America’s Professional Elite:

Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

The upper echelon is hoarding money and privilege to a degree not seen in decades. But that doesn’t make them
happy at work.

By CHARLES DUHIGG

Illustration by TRACY MA

MY FIRST, CHARMED week as a student at Harvard Business School, late in the summer of 2001, felt like a halcyon
time for capitalism. AOL Time Warner, Yahoo and Napster were benevolently connecting the world. Enron and
WorldCom were bringing innovation to hidebound industries. President George W. Bush — an H.B.S. graduate
himself — had promised to deliver progress and prosperity with business like efficiency.

The next few years would prove how little we (and Washington and much of corporate America) really
understood about the economy and the world. But at the time, for the 895 first-years preparing ourselves for
business moguldom, what really excited us was our good luck. A Harvard M.B.A. seemed like a winning lottery
ticket, a gilded highway to world-changing influence, fantastic wealth and — if those self-satisfied portraits that
lined the hallways were any indication — a lifetime of deeply meaningful work.

So it came as a bit of a shock, when I attended my 15th reunion last summer, to learn how many of my former
classmates weren’t overjoyed by their professional lives — in fact, they were miserable. I heard about one fellow
alum who had run a large hedge fund until being sued by investors (who also happened to be the fund manager’s
relatives). Another person had risen to a senior role inside one of the nation’s most prestigious companies before
being savagely pushed out by corporate politics. Another had learned in the maternity ward that her firm was
being stolen by a conniving partner.

[Housecleaners, nannies, health aides and domestic workers are organizing to secure job security. Read about
the new labor movement in our Future of Work issue.]

Those were extreme examples, of course. Most of us were living relatively normal, basically content lives. But
even among my more sanguine classmates, there was a lingering sense of professional disappointment. They
talked about missed promotions, disaffected children and billable hours in divorce court. They complained about
jobs that were unfulfilling, tedious or just plain bad. One classmate described having to invest $5 million a day
— which didn’t sound terrible, until he explained that if he put only $4 million to work on Monday, he had to
scramble to place $6 million on Tuesday, and his co-workers were constantly undermining one another in search
of the next promotion. It was insanely stressful work, done among people he didn’t particularly like. He earned
about $1.2 million a year and hated going to the office.

“I feel like I’m wasting my life,” he told me. “When I die, is anyone going to care that I earned an extra percentage
point of return? My work feels totally meaningless.” He recognized the incredible privilege of his pay and status,
but his anguish seemed genuine. “If you spend 12 hours a day doing work you hate, at some point it doesn’t
matter what your paycheck says,” he told me. There’s no magic salary at which a bad job becomes good. He had
received an offer at a start-up, and he would have loved to take it, but it paid half as much, and he felt locked
into a lifestyle that made this pay cut impossible. “My wife laughed when I told her about it,” he said.
 Verbs and their meanings
FEEL to experience a particular physical feeling or emotion
CONNECT: to join two or more things together
BRING: to take something or someone with you to the place where you are now, or to the place you are talking about
GRADUATE someone who has completed a university degree, especially a first degree
PROMISED to tell someone that you will definitely do or provide something or that something will happen
DELIVER to take goods, letters, packages etc. To a particular place or person
PROVE to show that something is true by providing facts, information etc
UNDERSTAND to know the meaning of what someone is telling you, or the language that they speak
EXCITE to make someone feel happy, interested, or eager
SEEM to have qualities to think something is like it is.
COME to move towards you or arrive at the place where you are
ATTEND to go to an event such as a meeting or a class
LEARN to gain knowledge of a subject or skill, by experience, by studying it, or by being taught
OVERJOY to experience an excessive joy or happiness
HEAR to know that a sound is being made, using your ears
HAVE: auxiliary verb used with past participles to form perfect tenses
HAPPEN: when something happens, there is an event, especially one that is not planned synonym occur
RISE: to increase in number, amount, or value
BE: to stay, to exist in a particular way, to have the qualities to be considered in a particular way.
PUSH to make someone or something move by pressing them with your hands, arms etc
STEAL to illegally take something that belongs to someone else
SECURE to get or achieve something that will be permanent, especially after a lot of effort
LIVE to have hove in a place. To inhabit
TALK to say things to someone as part of a conversation
COMPLAIN to say that you are annoyed, not satisfied, or unhappy about something or someone
Undermining to gradually make someone or something less strong or effective
EARN to receive a particular amount of money for the work that you do
HATE to dislike something very much
WASTE to use more money, time, energy etc than is useful or sensible
TELL to say something in a conversation or in a moment.
DIE to stop living because of dead
CARE to think that something is important, so that you are interested in it, worried about it
RECOGNIZE to know who someone is or what something is, because you have seen, heard, experienced, or learned
about them in the past
SPEND to use your money to pay for goods or services
MATTER to be important, especially to be important to you, or to have an effect on what happens
SAY to express an idea, feeling, thought etc using words
LOVE to have a strong feeling of affection for someone, combined with sexual attraction
CUT to reduce the amount of something
 Clue words
Business Shock Professional
School Reunion Disappointment
Halcyon Former Promotions
Capitalism Fellow Divorce
Innovation Investors Tedious
Progress Senior Insanely
Business Prestigious Stressful
Efficiency Politics Office
Corporate Maternity Percentage
Economy Conniving Meaningless
Good Partner Privilege
Luck Domestic Genuine
Fantastic Security Magic
Wealth Movement Salary
Meaningful Extreme Lifestyle
Work Examples

Main idea

A Harvard M.B.A. seemed like a winning lottery ticket, a gilded highway to world-changing influence,
fantastic wealth and — if those self-satisfied portraits that lined the hallways were any indication — a
lifetime of deeply meaningful work. This idea was changed by the one who is telling the story when he
/she attended a graduated classmates meeting where he/she realized that some of his former
classmates were living very stressful or miserable lives because of their works.
 Idea principal

Un Harvard M.B.A. parecía un billete de lotería ganador, una carretera dorada hacia una influencia que cambiaba el mundo,
una riqueza fantástica y, si esos retratos satisfechos que se alineaban en los pasillos eran una indicación, una vida de trabajo
profundamente significativo. Esta idea fue cambiada por el que está contando la historia cuando asistió a una reunión de
compañeros graduados donde se dio cuenta de que algunos de sus antiguos compañeros de clase vivían vidas muy
estresantes o miserables debido a sus trabajos.