[tobyjsullivan]

Not really a story but this is what I've learned having made this move more than once:

- There's an important difference between being earning less and being paid unfairly. It's easy to work for less as long as it's enough to fund your lifestyle and save something for retirement. It's very difficult to be happy if you believe you're paid unfairly (which is subjective, of course).

- There's generally no correlation between job satisfaction and pay. I've left to work at more interesting roles and about half the time ended up earning more for the privilege.

- On average, toxic companies pay more. There seems to be a certain class of company that believes it's okay to treat employees poorly as long as they pay well enough. This includes everything from overwork to overt bullying and worse. These opportunities tend to be evergreen due to their high turnover and so are overrepresented on job listings, etc. (Your network is less likely to refer you into this sort of role.) Focusing on salary alone is a sure-fire way to end up somewhere toxic, or stay somewhere longer than is wise.

[j_maffe]

Wouldn't you say that the second and third statements slightly contradict each other?

[tobyjsullivan]

As written, yes. I suppose I meant there’s no correlation in one direction.

Perhaps I should have avoided a technically-specific term such as “correlation”. It seems inappropriate for an anecdotal observation.