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I agree with the idea of pay. With that said, there really are some caveats. "I know everyone says no, I want this or that, but at the end of the day, you are

I agree with the idea of pay. With that said, there really are some caveats. "I know everyone says no, I want this or that, but at the end of the day, you are trading time for money." Not all time is equal. Let's say you're paid $2000 and you're at a job that has no stress, feels cognitively easy and career advancement is possible. Now suppose you're being paid $4000, but you're lightly stressed all the time at baseline. In fact, the whole company is. Now you're being paid $6000 with chronic moderate stress. Or imagine being paid $8000 with heavy chronic stress and you barely have it under control. In these scenario's I'd choose for the $2000 in most cases, unless the other cases are short-term assignments. I could do the $4000 job for perhaps 1 to 2 years, but you start playing with your health in all other cases if you do it for that long. Now this only looked at the relationship of salary, time and stress, but I believe there are a few other variables as well, but it's a lot of typing ;-) E.g. being able to do remote work wherever and work hours whenever, as long as you average 160 hours per month on a 3 month basis. That's completely different as well, I can imagine that you have people that take 1.5 months off and then sink in all their time in the other 1.5 months while being in Argentina, traveling with their SO.

pc86 6y ago
$2000 a month? A week? A day? You might as well replace the numbers with letters because discussing a time-for-money exchange while ignoring the time component is pretty worthless.
- dyadic 6y ago
  Yes, do that then. 2000 = x, 4000 = 2x, 6000 = 3x, 8000 = 4x
  - moreaccountspls 6y ago
    It doesn't work like that though. You can't ignore the diminishing value of money.
    - RhysU 6y ago
      Until all of one's marginal income is at the highest marginal tax rate, the government has already done that calculation for you. At least until then, marginal utility is essentially linear with marginal gross. Not sold? Boom, imagine that your loved ones are suddenly ill.
UglyToad 6y ago
Exactly, and the other thing I think is missing from the belief money is always more valuable than time is there is a scaling limit to money in most cases. In your example you go from x to 4x but taking a developer in London with say a new-senior salary of 70k for a standard low-medium stress role, (with a few exceptions such as working in finance) you might get up to 100k by making a change, which is ~1.4x. But that extra 30k is taxed at 40% so isn't significantly more and is irrelevant against the actual cost of housing in London. HN is always a SV bubble but by and large jobs that allow you to triple your income are vanishingly rare for the average developer, so given you're not going to change your situation entirely with an extra 16k why trade a known quantity for more stress, longer hours and a worse quality of life.

pc86 6y ago

$2000 a month? A week? A day? You might as well replace the numbers with letters because discussing a time-for-money exchange while ignoring the time component is pretty worthless.

dyadic 6y ago
Yes, do that then. 2000 = x, 4000 = 2x, 6000 = 3x, 8000 = 4x
- moreaccountspls 6y ago
  It doesn't work like that though. You can't ignore the diminishing value of money.
  - RhysU 6y ago
    Until all of one's marginal income is at the highest marginal tax rate, the government has already done that calculation for you. At least until then, marginal utility is essentially linear with marginal gross. Not sold? Boom, imagine that your loved ones are suddenly ill.

UglyToad 6y ago

Exactly, and the other thing I think is missing from the belief money is always more valuable than time is there is a scaling limit to money in most cases. In your example you go from x to 4x but taking a developer in London with say a new-senior salary of 70k for a standard low-medium stress role, (with a few exceptions such as working in finance) you might get up to 100k by making a change, which is ~1.4x. But that extra 30k is taxed at 40% so isn't significantly more and is irrelevant against the actual cost of housing in London. HN is always a SV bubble but by and large jobs that allow you to triple your income are vanishingly rare for the average developer, so given you're not going to change your situation entirely with an extra 16k why trade a known quantity for more stress, longer hours and a worse quality of life.