[masterzora]

Clearly. And this difference is exactly what we're seeing a lot of here.

Rational: "I am unhappy with $60,000 because it does not meet my needs."

Entitlement: "I was happy with $60,000 until I found out Fred was making $61,000."

[danssig]

Wrong.

Irrational: "I'm working in a free market world but I should just take what ever the company offers me and be happy"

Rational: "I'm working in a free market, selling my time so my time is also subject to market rates. I just found out a guy who has, IMO, lower market value makes more than me. This means something is out of whack. I view my market value higher than it really is, his lower than it really is, or I'm not earning my market rate even though my company (and CEO!) are"

The only entitlement in this picture is you two giving proxy entitlement to the companies to make even more money by underpaying everyone.

[masterzora]

No one said that you should take whatever the company offers and just be happy; that would be ridiculous. In fact, as someone who's weighing multiple offers right now, step one is negotiating with these companies to see who can meet my needs and, after that's met, see who can better meet my wants.

However, after I do negotiate and I decide company X's offer of $Y is plenty enough for me to be happy and then some, there is no reason for me to be unhappy if I find my coworker is making $Y + 10%. If I needed that 10% to be happy, I shouldn't have been happy with $Y.

Now, where such a thing is rational is if I'm not happy with $Y but I don't believe I can get a better offer so I take it and then later find out I probably could have gotten more. In this case, I'm already unhappy about $Y (although less unhappy than $0), so I continue to be unhappy when I find out I might have been worth $Y + 10% but am not receiving it.

[danssig]

So you, like the OP, are assuming everyone posting in this thread about getting more money are petty losers who just go "waaaah! He get's $500 more a year than I do! THAT'S NOT FAIR!". Does that sound reasonable to you? Does it sound fair? Why would you assume that instead of assuming they understand the market and that salary is simply the market value of your time?

[masterzora]

First, as a general rule, in any sort of discussion or debate or argument or whatever you want to call it when there are multiple disagreeing with each other, please avoid any sentence of the form "So what you're saying is...." Rarely do I see such a sentence that is not a total misrepresentation of the original point, intentional or otherwise, and attacking that point constitutes a strawman. As a specific example, I'd love to see you point to a single point where I said anything like that.

A much better representation of what I am saying: Let's say that I am making $50,000 and I am perfectly happy with it. More money would be nice, but I do not consider that more money to be at all essential to my happiness. Suddenly I find out my coworker is making $60,000, or even $100,000. It is irrational for me to now be unhappy with the same $50,000 I was happy about thirty seconds ago. This is precisely what both I and junishaun are saying, where you only care about more money for the sake of more money.

If you weren't happy with the $50,000 to begin with, then you have every right to be upset when you find out you could have gotten more. However, this is not the case I've seen represented by most of the HN comments on these various "salary taboo" threads.

[danssig]

>please avoid any sentence of the form "So what you're saying is...."

No, the point of that statement was to break down what you were saying for you because you might not have been aware (and still aren't apparently). The OP was saying the people posting here on HN were whinny people with an entitled mentality. So no, what I said was in no way a misrepresentation. Then you came on defending what he said without pointing out that you disagreed with his application of his theory to HN posters (you still haven't).

So you point out some mythical situation where you think someone would be behaving irrational. What does that have to do with this thread? No one has claimed to be mad about the money for the money's sake so this whole line is a straw man. Unless you (like the OP) are claiming other people here are behaving this way.

>et's say that I am making $50,000 and I am perfectly happy with it. More money would be nice, but I do not consider that more money to be at all essential to my happiness. Suddenly I find out my coworker is making $60,000, or even $100,000. It is irrational for me to now be unhappy with the same $50,000 I was happy about thirty seconds ago.

Again this is wrong. The mythical person was happy because he/she assumed the market rate for what they did was $50k. Now they've just seen evidence that it's actually $100k. The rational response is to take action as they're potentially leaving $50k (or more) of your value on the table. The person's happiness was based on a lie or misunderstanding and the new unhappiness is based on finding out the truth.

You're only going to live so long and you only have so much earning potential. Leaving money on the table for no other reason than some feeling of happiness is the furthest thing from rational.

[masterzora]

> No, the point of that statement was to break down what you were saying for you because you might not have been aware (and still aren't apparently).

I understand the intent behind such sentences; I was commenting on the common results, and I still maintain that this is one such case.

> The OP was saying the people posting here on HN were whinny people with an entitled mentality.

I hold that there are three key differences between what OP and I are actually saying and how you are representing it. One, neither of us said that every HN poster is an example of entitlement, but you are claiming that we said that. Two, you seem to be representing our statements as saying that anyone who is unhappy after finding out their coworker is making more is entitled when instead is upset for money's sake, which I have been specifically maintaining to be a case I have noticed rather than a universal. Three, while your "petty losers" case could certainly be an extreme case of this entitlement, it is a straight up misrepresentation to claim that we're putting it forth as the common case.

> So you point out some mythical situation where you think someone would be behaving irrational. What does that have to do with this thread?

I think this is most clearly exemplified by the original article ("That dev's salary is higher than mine") that sparked all of the subsequent "salary taboo" threads. A direct quote from that article: "Part of me was even angrier because if he hadn’t made this mistake I could be blissfully ignorant and wouldn’t have to deal with this mess."

The HN response? Largely in agreement with the article with very few people, including myself, calling the article out for this and a couple people (including you!) disagreeing with me.

> The person's happiness was based on a lie or misunderstanding and the new unhappiness is based on finding out the truth. This is he entitlement of which we are speaking; thank you for making it so explicit. If your happiness is tied so intricately to the amount of money you receive, that is entitlement. It would be ridiculous for me to claim that money cannot help achieve happiness, but if you are already happy, finding out you could have potentially had more money should not rationally decrease your happiness.

> Leaving money on the table for no other reason than some feeling of happiness is the furthest thing from rational.

If your definition of rational is "attempting to maximise the amount of money I make" is your definition of rational, sure, but I maintain that is a terrible definition of rationality. For a very obvious example, if you used that definition, we should all seek the opportunity to work every possible minute at the highest possible rate, the rest of our life be damned. After all, we need to get more money without worrying about silly things like "health" or "friends and family" or "enjoyment of job" or anything else that really is just "some feeling of happiness" at the end of the day. Since I don't think that either of us subscribe to this view, I think we'd agree that there needs to be some trade-off between money and happiness.

However, I'm not talking about leaving money on the table at any rate. If there exists money I can obtain, I have every right to go after it. It's being unhappy about the fact I don't have it where we're seeing this irrationality.

[jinushaun]

Exactly my point.