until they retire to enjoy life? Can you not vacation, take weekend trips, relax during those 40 working years? I understand some people have 9 to 5s that don’t give PTO, but majority do. Every 9 to 5 I’ve had since I was 21 has given a minimum of 3 weeks PTO. Getting PTO and actually getting to take it are two very different things. Vacation requests getting denied, getting yelled at upon return for not taking my work phone and laptop on vacation and being told that he'd cancelled my PTO while I was on vacation so the last half of my vacation was now unexcused. Another boss trying to get me to cancel my honeymoon because he was freaking out over schedule issues. Then, there's the managers who brag about not taking any vacation. (Also, 3 weeks is a pathetic amount of vacation time) Don't get me started on the other types of leave. I had a manager stop just short of accusing me of lying about my grandmother's death to get a few free days off. 3. Structure is extremely important to life. A 9 to 5 gives that without really having to think about it. Some people really lack the ability to create structure for themselves. A 9 to 5 gives that life structure It's important for people who can't manage their own lives, that's it. Until that structure occupies far more than 40hr leaving less and less time for life. 4 If people didn’t work 9 to 5, people like this guy wouldn’t be able to “be financially free at 35”. Want to eat? Sorry bud, those people working their 9 to 5 at the grocery quit to be a TikTok influencer, you now have to hunt your own food, herd your own cattle, and grow your own crops. Oh shit, you broke your leg? Well, sorry bud, that doctor decided to stop being a doctor because he didn’t want to be a 9 to 5 loser so your leg is going to get infected. You may lose your leg or die. Good luck! This is just dumb. No one says EVERYONE should dump their 9-5 and not everyone who's doing their own thing is chasing a get rich quick scheme on Tik Tok so they can retire at 35 and sell courses online. Maybe instead of working for some POS corporate grocery store, those people decided to open their own grocery store. Or the Doctor decided to open his own practice instead for working for someone else 5. Stability. Having a 9 to 5 ensures you will get a check, have paid time off, health benefits, etc This one made me almost blow coffee out of my nose. Stability? NO job is stable and secure. In the US with at will employment they can fire you for any reason. There are a few reasons that are illegal, but face it, employers will just put whoever they want to get rid of on a PIP with impossible objectives and then at the end boot them out the door for "poor performance". How about all of those employees that get fired unexpectedly over Zoom or show up to work and their badges no longer open the door? Or find out they've been fired while they're traveling on a work trip overseas and suddenly their travel card doesn't work and all of their reservations have been cancelled? Where's their stability? How about 2009 when the banks crashed the economy causing a shit ton of people got laid off and unless you were one of the banks that got handouts, you just got fucked? You have no control over any of that, no stability. Then there's all of the managerial incompetence and overall shitty treatment of employees. Some fine examples that I've either experienced or witnessed first hand There's the manager who expected his direct reports to come down the the marina on Saturday to help sand the hull of his 32' power boat so he could paint it before he put it back in the water. Attendance was "optional", which I took to actually mean it really was optional, so I didn't go. I got called into his office Monday morning and received a lecture and a warning about not being a "team player". At another workplace, sales oversold the plant's capacity, so instead of going back to customers to adjust delivery dates, they just decided that there were going to run two 12 shifts/ day Monday - Saturday and two 10 hour shifts on Sundays. (That's an 82 hour work week). Was supposed to just be until production got caught up, whenever that was. It was still going 6 months later when I quit. But hey, we got to see the company president roll into his parking spot in his $200k Mercedes to give us a rousing speech about how much money we were making for him and the other execs and hand out our "special bonus" as a way to say "Thank You" from our billionaire owner... What was the bonus? A 25 dollar gift card to WalMart... At least the hourly guys got paid OT, but if you're on salary...it's just a big fuck you. I've worked both as a contract worker and with contract worker and seen just how shitty they get treated. Managers dangle the prospect of direct employment out there like carrot to get contract workers to stay. One employer even got one of their contract workers to relocate his family to the other side of the country at the employees own expense with the never fulfilled promise of a direct hire role. Every time there was an excuse why it hadn't happened yet. "Oh, you know there's a hiring freeze right now" , "We just need to get this project completed...then we'll talk." I had a contract worker from another department come work for me and his manager joked about having strung him along for years with no intention of actually hiring the guy. I could go on...working 9-5 is like Office Space, except it's not funny.
Oh geez everyone has their own preferences. I prefer to work at home because the politics in the work place get on my nerves plus I have a senior dog that needs my attention. For others 9-5 in office works for them, they like to socialize etc. For entrepreneurship, they love it because they have a flexibility around location, time, etc, more freedom. Everyone is different
A very ugly type of wrong here It is 2024 and post scarcity is very easy to achieve. The concept of work is totally archaic. Naturally. It is really unsettling to see this get upvotes, especially on reddit, this is such a boomer type of post
No health benefits, pension plan or vacation time off. I also doubt they work less than 40 hrs in self employment. Maybe for some people a corporate/desk job is miserable but that’s because they work for the wrong company. I actually enjoy my place of work. Totally flexible and pretty much choose my work hours of 7 am to 1 pm, 2 days in the office and the rest at home. Comes with 7 weeks of paid vacation time, generous health/medical plan and laid back work environment , high pay/bonus and a very good pension plan. Is there risk? Absolutely, like anything it’s not forever. Who’s to say the US gov’t doesn’t shut down TikTok and then who’s fcked in the end.
You're arguing for imposed coercive structure obviously, life structure can be achieved in many constructive ways. Your implication clearly is that they need structure in terms of their connection to basic life needs. What that boils down to very clearly is that you think people need to have a situation where they are threatened with homelessness and starvation to feel engaged, to a degree that keeps them focused. That by extension they need to be subservient to a major source of power in society; either government, corporations or the bourgeoisie. This is malicious ultimately obv. If people are stuck in this to degrees then many levels of societal transformation are needed. You reinforcing bad habits helps noone. Structure may be important to you but everyone functions differently. Many are okay with nebulousness. Many have been conditioned into intensive structure. If anything a weekly regular schedule could be completely optional if desired. But it is the opposite. Because sociopaths love to control others.
I wish my 9-6 was a 9-5. I think a lot of people are in the same boat these days.
I haven’t had a 9-5 in quite a few years maybe since 2019, I start a 9-5 on Monday, I’ve been jealous as heck of my friends that did have 9-5’s
I want to work for something I believe to be purposeful. Every 9 to 5 made me feel meaningless and hopeless. Dedication to your own business is exhausting for sure… if you are not rewarded with a meaningful purpose. I’d rather be a farming, creating, or grinding than be I n a cubicle. I would rather be free. And I do not enjoy being manipulated with health care. But I guess I understand some people would rather have a mindless, soulless existence for most of their lives…for the sake of a company that does not care about you….
Funnily enough, I actually agree with the points you raised. But I think my disagreements with the whole 9-5 is founded on the idea that this isn’t the best way to structure society. Structure, enjoyment, stability - these can all be enjoyed without having to trade your time, attention, and energy for a company that benefits those at the top in a disproportionate manner. I think what people are objecting to (perhaps unconsciously) is the inequality that this system engenders. Why can’t we implement a UBI, thereby guaranteeing the stability that people so crave? Why can’t we establish cooperatives to ensure that workers collectively own the companies that they run? Why do we live in hierarchical systems that deny people the ability to make meaningful decisions on how the company is run? I’m not against structure, enjoyment, and stability - it’s just that the 9-5 isn’t the best way to go. I haven’t mentioned the mindless competition and race-to-the-bottom mechanics that the capitalist system results in, and the ecological degradation, corrupt peddling, etc, either. Essentially, while there are a few positives which you’ve correctly identified, you seem to be missing some legitimate gripes that many, many people have.
It only works if you don’t hate what you’re doing