What does he do, and do they have any openings?
Oversees contractors for specific kinds of home renovations. Or possibly oversees the people who oversee the contractors, I'm not sure.
So, he's paid based on a percentage of the contract, rather than hourly? That does sound like a sweet gig, so long as the contractors don't fuck up. If they do, and he doesn't catch it, then he's on the hook too.
That is, he might be getting paid based on the amount of risk he is taking, not the number of hours he is putting in.
I only charge hourly, so I'm really not interested in taking on a job where I can really only bill an hour or two, but if it goes wrong, I'm in line for a six figure claim. Lawyers do that work, but you have to have a volume operation on that, doing so many of the same thing that even if one goes wrong, you've still made a profit. (Yes, I have insurance, but don't there's deductibles and raised premiums to think about.)
Something is fucked up in US construction specifically, and my gut says the elaborate standardized network of middlemen is a significant part of it.
To 3 and 5, he's not personally assuming the risk. He's part of a larger company, with a boss.
All the sweeter! Just think how much the boss is getting if they can pay your friend-in-law big money for nothing.
So his job is to make sure each house is built as inexpensively as possible but still pass code and look good until sold? I have one of those and have spent the last 15 years upgrading everything so the heat actually works, the water actually comes out of the faucet, and the roof doesn't leak.
He's in a specific niche of a build or remodel, not the entire thing, but yes.
I remember a conversation, maybe 10 years ago, with somebody expressing envy over a friend of theirs who had a well-paying job which was boring but essentially zero-skill and minimal effort.
At the time I thought that a job like that wouldn't interest me very much because I appreciated that I had a job which required mental effort, in which I did learn things and got to solve real problems (even if there's also a fair amount of mental drudgery).
At this point, I still wouldn't want the well-paying boring job, but a well-paying job with minimal effort sounds really nice.
There's someone whose niche is niches.
Riches and riches for niches in niches.
Snitches seek niches to hide from stitches from bitches.
Me: Snitch seeking niche for current sitch
You: Rich bitch
Felt connection, wanna get hitched?
I used to get angry at how other people seemed to have jobs and careers that involves so much less work than my own. And I mean people who worked for the same division, in the same building, as I did. Somehow, they just had a cushy spot: they didn't have to actually generate any revenue for the company, nor do any interesting research, nor ... do anything, really. Somehow, they just coasted along, doing almost nothing and getting paid well for it.
But then one day, I realized that I wouldn't get angry at somebody for being born of rich parents, or being born beautiful, or winning the lottery, and really they're the same thing.
I still want confiscatory progressive taxation, though.
I realized that I wouldn't get angry at somebody for being born of rich parents, or being born beautiful, or winning the lottery, and really they're the same thing.
Aw, thanks. I'm not mad at you, either.
I'm with Chetan on this. I have a fair number of friends/relatives around my age who are retired or semi-retired, and who nonetheless collect good pensions or have employed spouses or whatever. They are nice people and I wish them well, even though I'm going to be working for another five years or more.
I do, however, occasionally wish I had caught on with the federal government when I was 22. The pensions used to be insane. (They have since been dramatically cut, but are still pretty decent.)
This from the OP is hard for me to comprehend:
I would maybe find it infuriating to be in her shoes.
If the Missus were to find a makework job with great pay, how could I be anything but delighted? Your friend is a beneficiary of this situation, not a victim of it, no?
She's working a lot harder than her husband -- being a little envious of his leisure seems reasonable.
Having hoards of free time and not sharing isn't good. Like buying carry out food and not asking if anyone else wants something.
But it's the sharing that's the issue, not possession of the time or the food. I take the point, though, and I now see that this is a pretty ordinary way to feel. Come to think of it, it's probably good for my marriage that the Missus and I agree that I work harder than she does. Doesn't bother me, but it might indeed bother her if our positions were reversed.
22: HB's 11 implies he has to go to job sites, or at least oversee the inputs and outputs, talk to contractors and the people in government who sign off on documents, and so on. To my mind that's not exactly heavy lifting, but not "leisure" either. I've known a fair number of people who have well-compensated, rather cushy jobs, but that doesn't always mean they have lots of free time.
So, HB, does his "barely working" still require him to be doing something for the whole workday, or does he sit at home doing nothing except for the occasional con call or trip to a job site, etc.?
7: Huh, I guess they started allowing some limited access (I barely go to that site). Basically, construction productivity has been basically flat for decades, contra productivity in virtually every other industry, driving up the cost of housing.
25: My understanding is that pre-covid, he would loop around to various sites, have lunches with people and have meetings. Now it sounds like it's ~1 conference call a day and maybe a site visit once a week? Because of covid safety, not because business has tanked.
If he's using his extra daytime bandwidth to try and ease her load a bit without endangering the cushy paycheck that 's helping them both out, then I'm guessing she'd be glad he has the bandwidth. But if he's sitting around being barely sheepish dicking around on her phone while she's juggling housework with trying to keep her job, then that would be pretty fucking annoying from spouse.
Also, to pf's point, I think it's a bit of a stage-of-life thing. It also happens that her kids from a previous marriage are younger than his kids from a previous marriage, and so his parenting duties are significantly reduced and winding down compared to hers.
Whereas when two people are empty-nesters or nearing retirement, I think it's easier to not be jealous of other people's free time, because it no longer seems like a desperately scarce resource.
They should even things out by having him get an incontinent dog.
I bet the shelter people get really suspicious if you ask for that directly.
33: They've never heard of the phrase Fido akrates?
29: Right.
31: The OP and this comment don't discuss the view of the actual person involved. How does she feel about it?
Oh, I hear some venting. Let's put it that way. With the acknowledgment that nothing is actually wrong and needs to be fixed, exactly.
I used to know someone whose (respectable, middle-class, pensioned) job involved basically no work at all -- he had to order and oversee some kind of repair to a bit of the hydro (or was it the phone?) system that never broke down and was fully automated anyway. As he explained it the job existed because his *boss's* job represented an important chunk of the company's mission, so that it would feel weird for him not to be supervising anyone, but there wasn't actually anything for the symbolically-appropriate underlings to do. IIRC this started out in the public sector but then it was privatized and nothing changed.
Not really on topic, but last night somebody drove in Kelly's, site of various meet-ups.
My take is more that he's a medieval courtier or a comitatus member, and that capitalism hasn't really rationalized the workplace as much as you'd think
Is he the guy who gets called when things go south? I've had friends with that kind of job. They have tons of free time, sometimes more than they want. Then, their pager would beep - this was a while back - and they'd be working 24 hours a day for most of a week fixing things.
The pay was really good, but it sounded rough on the nerves, and it was impossible plan.