[FredPret]

What a tone-deaf article.

- Salary is absolutely the key factor when people pick jobs. The difference between a fun hobby and a great job is that you get paid a lot to do the latter.

- Here he's saying that companies should create a buzz around jobs; but having good feelings about your low-paid job doesn't help you nearly as much as just having lots of extra new wealth.

- Saying that because high-end employees are far beyond the "buying food" stage of Maslow's Hierarchy means more money is unnecessary is just brain-dead. Economic growth anyone? More money = good.

- High pay is a great way for companies like Google to prevent competition. Why risk starting a business when you can earn a million bucks every couple of years working for them?

- High CEO pay is absolutely not a problem. If a top CEO increases a company's market cap by billions, and is only paid tens of millions, then what a waste of time and emotional energy it is to fixate on the tens of millions.

I can't believe this character is actually advocating for lower salaries.

[JAlexoid]

> Salary is absolutely the key factor when people pick jobs.

For people with poor reasoning - yes. Most people think of ROI, especially after COVID. A finish carpenter runs at $150 per hour, but your career is limited by your physical abilities.

Going to a company like Bridgewater, where 50 hr workweeks onsite are expected, at $250k may be less valuable than going to Microsoft at $180k.

> I can't believe this character is actually advocating for lower salaries.

Did you spend any time understanding the article? The whole article is all about how certain companies only use salaries are something to draw and keep people in.

[asadotzler]

No, they didn't spend any time. That doesn't happen much here on HN any more. They took the headlines, perhaps a few other comments here, and ran with whatever their gut was telling them, often contrarian and usually wrong.

[FredPret]

No doubt you, oh wise one, carefully weighed every factor in both the article and the entire comment chain before offering your comment, which by the way is totally not contrarian.

Yes I read the article, and yes I think it's a crock of shit written by a "marketing guru" in 2009 to capitalize on popular anger towards bankers.

[ghaff]

>Salary is absolutely the key factor when people pick jobs.

Eh. It's a key factor. Once you get beyond a certain point, many people take lots of factors into account for jobs that are not otherwise basically interchangeable.

[FredPret]

A CEO picking between a $10m / yr gig and a $50m / yr one would have to have rather a lot of soft factors working in favor of the lower paid one to justify it.

[asadotzler]

I'm not sure. I spent a quarter century in tech, and probably brought in about 20% maybe 255 of what I could have in that same time if I'd have sacrificed my ethics and gone to work for one of the big players rather than a non-profit. I chose not to because I value how I feel about myself more than I value the extra money. I've got a paid for house in the bay area under 3 acres of redwoods, 12 miles from the Googleplex. Sure all that money would be nice, but not at the expense of my conscience.

So, my experience as a non-CEO is that yes, people are willing to take the job that pays 1/5th the salary when it meets their needs and matches their ethics. If I had it to do all over again, I'd make the same choice. I simply couldn't function knowing I spent the most valuable years of my life striving to make rich people richer by tricking poor people into clicking more links.

[ghaff]

Almost certainly a lot of that would be variable comp depending upon a bunch of things. And I could also imagine a $10m gig (especially with speculative equity) at a company with really exciting prospects could trump a $50m one for a stodgy company not going anywhere.

[FredPret]

"Exciting prospects" in the context of a career means "is going to pay a lot"

[ghaff]

Maybe?

Do something high-profile, considered influential, matches some mission you believe in, etc.?