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That’s not a rational way to evaluate compensation. Would a reasonable person rather take a guaranteed $1000 or a 10% chance of a $1 million? Obviously the latt

That’s not a rational way to evaluate compensation. Would a reasonable person rather take a guaranteed $1000 or a 10% chance of a $1 million? Obviously the latter, even if it has a large chance of being worthless. The not-stupid way of assessing a compensation package would be to conservatively estimate the expected value of the options and apply a substantial risk penalty in your objective function, not to round all volatile compensation down to zero.

simongr3dal 8y ago
Or more realistic: Would a reasonable person accept $1000 a month or a 10% chance of a million dollars?
- est31 8y ago
  ... without you knowing whether it's a 10% chance or a 0.2% chance and that number becoming 0 if you leave the company so you stay inside and spend even more time working for them even though you might get more at another place, or get a second shot at least. Big tech has multiple advantages, including higher total comp and flexibility.
xyzzyz 8y ago
That’s not a rational way to evaluate compensation. Would a reasonable person rather take a guaranteed $1000 or a 10% chance of a $1 million? A "reasonable person", or a more commonly used "rational agent", is an idealized notion that doesn't actually exist in a real world. Actual humans are not expected-utility-maximizers. See e.g.[1]. Also importantly, the scenario (evaluating the value of option-based compensation) is not like "guaranteed $1000 or a 10% chance of a $1 million" scenario you're describing. Rather, it's like "pay $50-100k/year in opportunity cost for entry to the lottery in which you can win some unknown prize that's almost surely below $5M, at even more unknown probability". Even an expected-utility-maximizer, a "reasonable person", cannot really make a reasonable calculation of the expected utility. [1] - https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167487099000318 https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...
- kolbe 8y ago
  Just because people don't tend to do it doesn't mean you as an individual are incapable of doing it. His advise is the rational approach, and people on Hacker News tend to be smart enough to understand how to estimate probability distributions and how to compute expected value off of these estimates. With tools like this at their disposal, they are more than capable of applying their risk preferences and making rational choices.
  - roguecoder 8y ago
    It isn't really a matter of being "smart". Even investors, who have detailed financial models, decades of data for comparables, get preferences and often board representation to protect their interests, aren't confidently going to be able to provide a probable value of the investment. It is certainly unreasonable to expect employees, who get no board representation and thus can be screwed over in any scenario short of an IPO, to do better than people who have this as their entire job.
    - xyzzyz 8y ago
      That's precisely right. Calculating EV of a lottery ticket is easy, because you know the odds exactly. The idea that a "smart person" can do the same for an early-stage startup that's offering options to employees simply beggars belief.
      - repsilat 8y ago
        Estimating the value at zero is no different. I don't know if options from my old job will ever be liquid and worth anything of note, but I wouldn't sell them for a penny.
  - munk-a 8y ago
    His advise is only smart if the salary you'd be giving up is unnecessary and you consider it a luxury to lock into an investment you may lose. In fact, that's exactly what it is, whenever you're taking stock options into account for compensation be sure to consider how big of an investment (in loss of salary) it is and whether the potential payout and the risk seem logical. If you think that making that big of an investment is too risky for your well being (even if, in the average, it'd pay out better over a lot of plays) then don't take it. We exist for a limited amount of time and large games of chance like this (even if they have an expected return) are not irrational to decline.
op00to 8y ago
I’m reasonable. I would never take a lottery ticket vs $1k in cash unless I could buy 20 tickets.
badfrog 8y ago
> Would a reasonable person rather take a guaranteed $1000 or a 10% chance of a $1 million? For a lot of good software engineers, it's more like: Option A: $1.5mm (5 years total comp at FANG) Option B: $0.5mm (5 years startup salary) + 0-10% chance of $0-20mm. Given all the unknowns in B, I'd definitely take A.
- justrudd 8y ago
  I'm on the Option B track right now :) And there are a lot of unknowns. But I would say that I'm "learning" more at B then I would at A. I can't speak for Facebook, Google, but I did work at Amazon for about 5 years (and take this with a grain of salt because this was 2003 through 2008 on the ops side (supply chain specifically)). And you learn the Amazon way of building software. You use Amazon tools, frameworks, and style. And while some of that knowledge is definitely applicable to other jobs I've held, most of it is not. It is a little bit more now because of AWS (similarity between internal tools and AWS offerings). So yeah...with Option B you might not hit the lottery. But the skills I learned from multiple attempts at Option B are more applicable in my opinion. And that's worth something.
  - mikekchar 8y ago
    Yeah. Either one is a good salary. At some point enough is enough. Take the job that you will enjoy. Even as I say that, I know that for some people job == money, so if making the most money is "fun" then that's totally OK. "I took the one [road] less travelled by, and that has made all the difference" ;-) It doesn't matter which way you go, years from now you'll end up thinking the decision was an important one.
    - solveit 8y ago
      I disagree. Either one is a good salary if and only if you are willing and able to work for the rest of your life. I would spend 15 years at a FAANG and retire early with a comfortable amount of money.
  - fatnoah 8y ago
Spooky23 8y ago
If we were talking about horse racing, I’d agree with you, as you can evaluate the odds of an outcome. The reality is that in business as an employee you’re ability to project the odds is limited at best. You simply don’t have the information to make that calculation. Obviously there’s a spectrum of risk, which is why most people don’t work for minimum wage plus options. But it’s pretty clear that in a world that hasn’t seen a tech recession in a long time, employees without the perspective of living through 2000 may not appreciate what can happen, and will happen again.
munk-a 8y ago
If a rational person was given this choice 100 times it would be rational to always chose 10% chance of $1 million, but is having 10k cash in your pocket 10 times as valuable as having 1k in your pocket when compared to having 0 in your pocket? Money has diminishing returns and when you're potentially going to be below water when it comes to mortgage, food, utility, even the occasional vacation for sanity - then a smaller guaranteed sum can be more valuable than a larger expected sum.
roguecoder 8y ago
That depends on the marginal value of a dollar. If you don't have any money, a rational person would take the first $1,000 since "some food" is better than "a 10% chance of some food".
grey-area 8y ago
Your example dramatically overstates the upside, understates the risk, and ignores a lot of the difficult problems in evaluating options - there are large uncertainties in valuation and very limited information, there is a negligible possibility of fraud or misrepresentation, the person evaluating might have good reason to choose less risk (e.g. starting from 0 savings greatly increases the value of stable predictable income), there is additional risk in having salary and investment tied to the same company, etc. Let's change it to make it slightly more realistic - on offer are options which have a 1% (at best) chance of being worth 1 million in 10 years or a guaranteed higher salary over 10 years worth 300k more. It's not quite so clear cut in that case, and depends greatly on the circumstances and judgement of the person making that call with very limited information. I think it's more reasonable to assume they are worth 0, as the majority of options end up at 0, and the probability of making more through options than salary is nowhere near that in your example.
- diogofranco 8y ago
  I don't think your example depends on the person's circunstances, there is a very clear cut rational decision there. Even not taking the utility of money into account, nor the fact that you need to discount that million as it only arrives in 10 years, you are still only making 10k on average on that gamble. Taking the 300k is the rational decision.
logfromblammo 8y ago
A reasonable person would take the lottery ticket and immediately offer to sell it back to the issuer--or to a large insurer or casino--for a guaranteed $50k (negotiable) before the drawing occurs. However, some options grants are not transferable in that fashion. The reasonable person can then calculate the range of payouts for each option as [$1k..$1k], ev $1k, for the cash option, and [$0..$1M], ev $100k, for the gambling option. Not all gamblers only use expected value as their only metric. Some people also use the minimum return. Those people would take the guaranteed $1k, in cash, and walk. Even if the gambling option had a minimum payout of $1000, thus making it the strictly superior option on paper, just by those metrics, it might also only pay off 3 days from now, when the $1000 on the spot, could be used right now, possibly in some other psychologist's thought experiment on gambling behaviors.
snarf21 8y ago
Because it is more like $200K/year and 0.1% chance of $500K or $75K/year and a 0.1% chance of $5M. It would be silly to take the latter over an expected 5 year tenure.
smileysteve 8y ago
> Would a reasonable person rather take a guaranteed $1000 or a 10% chance of a $1 million? When they have monthly expenses, or understand the power of compounding interest? A reasonable person would take the guaranteed. ---- Even if you make your example less hyperbolic (for an employee): $100k vs $90k + a 5% chance of making $50k in 5 years. Where, the higher and guaranteed salary also has 3% annual COLA (or further freedom to job switch) raises, has a 4% 401k match; The wise person would take the guaranteed income.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
shocks 8y ago
Expectation of option B is $100,000 - so any rational human would take that.
sethammons 8y ago
The numbers I've seen are more like: give up anywhere from $30k to $130k per year for a chance at an equity payout. The only way that works out is if $num_years_worked * $discount_salary < $potential_payout * $chance_of_payout. So if you are getting shorted $50k/yr and you spend 8 years helping build the company, you need a payout that is better than $400k with 100% chance of success. Something like 90% of companies utterly fail. I'm sure some VC math can be applied here. But the VC gets to roll the dice a lot. You get to role the dice once every few years as you change jobs after getting some vesting going on. There is a reason why it is called the start up lotto. You can pad the chances by going with founders with a track record, or going for a company that is nearing an exit, but it is all still the start up lotto.
- danenania 8y ago
  I think the difference is that equity has the potential (even if it’s a small chance) to create a major qualitative change in your life. If you stand to make a million over 8 years anyway, another 400k is nice but won’t change your life that much. Maybe you buy a slightly bigger house or you retire a few years earlier. But a homerun outcome in a startup can mean complete financial freedom and never needing to work again. It’s the long tail, sure, but given that there are other benefits to a startup (learning more, more influence, etc.), a lot of people prefer that long shot to the certainty of being marginally wealthier. I also don’t think it’s really comparable to the lottery. It’s like playing the lottery if you could easily afford to have a 1-5% chance of winning... in which case it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to play for many people. Different strokes for different folks and all that, but I do think it’s wrong to imply that it’s always wrong to take a calculated risk like this when given the opportunity.
  - gtowey 8y ago
    > I also don’t think it’s really comparable to the lottery. It’s like playing the lottery if you could easily afford to have a 1-5% chance of winning... in which case it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to play for many people. Really? Roulette has odds of 37:1 for a single number which is about a 2.7% chance. Would you take $300k that you could otherwise earn in salary and place it all on a single number? The payout would be 10.5 million which far more than anyone I know expects to get from their stock options even with a pretty good outcome. You'd still be insane to walk into a casino in Vegas and make that bet.
Angostura 8y ago
> Would a reasonable person rather take a guaranteed $1000 or a 10% chance of a $1 million? Can this reasonable person afford to pay this month's bills?
mattnewton 8y ago
Idk, does taking the second option mean I have a 90% chance of not making rent?
ska 8y ago
I think you are misreading the point. It's not that the true expected value of early stage options is actually zero, it's that it might as well be for your purposes, choosing between that and other reasonable (i.e. market value) opportunities. If you look at early stage startups, I think it's pretty clear that the EV[startup options] < EV[invested market value salary delta]. This holds true over nearly all startups, and nearly all people who have the option of early stage options. There are outliers, sure - but to a 1st approximation you aren't in them. So you have to fall back on "how much more fun/cool is this startup job than other things I can do". And realistically, getting rich off a startup isn't a rational plan for nearly all people. Asking yourself, "what are the odds I recoup most of the lost salary?" is a more like it. And for typical seed round start up, that break even is going to be a few percent, dilute as needed to look at different rounds. Of course this doesn't help you choose between two different under market salaries with options, either...
smsm42 8y ago
For that to be "obvious", the 10% estimate should be objective and not just pulled out of thin air by somebody. And if it is statistics-based, it should hold into the future even though conditions change all the time (no idea how you would guarantee that). Even then, it's not that obvious - you can't pay rent with a 10% chance. Surely, if you take such chances regularly, it would pay you rent on average, but if you do it just once, you'd have to think about how much not being evicted from your apartment when 90% chance plays out instead costs to you.
dreamcompiler 8y ago
The problem with that logic is that you never know up front what the percentage chance is, and whatever it might be, a retrospective analysis shows it's always much, much lower than 10%.
mcv 8y ago
A conservative estimate of the expected value of the options in a startup that is not successful yet, is $0. So assuming the options are worthless is not all that unreasonable. Options are bonus, not part of the real compensation. Unless the company is already successful or your share in the company is large enough that it really is worth the risk. But if in the most optimistic scenario your options end up being worth $1 million, but it's going to be years before they're worth that much, the chance they're going to end up worth that much is small, and in the mean time you're severely underpaid, then it's probably not such a good idea.

simongr3dal 8y ago

Or more realistic: Would a reasonable person accept $1000 a month or a 10% chance of a million dollars?

est31 8y ago
... without you knowing whether it's a 10% chance or a 0.2% chance and that number becoming 0 if you leave the company so you stay inside and spend even more time working for them even though you might get more at another place, or get a second shot at least. Big tech has multiple advantages, including higher total comp and flexibility.

xyzzyz 8y ago

That’s not a rational way to evaluate compensation. Would a reasonable person rather take a guaranteed $1000 or a 10% chance of a $1 million? A "reasonable person", or a more commonly used "rational agent", is an idealized notion that doesn't actually exist in a real world. Actual humans are not expected-utility-maximizers. See e.g.[1]. Also importantly, the scenario (evaluating the value of option-based compensation) is not like "guaranteed $1000 or a 10% chance of a $1 million" scenario you're describing. Rather, it's like "pay $50-100k/year in opportunity cost for entry to the lottery in which you can win some unknown prize that's almost surely below $5M, at even more unknown probability". Even an expected-utility-maximizer, a "reasonable person", cannot really make a reasonable calculation of the expected utility. [1] - https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167487099000318 https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...

kolbe 8y ago
Just because people don't tend to do it doesn't mean you as an individual are incapable of doing it. His advise is the rational approach, and people on Hacker News tend to be smart enough to understand how to estimate probability distributions and how to compute expected value off of these estimates. With tools like this at their disposal, they are more than capable of applying their risk preferences and making rational choices.
- roguecoder 8y ago
  It isn't really a matter of being "smart". Even investors, who have detailed financial models, decades of data for comparables, get preferences and often board representation to protect their interests, aren't confidently going to be able to provide a probable value of the investment. It is certainly unreasonable to expect employees, who get no board representation and thus can be screwed over in any scenario short of an IPO, to do better than people who have this as their entire job.
  - xyzzyz 8y ago
    That's precisely right. Calculating EV of a lottery ticket is easy, because you know the odds exactly. The idea that a "smart person" can do the same for an early-stage startup that's offering options to employees simply beggars belief.
    - repsilat 8y ago
      Estimating the value at zero is no different. I don't know if options from my old job will ever be liquid and worth anything of note, but I wouldn't sell them for a penny.
- munk-a 8y ago
  His advise is only smart if the salary you'd be giving up is unnecessary and you consider it a luxury to lock into an investment you may lose. In fact, that's exactly what it is, whenever you're taking stock options into account for compensation be sure to consider how big of an investment (in loss of salary) it is and whether the potential payout and the risk seem logical. If you think that making that big of an investment is too risky for your well being (even if, in the average, it'd pay out better over a lot of plays) then don't take it. We exist for a limited amount of time and large games of chance like this (even if they have an expected return) are not irrational to decline.

op00to 8y ago

I’m reasonable. I would never take a lottery ticket vs $1k in cash unless I could buy 20 tickets.

badfrog 8y ago

> Would a reasonable person rather take a guaranteed $1000 or a 10% chance of a $1 million? For a lot of good software engineers, it's more like: Option A: $1.5mm (5 years total comp at FANG) Option B: $0.5mm (5 years startup salary) + 0-10% chance of $0-20mm. Given all the unknowns in B, I'd definitely take A.

justrudd 8y ago
I'm on the Option B track right now :) And there are a lot of unknowns. But I would say that I'm "learning" more at B then I would at A. I can't speak for Facebook, Google, but I did work at Amazon for about 5 years (and take this with a grain of salt because this was 2003 through 2008 on the ops side (supply chain specifically)). And you learn the Amazon way of building software. You use Amazon tools, frameworks, and style. And while some of that knowledge is definitely applicable to other jobs I've held, most of it is not. It is a little bit more now because of AWS (similarity between internal tools and AWS offerings). So yeah...with Option B you might not hit the lottery. But the skills I learned from multiple attempts at Option B are more applicable in my opinion. And that's worth something.
- mikekchar 8y ago
  Yeah. Either one is a good salary. At some point enough is enough. Take the job that you will enjoy. Even as I say that, I know that for some people job == money, so if making the most money is "fun" then that's totally OK. "I took the one [road] less travelled by, and that has made all the difference" ;-) It doesn't matter which way you go, years from now you'll end up thinking the decision was an important one.
  - solveit 8y ago
    I disagree. Either one is a good salary if and only if you are willing and able to work for the rest of your life. I would spend 15 years at a FAANG and retire early with a comfortable amount of money.
- fatnoah 8y ago

Spooky23 8y ago

If we were talking about horse racing, I’d agree with you, as you can evaluate the odds of an outcome. The reality is that in business as an employee you’re ability to project the odds is limited at best. You simply don’t have the information to make that calculation. Obviously there’s a spectrum of risk, which is why most people don’t work for minimum wage plus options. But it’s pretty clear that in a world that hasn’t seen a tech recession in a long time, employees without the perspective of living through 2000 may not appreciate what can happen, and will happen again.

munk-a 8y ago

If a rational person was given this choice 100 times it would be rational to always chose 10% chance of $1 million, but is having 10k cash in your pocket 10 times as valuable as having 1k in your pocket when compared to having 0 in your pocket? Money has diminishing returns and when you're potentially going to be below water when it comes to mortgage, food, utility, even the occasional vacation for sanity - then a smaller guaranteed sum can be more valuable than a larger expected sum.

roguecoder 8y ago

That depends on the marginal value of a dollar. If you don't have any money, a rational person would take the first $1,000 since "some food" is better than "a 10% chance of some food".

grey-area 8y ago

Your example dramatically overstates the upside, understates the risk, and ignores a lot of the difficult problems in evaluating options - there are large uncertainties in valuation and very limited information, there is a negligible possibility of fraud or misrepresentation, the person evaluating might have good reason to choose less risk (e.g. starting from 0 savings greatly increases the value of stable predictable income), there is additional risk in having salary and investment tied to the same company, etc. Let's change it to make it slightly more realistic - on offer are options which have a 1% (at best) chance of being worth 1 million in 10 years or a guaranteed higher salary over 10 years worth 300k more. It's not quite so clear cut in that case, and depends greatly on the circumstances and judgement of the person making that call with very limited information. I think it's more reasonable to assume they are worth 0, as the majority of options end up at 0, and the probability of making more through options than salary is nowhere near that in your example.

diogofranco 8y ago
I don't think your example depends on the person's circunstances, there is a very clear cut rational decision there. Even not taking the utility of money into account, nor the fact that you need to discount that million as it only arrives in 10 years, you are still only making 10k on average on that gamble. Taking the 300k is the rational decision.

logfromblammo 8y ago

A reasonable person would take the lottery ticket and immediately offer to sell it back to the issuer--or to a large insurer or casino--for a guaranteed $50k (negotiable) before the drawing occurs. However, some options grants are not transferable in that fashion. The reasonable person can then calculate the range of payouts for each option as [$1k..$1k], ev $1k, for the cash option, and [$0..$1M], ev $100k, for the gambling option. Not all gamblers only use expected value as their only metric. Some people also use the minimum return. Those people would take the guaranteed $1k, in cash, and walk. Even if the gambling option had a minimum payout of $1000, thus making it the strictly superior option on paper, just by those metrics, it might also only pay off 3 days from now, when the $1000 on the spot, could be used right now, possibly in some other psychologist's thought experiment on gambling behaviors.

snarf21 8y ago

Because it is more like $200K/year and 0.1% chance of $500K or $75K/year and a 0.1% chance of $5M. It would be silly to take the latter over an expected 5 year tenure.

smileysteve 8y ago

> Would a reasonable person rather take a guaranteed $1000 or a 10% chance of a $1 million? When they have monthly expenses, or understand the power of compounding interest? A reasonable person would take the guaranteed. ---- Even if you make your example less hyperbolic (for an employee): $100k vs $90k + a 5% chance of making $50k in 5 years. Where, the higher and guaranteed salary also has 3% annual COLA (or further freedom to job switch) raises, has a 4% 401k match; The wise person would take the guaranteed income.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

shocks 8y ago

Expectation of option B is $100,000 - so any rational human would take that.

sethammons 8y ago

The numbers I've seen are more like: give up anywhere from $30k to $130k per year for a chance at an equity payout. The only way that works out is if $num_years_worked * $discount_salary < $potential_payout * $chance_of_payout. So if you are getting shorted $50k/yr and you spend 8 years helping build the company, you need a payout that is better than $400k with 100% chance of success. Something like 90% of companies utterly fail. I'm sure some VC math can be applied here. But the VC gets to roll the dice a lot. You get to role the dice once every few years as you change jobs after getting some vesting going on. There is a reason why it is called the start up lotto. You can pad the chances by going with founders with a track record, or going for a company that is nearing an exit, but it is all still the start up lotto.

danenania 8y ago
I think the difference is that equity has the potential (even if it’s a small chance) to create a major qualitative change in your life. If you stand to make a million over 8 years anyway, another 400k is nice but won’t change your life that much. Maybe you buy a slightly bigger house or you retire a few years earlier. But a homerun outcome in a startup can mean complete financial freedom and never needing to work again. It’s the long tail, sure, but given that there are other benefits to a startup (learning more, more influence, etc.), a lot of people prefer that long shot to the certainty of being marginally wealthier. I also don’t think it’s really comparable to the lottery. It’s like playing the lottery if you could easily afford to have a 1-5% chance of winning... in which case it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to play for many people. Different strokes for different folks and all that, but I do think it’s wrong to imply that it’s always wrong to take a calculated risk like this when given the opportunity.
- gtowey 8y ago
  > I also don’t think it’s really comparable to the lottery. It’s like playing the lottery if you could easily afford to have a 1-5% chance of winning... in which case it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to play for many people. Really? Roulette has odds of 37:1 for a single number which is about a 2.7% chance. Would you take $300k that you could otherwise earn in salary and place it all on a single number? The payout would be 10.5 million which far more than anyone I know expects to get from their stock options even with a pretty good outcome. You'd still be insane to walk into a casino in Vegas and make that bet.

Angostura 8y ago

> Would a reasonable person rather take a guaranteed $1000 or a 10% chance of a $1 million? Can this reasonable person afford to pay this month's bills?

mattnewton 8y ago

Idk, does taking the second option mean I have a 90% chance of not making rent?

ska 8y ago

I think you are misreading the point. It's not that the true expected value of early stage options is actually zero, it's that it might as well be for your purposes, choosing between that and other reasonable (i.e. market value) opportunities. If you look at early stage startups, I think it's pretty clear that the EV[startup options] < EV[invested market value salary delta]. This holds true over nearly all startups, and nearly all people who have the option of early stage options. There are outliers, sure - but to a 1st approximation you aren't in them. So you have to fall back on "how much more fun/cool is this startup job than other things I can do". And realistically, getting rich off a startup isn't a rational plan for nearly all people. Asking yourself, "what are the odds I recoup most of the lost salary?" is a more like it. And for typical seed round start up, that break even is going to be a few percent, dilute as needed to look at different rounds. Of course this doesn't help you choose between two different under market salaries with options, either...

smsm42 8y ago

For that to be "obvious", the 10% estimate should be objective and not just pulled out of thin air by somebody. And if it is statistics-based, it should hold into the future even though conditions change all the time (no idea how you would guarantee that). Even then, it's not that obvious - you can't pay rent with a 10% chance. Surely, if you take such chances regularly, it would pay you rent on average, but if you do it just once, you'd have to think about how much not being evicted from your apartment when 90% chance plays out instead costs to you.

dreamcompiler 8y ago

The problem with that logic is that you never know up front what the percentage chance is, and whatever it might be, a retrospective analysis shows it's always much, much lower than 10%.

mcv 8y ago

A conservative estimate of the expected value of the options in a startup that is not successful yet, is $0. So assuming the options are worthless is not all that unreasonable. Options are bonus, not part of the real compensation. Unless the company is already successful or your share in the company is large enough that it really is worth the risk. But if in the most optimistic scenario your options end up being worth $1 million, but it's going to be years before they're worth that much, the chance they're going to end up worth that much is small, and in the mean time you're severely underpaid, then it's probably not such a good idea.