Why do highly educated people accept 100 hour a week jobs?

[Novelty_Bobble]

@Elmer_J.Fudd

There’s also a cultural factor at play. An American’s job is, more often than not, a primary part of their identity. If your answer to “who are you?” is your occupation, of course your time is going to be focused mostly on that. I’ve been to weddings in Ireland and Sicily where I spent hours talking to Europeans about everything under the sun without even learning what they did for a living. That takes about two minutes after meeting someone for the first time in the US.

That’s a good point. Even my wife struggles to remember what I actually do and when I meet up with family and friends I can’t ever recall work being a major topic of conversation.
Heck, my younger brother went to Cambridge and got a PhD and you’d think whatever he does would be notable or important to him or me but damned if I know what he does for a living now. Something in academia I believe.