Watches Are for the Poor

Seems like a torqued version of “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule,” but without redeeming ideas for improving the human condition.

https://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

The company owner has a watch too, because while he may be rich and comfortable, he answers to The Machine even more than you.

Somewhat recently here in Bogotá police have learned of criminal organizations dedicated to steal expensive watches from wealthy people. It seems to me like since a year ago or so it was kind of frequent to hear someone got stolen their rolex that went around COP$50000000 (around US$12950). President, senators, ministers and the like are earning around the same amount each month, which is around 50x the minimum wage (and as with many "third world" countries, in many cases a minimum wage is the only income for an entire family). Not long ago there were children dying of starvation in the northest part of the country.

Colombia still rakes the top 10 of most unequal countries in the world [0], recently it was in the top 3.

[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?locations=C...

I think this article is a monumental example of confirmation bias, cherry-picking and wild inferences.

Watches were invented for the rich for the very reason the same article describes: it was the poor -- which was to say -- the farmers, who didn't really need to know their time, as general time of day is more than sufficient for farming. In addition, the church used to sound the time (the bell would be sound five times at 5PM etc.) On the other hand, a rich city-dweller might need to know how much time was left until an opera performance that begins at seven.

However, the difference is much more rural-urban than rich-poor. The worker needs to know when the factory he works at starts, but the factory owner also needs to know when the factory he owns starts. The artisan opening a shop needs to know when to open it, but the rich guy who buys some luxury item from the artisan (eg. a nice tailored suit) needs to know when the artisan shop closes.

Yes the wrist watch, was a worker's item, because it enabled him to look at the time while his hands were doing something else. Gentlemen wore pocket watches. But that has nothing to do with the general idea of a watch or time-keeping device.

There is also the old fashioned wall clock, which people who have more domestic lifestyles (traditionally, women) would use to tell the time. Bellow it sits the old fashioned calendar, which both of my grandmas check off ever morning. The person who was out and about would use still use the calendar in the morning and would know what day it was for the rest of the day (if that information mattered to him).

Much more often, the day that actually mattered is the day of the week, and I can always tell you what day of the week it is, and everyone always probably could (including farmers -- since they went to church on Sundays). In fact, the farmer's sense of date in the year was much more based around religious dates (days until Christmas, days until Easter, etc.) than on the Xth of September. Again, the difference becomes rural-urban, not rich-poor.

Finally, the reason the time is more important than the date is about biology and the social integration of biology. Your body needs to sleep, eat, and can do a certain amount of work in a fairly daily cycle. To keep society cohesive, we assign certain times for each activity. The date also matters but less so: it matters for farming, etc. but more so the season than the exact date.

As we urbanize, the gradations of time become more important: what minute is it? what day is it in September? This happens around both the date the time axis. The time of day is still more important, but the date of the month becomes more important than in was in rural society.

It baffled me a bit as the rich use watches, too, and they use them a lot, and they are acutely aware of passing time. Are other articles by the same author also addressing inequality issues?

So I found this:

https://prajyoth.pages.dev/article?id=2025-01-29-building-wi...

Apart from being partly written by AI, I wonder if it was written for humans because the code formulated in terribly long lines hidden behind scrolling bars. If anybody is considering writing content in this way, please don't.

> But unknowingly, my brain entered that deep-think mode like a Large Language Model by then.

That sentence is stupendously dumb, but is so 2025. Is he saying read no further, because the article is slop? Has he forgot what thinking is, and that LLMs don't do it (despite feature-branding decisions by their promoters)?

I understand there's a metaphor here, but clocks and watches are most associated with churches and religious institutions, who used them to keep track of prayer times; the nobility, who used them as demonstrations of wealth; and astronomers and sailors, who used them to precisely measure the stars. I suppose during the industrial revolution they were also associated with factories, but weren't owned by workers at the earlier stages.

If you were a worker during most of the industrial revolution, you probably tracked time using church bells, the clock in your workplace, the sun, or a man with a long pole who'd wake you up in time for your shift by tapping on your shutters. You wouldn't have a watch any more than a worker in 1968 would have a computer.

You would also likely face consequences for failing to turn up to church on your Sunday off.

This gets at an underlying concept, but arrives at entirely the wrong conclusion IMHO.

Through history clocks and time have been used to regulate and control society. eg read "About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks" by Rooney.

But time-keeping was orchestrated by elites, to control the masses, and differentiate themselves, just like manners. Whoever owned the time, had the best clock, had power and control.

That is now symbolized by expensive clocks and watches, worn by the wealthy and powerful.

That's one viewpoint. I had a Swedish-American economics and history teacher in high school who was a partial Luddite against watches and cell phones because he viewed them as tools limiting freedom rather than as functional or ornamental accessories. Some view the presence of watches as concern for respect of time and/or efficiency, and others perceive smartwatches as convenient, less obtrusive alternatives to smartphone notification/scrolling time sinks. There are many viewpoints. I would suggest continue doing whatever works best for the individual independent of shitpost opinions on the internet.

A key piece of human civilization shouldn’t be seen as an unidimensional tool.

My subjective time is not your subjective time, so at the very least for meetings, coordination, dealing with more people, work or not, are essential. And time, and time zones, is what makes a global civilization run.

If anything, having watches made us free from more work, is 8 hours, not “during daylight”. But the key here is the other people, you don’t work alone.

To be honest, I have my doubts.

Watches and clocks have always been high status, and watchmakers highly skilled individuals. For the hot polloi, clocktowers in parishes could supply all the time information that mass workers would need - hence the existence of horns and hooters in factory settings. A clock would be a valuable thing in a family and would be handed down. A miniaturised clock would be more valuable still and they were ornamented accordingly.

I’m sitting here wearing a Hamilton Air Zermatt. I have a half dozen decent watches, ranging from Vostok to Rolex, and the Hamilton is the one that I wear.

At ~$1k, it’s a nice balance between “nice enough to make me smile when I look at it” and “too expensive to wear everyday”.

I have an Apple Watch Series 8 as well, and while it was certainly convenient… if just didn’t make me happy. The Hamilton does. It’s a pure luxury item for me, meant only for my only gratification.

I think you just make it to fit your narrative. Obviously there are people in us paid bi weekly and in Europe monthly, for same position.

*Watches are for the rich* Why watches were never just tools—they were crowns, allowing the powerful to master their own time while the masses were bound by the sun and seasons.

September 22, 2025

7 min read

*Watches are for the rich* The fundamental division between the powerful and the powerless isn't capital; it's their relationship with time. One group lives by the sun, the seasons, and the day. The other commands the minute, the schedule, and the deadline. This is the truth I almost missed until a simple glass of water revealed it to me: The masses have been given calendars, but the elite have always kept the watch for themselves.

The thought came to me unexpectedly. I was drinking water and urgently needed to know the date. I locked eyes with my 80-year-old grandma, but found myself stumped—how do you gesture for the date? There is no universal sign. In that moment of confusion, the reversal hit me like a lightning strike. Had I wanted to know the time, I would have instinctively pointed to my wrist. The entire world understands that sign.

That single gesture holds the entire philosophy. Society has encoded a universal symbol for the unit of time that matters to commanders, executives, and financiers—the precise minute. The unit of time for the laborer—the day—is left to words and almanacs. A watch is not merely a device with three spikes rotating at speed; it is the embodiment of a power structure, a tool for those whose moments are leveraged and whose seconds are monetized. The question wasn't if watches were for the rich, but a deeper exploration of why. It is the instrument for those who don't follow the rhythm of life, but dictate it.

*The Question That Started It All* This understanding reframed everything. A common person can look outside anytime—the sky, the sun setting—and say, yeah, it must be 5. Their life is governed by natural cycles. But they can't, in any way, without an external source of information, say today is the 20th of September—pinpoint exact. It's unnecessary for them. Then why was knowing the precise time so critical it deserved its own invention and universal symbol? Leadership it is!

*The Executive's Reality* I'm a man who needs to build an empire. Who cares what day it is? I hope it's a profitable day! I hope my stock price rises, or maybe I close a major acquisition. I wake up at 5 AM for a call with the London office, my ship leaves the port at 8:45, a capital allocation meeting is at 11:30. That's the chime on my minute repeater! It must be 12! Time for a lunch meeting. I'm feeling the pressure, there goes the alarm on my perpetual calendar! It's 6 PM now. Yeah, I can get out of this office and head to a board dinner. I need to rush now, catch the car at 6:15 to be on time. An executive in a high-rise has little chance of looking at the open sky to tell time. Not his concern. A precision instrument like a wristwatch is essential for someone like that. What would he do with a simple wrist calendar when his entire day is a sequence of leveraged minutes? The ability to coordinate, to schedule, and to command is built on the second hand, not the sunrise. The bells don't dismiss him; he commands the bells.

*The Rich and the Bigger Picture* But me, in my deep-think mode, couldn't pause there. Why did the rich need them so profoundly? What is a giant company's chairman orchestrating? Everything happens on his command, right? The watch was never a passive virtue. It was the very tool of that command. He doesn't wait for things to happen. He schedules them into existence. The bigger picture is assembled from a thousand precisely managed moments. A five-minute delay for him isn't an inconvenience; it's a five-figure loss in opportunity cost, a cascade of rescheduled meetings, a sign of weakness. The watch wasn't an accessory to his power; it was the engine of it.

*The Pyramid of Time* A factory girl at a textile mill was paid by the hour. Her time was owned by another. A bricklayer got paid by the end of the day. His horizon was the setting sun. A shipbuilder or a railway engineer might be on a weekly wage, focused on a project milestone. A manager was on a monthly salary, executing a strategy. A chief or head of department saw his success measured by the end of quarters. A founder or an investor never counted in hours. They planned in years and built dynasties. Looking at this pyramid, we can infer that mastery of the smallest unit of time enables control over the largest. The person at the top doesn't ignore the minutes; they leverage them with ruthless efficiency. The higher up, the longer the horizon—and the more the watch becomes a symbol of that absolute control over every second. Watches and smartphones > Calendars and day-books > Attendance records and ledgers > Account books and payrolls > Reports, financial statements, and forecast charts

*The Real Purpose of Watches* So maybe watches were never just ornaments or tools. Maybe they were crowns—giving the commander's eyes dominion over the clock while the workers looked at the sun. The poor were made to live by the day. The rich conquered the minute to build their years. And that's how power was forged.

*Today's Pyramid* Today, watches are investments, calendars are weaponized apps, and forecasts are AI-driven models. The pyramid of time hasn't disappeared—it's just become steeper, measured in KPIs, OKRs, and quarterly earnings calls. The smartest move isn't to stop counting the hours—it's to make your hours count for more than anyone else's. Maybe the real flex was always the Rolex—not for its price, but as a statement of the power to decide which unit of time you, and everyone below you, will live by.