# Retired Dopers: how did you decide when to retire?

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/retired-dopers-how-did-you-decide-when-to-retire/939207
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [April 2, 2021, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/retired-dopers-how-did-you-decide-when-to-retire/939207 "2021-04-02T05:32:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 102

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### Author: ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [April 12, 2021, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/retired-dopers-how-did-you-decide-when-to-retire/939207/102 "2021-04-12T21:33:59Z")

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> [@pkbites](#):
>
> Why didn’t you get paid overtime? Were you exempt or was your employer a slime

Here’s a whole thread about the many ways that salaried employees of all types are routinely made to work 50 or 60 or 100 hours for zero additional wages over 40. You have two choices: do the extra time or be fired. When your whole industry operates on that basis, you may be able to change employers, but you can’t escape the exploitative reality of the industry.

This OP is ostensibly about the limit case bad deals, but plenty of more ordinary jobs work the same way. Making, say, $60K+ in any office doing anything and being allowed to work only 40 hours doing so is a very rare treat. White collar slaves is more like it.

High wage hourly workers such as you and I are by far a rarity in the USA. In my industry the vast majority of overtime is paid but only at straight time rates.

> [@Why do highly educated people accept 100 hour a week jobs?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-highly-educated-people-accept-100-hour-a-week-jobs/938367):
>
> I read that bankers working for Goldman work for 80 and even 100 hours a week and that blew my mind. I live in the Balkans in one of the poorest countries in Europe, where the average salary is about 450 - 500 usd, yet most people here work for 8 hours a day for 5 days and some in saturday as well, very little people work on sunday, usually only the ones that have crappy jobs and have to make as much as they can to survive. Even counting saturdays, that is 8 hours x 6 days - 48 hours a week, if…

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