[htss2013]

Yes there's absolutely a sweet spot. The ratio of pay to stress was best like 5 years into my career. I'd absolutely go back to that level of pay and responsibility if I could.

The problem is if that's your sweet spot, people perceive that and try to push you up. It's like making it look easy to do super well is unacceptable and you must be repositioned until you struggle more.

[emerongi]

It's also because the employer has invested a fair bit of time/money into you and would like to see you take more responsibility after doing so. This is most obvious with juniors, where besides the salary cost, there are hidden costs of training. The expectation is that it will pay off in the future.

[superdug]

My expectation as a performer is that you need to also increase my salary if you want me to keep performing at that level. I'm _not_ an investment, I'm a professional, if they want to keep me, they in turn, must keep me happy for them to remain happy.

[KnobbleMcKnees]

Employees aren't investments who owe you something. Employment is a contractual agreement of work for pay and that's it. Anything beyond that is corporate blackmail for the naive.

[m_rpn]

Unfortunately people in 2023 still don't understand this very simple fact, and that's why we constantly have to prove our "value" to the world for no reason at all XD.

[htss2013]

The reason they push you up is pretty transparent and it's not to get a pay off on their investment.

It's because they have a really hard time externally hiring and retaining senior people in X job. They can recruit and churn through junior people all day. So they figure it'll be much cheaper to manufacture juniors into seniors internally.

If they lose a junior who fails to convert into senior, who cares? They're relatively easy to replace. It's worth the risk even if only a minority of them convert into senior people successfully, because they're so difficult to hire externally and keep.