Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
How do I accurately evaluate my worth? I'm too heavily confounded by impostor syndrome that I can't tell where it ends and my true value lies. I'm definitely below average for a Math PhD in terms of accomplishments. None of my grad-school work ended up getting published, and I've published 1-2 papers per year in my postdocs which have gotten ~5 citations each. I seem to work a lot less than my peers, and my advisor/bosses have been too busy and/or easy-going to push me, so I've kind of been coasting. That said, I am smart enough to learn stuff when I do try, and got a Math PhD, and know how to hack code together into something that compiles. I don't know what that's worth. What I do know is I'm not willing to put in the 60+ hour per week that the professors I've worked under seem to do writing grants and managing grad students and whatnot. At least not consistently, I would put in a couple long weeks if I really had to.
And I don't want to move, which drastically reduces my options. But on the other hand, the cost of living is not very high, and I'm currently DINK, so technically could survive on just my wife's job, but that wouldn't really be fair to her. On the work-life balance front I heavily lean towards the life part. Work is there so I don't starve and can afford people to do stuff like house repairs that I don't want to do.
I'm sure someone with my intelligence plus work ethic and ambition that I don't have could easily be making loads of money. However, given my constraints, is $40 an hour still an insult? My ideal position is remote, high pay per hour, few total hours, and meaningful/satisfying/moral, (I'm not phoning it in on a job that my employer expects more from), but I'm not sure what that is or if that's too many variables maximized simultaneously and I might need to compromise on some.
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