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> thats another way of saying you mainly want to work for the money. Is it? Years ago... I had a friend who was just getting in to dev work, but he was pretty

> thats another way of saying you mainly want to work for the money. Is it? Years ago... I had a friend who was just getting in to dev work, but he was pretty good, even then. He was doing low-pay work someplace, not even dev work entirely, but he got to learn a bit on the job. But... was making around $37k (2007?). I offered to connect him with a recruiter who had a 6 month python gig lined up for him at ~$50/hr. That's... after his taxes... it's about $45k for 6 months of work. "But... what would I do after that? I wouldn't have my health insurance! There's too much risk!" I said "you'll be making more in 6 months than you do in a year... you can figure things out then, and very likely there will be more stuff after that, once you're 'in' there". "Too risky..." So... the 'stability/peace of mind' is, imo, not just another way of saying 'in it for the money'. I think stability with known lower pay is a stronger motivation for some folks.

johnbcoughlin 5y ago
The stability your example cites is stability of the amount of money you have and are making. Not to say that the other kind isn't a real thing people care about, but I don't think this is an example.
ghaff 5y ago
>I think stability with known lower pay is a stronger motivation for some folks. And there's sometimes this baked in assumption that you can call a recruiter on Monday and end up with three $300-400K offers by the following Monday. Which may be true for some people with very in-demand specific skills. But is utter fantasy for people in more specialized roles, older, etc. who actually are making a comfortable amount of money and like where they are. Why take a jump they don't really need to just for some extra cash?
- lowercased 5y ago
  > And there's sometimes this baked in assumption that you can call a recruiter on Monday and end up with three $300-400K offers by the following Monday I have never had this illusion, but I think my wife has had that idea (for me, not for her), and I had to disabuse her of that notion :) We're not in a terribly HCOL area to begin with, nor in a major tech hub, so... traditional w2 9-5 jobs, even in tech, are, for most senior folks I know, topping out in the mid $100s. If you want to count 401k/insurance/etc in total comp, you're still generally going to be under $200k (probably even fully loaded cost). Not so say there aren't any higher paying jobs, but they're relatively limited, and are going to have higher competition, etc.
  - ska 5y ago
    This is true of the vast majority of tech work, notwithstanding typical compensation conversations on HN.

johnbcoughlin 5y ago

The stability your example cites is stability of the amount of money you have and are making. Not to say that the other kind isn't a real thing people care about, but I don't think this is an example.

ghaff 5y ago

>I think stability with known lower pay is a stronger motivation for some folks. And there's sometimes this baked in assumption that you can call a recruiter on Monday and end up with three $300-400K offers by the following Monday. Which may be true for some people with very in-demand specific skills. But is utter fantasy for people in more specialized roles, older, etc. who actually are making a comfortable amount of money and like where they are. Why take a jump they don't really need to just for some extra cash?

lowercased 5y ago
> And there's sometimes this baked in assumption that you can call a recruiter on Monday and end up with three $300-400K offers by the following Monday I have never had this illusion, but I think my wife has had that idea (for me, not for her), and I had to disabuse her of that notion :) We're not in a terribly HCOL area to begin with, nor in a major tech hub, so... traditional w2 9-5 jobs, even in tech, are, for most senior folks I know, topping out in the mid $100s. If you want to count 401k/insurance/etc in total comp, you're still generally going to be under $200k (probably even fully loaded cost). Not so say there aren't any higher paying jobs, but they're relatively limited, and are going to have higher competition, etc.
- ska 5y ago
  This is true of the vast majority of tech work, notwithstanding typical compensation conversations on HN.