4 ms·

Appreciate the additional details, Michael. I agree, you're right. My thoughts stemmed from a lot of my peers who are still in college wanting to focus on mone

Appreciate the additional details, Michael. I agree, you're right. My thoughts stemmed from a lot of my peers who are still in college wanting to focus on money straight off the bat, and put themselves in to terrible places inside various companies.

michaelochurch 13y ago
I feel like paying attention to salary signals is actually close to the optimal strategy, most of the time. Here's why. Your salary is how much it costs your employer to waste your time. (You'll find out that a lot of managers like wasting their reports' time. It's a status thing.) Should you take a $105,000 offer at a company you hate over $100,000 at a great company? Of course not. However, if an offer comes in below market, you have to question whether that's for legitimate economic reasons (lower cost of living, cash-poor startup) or because it's a lower-level position than you deserve and, if it's the second, run. Unfortunately, it's still really hard (especially when you're young) to tell a good job/company/role vs. a bad one before starting, so salary gets overvalued as a signal, because of the opacity in the career variables that, in the long term, matter a lot more.
- kevinchau 13y ago
  Agreed. It's all about knowing how to ask the right questions.
- lsc 13y ago
  >I feel like paying attention to salary signals is actually close to the optimal strategy, most of the time. Yeah, when I was starting out? I was always shocked at how closely the salary correlated with how well you are treated in general. I mean, personally? If I feel like I'm overpaid, I am okay dealing with more bullshit, but that's not how it works. If anything, as I got paid more, less was expected of me. I mean, less of the hard stuff. Showing up on time, for example, became much less of a big deal as I got paid more. (For me, showing up on time is often the hardest part of the job.) - I mean, sure, I was expected to solve harder problems... and I was expected to actually come up with a working solution more often... but that was never the hard part for me.
jaxytee 13y ago
I couldn't agree more with kevinchau. I'm also 24 and a semi recent grad. My first two jobs were at mega corps (a fortune 100 telecom and a fortune 500 energy company). They were well paying but I, they stripped me two things I hold near and dear to myself . My autonomy of work and schedule. I left mongocorp and went to worked at a start up with great/smart people for the past year. I recently left the start up to scratch my own itch. I lived pretty frugal even while being employed by the super corps, so I have enough saved to last me at least a year or so. The past 4 months of my corporate sabbatical/"start up" has been one of the happiest times of my life. I'm learning the technologies I WANT to learn by applying them to solving real problems in my (still in stealth mode) product . When I see my past early twenties colleagues posting the " time of my life" weekend pics to the social networksphere, I laugh inside. I see past the distractions they engage in to make themselves feel like they've made it because, I remember the conversations we had daily about how much we hated the low quality work, stale tooling, and sometime poisonous corporate enviorments in which we worked. I have no kids (I do have a dog that eats better then some people) and am only responsible for my self right now. I'm spending this time exploring and learning, not producing value for some clueless middle manager. 9 Months clean off corporate and hacking daily to keep it that way.

michaelochurch 13y ago

I feel like paying attention to salary signals is actually close to the optimal strategy, most of the time. Here's why. Your salary is how much it costs your employer to waste your time. (You'll find out that a lot of managers like wasting their reports' time. It's a status thing.) Should you take a $105,000 offer at a company you hate over $100,000 at a great company? Of course not. However, if an offer comes in below market, you have to question whether that's for legitimate economic reasons (lower cost of living, cash-poor startup) or because it's a lower-level position than you deserve and, if it's the second, run. Unfortunately, it's still really hard (especially when you're young) to tell a good job/company/role vs. a bad one before starting, so salary gets overvalued as a signal, because of the opacity in the career variables that, in the long term, matter a lot more.

kevinchau 13y ago
Agreed. It's all about knowing how to ask the right questions.
lsc 13y ago
>I feel like paying attention to salary signals is actually close to the optimal strategy, most of the time. Yeah, when I was starting out? I was always shocked at how closely the salary correlated with how well you are treated in general. I mean, personally? If I feel like I'm overpaid, I am okay dealing with more bullshit, but that's not how it works. If anything, as I got paid more, less was expected of me. I mean, less of the hard stuff. Showing up on time, for example, became much less of a big deal as I got paid more. (For me, showing up on time is often the hardest part of the job.) - I mean, sure, I was expected to solve harder problems... and I was expected to actually come up with a working solution more often... but that was never the hard part for me.

jaxytee 13y ago

I couldn't agree more with kevinchau. I'm also 24 and a semi recent grad. My first two jobs were at mega corps (a fortune 100 telecom and a fortune 500 energy company). They were well paying but I, they stripped me two things I hold near and dear to myself . My autonomy of work and schedule. I left mongocorp and went to worked at a start up with great/smart people for the past year. I recently left the start up to scratch my own itch. I lived pretty frugal even while being employed by the super corps, so I have enough saved to last me at least a year or so. The past 4 months of my corporate sabbatical/"start up" has been one of the happiest times of my life. I'm learning the technologies I WANT to learn by applying them to solving real problems in my (still in stealth mode) product . When I see my past early twenties colleagues posting the " time of my life" weekend pics to the social networksphere, I laugh inside. I see past the distractions they engage in to make themselves feel like they've made it because, I remember the conversations we had daily about how much we hated the low quality work, stale tooling, and sometime poisonous corporate enviorments in which we worked. I have no kids (I do have a dog that eats better then some people) and am only responsible for my self right now. I'm spending this time exploring and learning, not producing value for some clueless middle manager. 9 Months clean off corporate and hacking daily to keep it that way.