Would You Work For Your Spouse (SO) Knowing What You Know About Them?

Oh, no. Like others, my wife and I go about doing work completely differently and have very different strengths. She could never work with or for me, and probably vice versa.

She is more deeply analytical than I am, with a PhD in Mathematics from a top institution, and is capable of working on difficult and abstract problems over a long period of time. As an academic research professor, aside from the teaching load she has (which is a repeated pattern), she gets to work on one problem for as long as she needs to until it’s done to her satisfaction. However, she finds time pressure on problem solving (“you MUST figure this problem out one hour or there will be a serious shitstorm”) stressful to the point of being unable to actually work, and cannot multitask at all: if she’s thinking about problem X, interrupting her about problem Y causes her to be unable to do either well.

Such traits, however talented, smart and hard-working the person may be, is an immediate no-go for working with me - developing, managing, maintaining and supporting the analytics and reporting/trading system for a large financial firm.

I also have a deep need to confirm and test things empirically, which is simply not possible with abstract mathematics. You can’t run a test script or debug a mathematical theorem. I’ve managed to unsettle her by challenge the idea that all of the mathematical proofs she cites - many pages long, and citing other similarly long works - are necessarily reliable, because the whole system works on a network of peer-reviewed journals. At least a few well-known works have been accepted as correct theorems for years or even decades before someone found a hole.

On the other hand, for all the people who’ve ever wanted to say “screw you” to their boss, such a suggestion could be made with some expectation of eventual fulfillment.

It’d be a no. I need some “me” time, even if that means with other people or alone. If we worked together, I’d feel a bit suffocated. I just couldn’t spend that much time with anyone.

That said, if I didn’t know him and we weren’t together, I could work for him. We have the same motivation and ethics level and more of a commitment to working smart and hard at the same time.