5 ms·

When someone says it's about the money, it's never about the money. So in order to prevent the "I have a better offer" discussion, you have to innoculate your

• kami8845 14y ago
  > - meaningful work One thing that you didn't mention and that has been very important in the decision making process of my recent job search would be: - hard work The vast majority of the jobs out there are run-of-the-mill scale this CRUD thing jobs. Nothing wrong with that but if a company can offer me the opportunity and trust to work on something that is technically very hard, then that is a definitive bonus (although it's not possible for all types of companies to offer that kind of work to engineers)
  • gbog 14y ago
    What do you mean by hard? Hard like design an exciting new nonosql datastore? Or hard like refactoring and fixing an enormous crud codebase with myriad of hidden dependencies?
    • kami8845 14y ago
      As I said above: Hard like technically hard: AI, Machine learning, generally designing new algorithms, language design, crypto, distributed systems, computer vision, compilers, and so on and so forth >exciting new nonosql also nice try at drawing a false dichotomy between CRUD stuff and "reckless" NoSQL DBs.
      • gbog 14y ago
        the legacy codebase refactoring is likely harder than designing new algorithm and all.
  • kamjam 14y ago
    Surely that fits under the meaningful work description? What you may find hard, others may find easy. So at this point it's how meaningful is this work to me? Am I learning anything? Am I finding it challenging enough?
• kyrra 14y ago
  My last company had some pretty interesting work, but a lot of people started looking to leave or left due to money. I think everyone who left got at least a 25% increase in pay leaving. At the same time, a lot of people didn't leave because the work was interesting and their peers were all good to work with. When a company doesn't give meaningful raises for 5 years, people will start leaving.
• roflc0ptic 14y ago
  You wrote: > When someone says it's about the money, it's never about the money. Sometimes, it's about the money. I recognize this isn't a normal experience, but I spent a year and a half working on a team where I made 26k/yr while other team members made 80-120k/yr. There were some complicating factors (it was a state legislature, and I didn't have a college degree), but even localized, 26k for my skillset (web development focusing on open source mapping technology) was unreasonable. When I left, it was definitely about the money. I was very clear that it was about the money. If somebody said, "Money aside, what's really bothering you?" I'm not sure my then 23-year-old-self could have managed to be civil.
  • varelse 14y ago
    Been there, lived that. Salary issue was addressed immediately once I had a competing offer. But unfortunately, in my experience, without that poker chip in your hand, it's all bluster. As much as people say to never ever ever ever accept the counteroffer, doing so IMO is the ideal black spherical cow of salary negotiations. In my case, the long-term benefits of the project I was on were worth accepting the counteroffer and I have no regrets about doing so. Your mileage may vary. In general, every year I talk to a couple potential employers to insure I have a good sense of my market value to prevent incidents like this from ever blindsiding me again.
• debacle 14y ago
  When you're in the upper echelons, where your single income is 3x the median houshold income, it's never about the money. But most programmers don't live there.
  • obviouslygreen 14y ago
    There's way too much "never" floating around in here. If you make three times the median household income and -- like many people -- you live at or slightly beyond your means, then yes, it certainly can be about the money. I knew people in high school whose families made way more money than ours but chose to live in homes that left them with nothing after the mortgage; they were often called "house poor." Big house, ancient station wagon, nothing left over for furniture. Of course this is just anecdotal, but I think we can probably agree that given the commonness of financial irresponsibility and undereducation, to state that all people who make a lot of money have no money problems (whether they should or not) is a little too optimistic.
• nollidge 14y ago
  Correction: it's never just about the money.
  • saraid216 14y ago
    To add a little nuance, If you're not getting enough money, that's a symptom of a deeper problem. Maybe no one gives a shit about your company's product. Maybe your boss undervalues you and pays you accordingly. Digging in and finding the actual root of the problem is occasionally worth it and usually not.
• mikeash 14y ago
  I wish people would realize that absolutes are almost never correct. Sometimes it is about the money. You think people are never horribly underpaid in a job that they otherwise like?
  • jdbernard 14y ago
    Just to add a corroborating data point here: I left a job I loved because I was underpaid. There were extenuating circumstances and my manager's hands were tied, but when an offer for 75% more came along I did not feel bad at all taking it. The job I took was not nearly as interesting to me, but life in general was much better because of the money. We had just had another child and the increase contributed directly to less stress about bills and the costs of a new child, and allowed us to maintain a more comfortable standard of living. Sometimes it is entirely about the money.
    • kamjam 14y ago
      So that would fall under the appropriate compensation / benefits category then. I don't think the OP is saying money isn't a factor, just that it is not the only factor all things being equal. I have taken jobs before where I got paid less because I would learn much more in the new job, inevitably allowing me to earn more money in the longer term. Had I stayed at the old job I would have found it extremely difficult to find a job now with very outdated skillset.
      • mikeash 14y ago
        "When someone says it's about the money, it's never about the money."
      • jdbernard 14y ago
        OP was pretty clear, as mikeash points out by quoting. I agree that it is usually not about the money, and I understand taking a cut or smaller increase b/c of a good opportunity, but to say it is "never about the money" is off the mark. As my situation illustrates, sometimes it is only about the money. That was literally the only reason I left my first position. On every other count the first position was equal or better than the one I moved into. After the switch work was worse but life was better. Because of the money.
• bane 14y ago
  In many ways I don't disagree with you, but in many ways I do. I left my first four jobs purely due to money -- particularly the first three. There is nothing those businesses could have done to retain me short of a rapid and vast increase in pay. The fourth one was about money, but it was also about several of your other listed factors. I was underpaid sure, but I also had excellent work conditions, good work/life balance, great benefits, great recognition and easily the best work mates I've ever had. I miss those few years daily and wish I could return there, but with better pay and differently aligned work responsibilities. After these jobs I entered a very different phase in my career. My next three paid me well enough that pay wasn't an issue, I could live comfortably, travel when I wanted,have plenty of toys, etc. All have had meaningful work, but most of the list was off with few exceptions. These two major phases, early career development and later career development have been very different in terms of what has motivated me to stay. Early career - rapid advancement -- which was really a proxy for more money. Late career - now that I had sufficient money - I either have to find work where I can advance or find something I can stay in steady state till retirement. I prefer the former, but it's surprisingly easy to find yourself in a situation where neither are true and it's time to move on. Operating under the assumption that I won't take a job that doesn't pay well and provide meaningful work and reasonable work conditions, here's what motivates me to leave these days: - Lack of good leadership and a clear direction with strong decision making skills and high workforce engagement. - Leadership that doesn't invite input from experienced employees. - Cronyism. Nepotism. Brown-nosing. Machiavellianism. - Non-congruent culture. Very hard to judge until you work there. - Lack of stability in the work environment. - Artificial glass ceilings. - Misdirected recognition. I'm not bothered by an environment of no particular recognition, but I am bothered by one that directs it to the wrong people. - People getting passed over for obvious promotions. It's usually tied to Cronyism and Nepotism, but not always. I've even happily taken positional promotions that weren't tied to pay increases. I've found that most people I know who've stayed at a job long-term usually hate their jobs, but for a wide variety of personal reasons fear they can't find equivalent or better work elsewhere. Some of them are highly qualified and experienced, but stay only out of an irrational fear of staying with the devil they know because, as one friend put it, "it could be even worse someplace else!" Here's how I view this: really excellent employees need continuous challenges, most business will eventually run out of new and interesting things for those employees to work on and try to make it up with positional advancements, but at some point even those slots will run dry. It's perfectly natural for excellent employees to move on elsewhere and there's nothing wrong with it. It's incumbent on the employer to make sure that the work that person was doing wasn't staffed one deep and has a plan B for the eventuality of that person leaving. Turnover can be good, it's natural, it should be embraced just like Google embraces failure in their scalable systems. Good employees should leave with your blessing.
• larsberg 14y ago
  > it's never about the money In finance, that's certainly not true. I've seen several people make the leaps from the entry-level $100k job to the mid-level $200k job to the profit-sharing (or director-level) uncapped compensation jobs, doing it for the money. But to be fair, the difference in developer payscales as you move across finance-related roles is lifestyle-changing large, not the $20k bump you get switching from MSFT in Redmond to Google in Kirkland.
• rpwilcox 14y ago
  I would agree: when the employee gets to the point where, "It's about the money" I would guess that it's probably not. In addition to not finding fulfillment (edw519's list of motivating factors), I'd say there's a list of demotivating factors too: * Having your feedback or objections being ignored by management * "... I'm gonna need you to come in on Sunday..." once too often * Not being able to do your best work (because of schedule, or other, pressures) * Too many meetings / status checks * Greener pastures, technology stack wise, "Wow, here I am doing Java, but hot darn does Scala look cool, I wish we could use some Java version later than this Java version from 1999" * too much drama With enough of these conditions too often, it doesn't matter how good the money is. Having said that, if your current salary is around the amount you need to survive, then these worries come into place. If you're worried about losing your house because your salary is too low, then you're at a different place on the Maslow's pyramid and then it might really be about the money. ("Wow, this job is actually going to pay me, vs working for equity. I should take it")
• Diederich 14y ago
  I am in the process of leaving an excellent job. I am well paid. The work is very enjoyable and meaningful. The people I work with are excellent. My team and I have huge freedom to innovate. The company is stable. I do not have to work huge hours. The work my team and I do on a daily basis is highly regarded. Why am I leaving? When I arrived, in 2009, I decided that I was not going to work anywhere more than 3-5 years, simply because I had worked in my previous company for 12 years, and it took me 'too long' to shake free of that. That's the discipline that I am working through right now. Everyone around me has known from the beginning about that arbitrary time-limit. They know I'm actively looking. They know that I'll continue to be exceptionally transparent about the entire process. Honestly, I've been very happy with this process. People know where I stand, and that reduces anxiety. I've been paying down technical debt with a pure passion for the past few months, which would probably not have been possible without as much communication. I'm probably going to end up getting an additional pay raise when I leave, which is fine, and I'm happy to get it. But it's not why I'm leaving. I'm leaving because, for me, it's time. :)