[newaccount74]

I hired a developer who just wanted a cushy job and I offered him a cushy job.

I offered 4 day work week, no on-call, no overtime, but paid less than their previous employer (because I couldn't afford it).

I am sure lots of people value things besides salary.

[Dylan16807]

Changing the work hours doesn't technically affect "salary" but it's a change in wages. I think your example mostly reinforces the point, but we should be using the word "wages" to be clearer.

[GreenWatermelon]

You effectively offered them a higher dollar/hour rate. And depending on how much they value their free time, that's more $$ in their figurative bank.

[newaccount74]

I don't think I even paid them more per hour. The problem was that all the other companies only want to hire full time programmers, so I was able to hire them by offering a job with fewer hours.

Also, they complained that their previous job was super stressful because the sales people kept making promises to customers that were really hard to keep ("of course we'll implement this in two weeks") and so they were constantly scrambling to meet impossible deadlines.