[thunder-blue-3]

Hearing about Iridium reminded me of how excited I was to take on a job managing 5 engineers for them, until they offered me a base salary of $135,000 in Phoenix. They work on incredibly cool technology—I'm bummed I had to pass it up to work for some garbage web-focused tech company becayse Iridium pays pennies on the dollar to their engineering department.

[diggan]

> until they offered me a base salary of $135,000 in Phoenix

It's crazy to me that $11,250/month could be considered low for a comfy job like engineering manager, especially if the work is interesting. The cost of living in Phoenix must be through the roof?

[hollerith]

If he has a wife and dependent children, he probably cares more about always being able to provide for them than about how appealing or satisfying his work is -- regardless of the cost of living in Phoenix.

[diggan]

Can you not survive (and even live a pretty above average/good life) with a family on $11,250/month?

[hollerith]

Yes, one can, but--

You don't have children, do you?

[diggan]

I don't, but I have friends with families that survive on way less than half of that.

You're never experienced life within working/middle class, have you?

Maybe, just maybe, we live in different parts of the world with very different levels of salary and/or cost of living.

[hollerith]

This conversation started[1] as an attempt to understand why a particular person made a particular choice about a job. You are letting your emotions (or maybe your social ideals or ethical principles) prevent you from understanding the situation from this particular person's point of view. Even if his annual income is $135,000, it can be rational and ethical to sacrifice some aspects of job satisfaction for even more income, e.g., if he is responsible for the economic security of an entire family.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41769450

Money is very useful, particularly for avoiding or recovering from the 100s of kinds of catastrophes than can befall a person, and even in the wealthiest parts of the world, most people's lives would be more secure and better if they had more money.

[0xffff2]

Is it just me, or does the wording of this comment imply that you passed up the Iridium job to work somewhere else that underpays their engineers? Seems like you meant to imply the opposite.

[supportengineer]

I think it's clear he has to work for the "garbage" company because it paid more than Iridium did

[barkerja]

The opposite. Op would have preferred to work at Iridium, if only they offered higher pay compared to where they are currently.

[thunder-blue-3]

yeah I meant Iridium pays pennies on the dollar -