Money doesn't motivate people past, oh, a half million or so a year, maybe.
For normal people, its infuriating to hear businesses complain about turnover and a lack of loyalty when their "performance" raises amount to a cost of living increase, and their promotion raises don't bring them in line with the salaries that people getting hired at the more senior position make coming through the door. Money isn't the only reason I work, but it is one of the reasons. Its more about the principle. A company that wants loyalty should show loyalty and not attempt to nickel and dime the talent.
Tech companies are usually responsible for creating the turnover they complain about.
Fortunately, my employer already does both of those. I just wish it wasn't almost a requirement to leave in order to get a decent raise.
Note: I'm not expecting to make $200k in a technical role as a security analyst any time soon, its just hypothetical.
What would your 18yo self said about 100k?
What do you think about a Netflix engineer making 300k? They'd probably be happy with 500k (though, cost of living, derailment ahead..).
At $200k, I could maintain the same standard of living, easily pay off all of my student debt in about a year (without sacrificing anything), easily buy a house, buy a new car outright after saving excess money for 3-4 months, pay for my kid's college education outright, and save a ton of money for retirement. At $100k, I constantly have to pick and choose which of these things I work on.
If I made $200k, living in the same area, I might not be wealthy in the grand scheme of things, but I sure would feel like it. About 70% of the negative stress in my life comes from anxiety about being able to afford everything my family will want and/or need eventually.
Interestingly enough, I have already lived through the experience of having my salary double almost overnight. I used to live in a relatively low-cost area, but I was still getting paid about $25k below market. Then I moved to a higher-cost area, and took a more advanced position at a company that paid a little more than market rate. Went from below $50k to just under $100k. The impact on my life was significant. I went from feeling poor and helpless to finally being able to breathe. I used to be depressed and angry all the time because I could barely take care of my family and my household. Now I'm more or less happy.
The interesting thing though is that you wouldn't really want to entice me that way, because I'd guess you'd get a worse product out of me. So there are different types of motivation that are important. The motivation to make a choice, versus the motivation to work hard on a choice.
Financial independence to me is not needing to work ever again, even if I'm living quite frugally.
I've run the numbers on what I'd need to not work and the total amount required would clearly put me in the 'wealthy' camp.
I would say yes. Well, maybe not dependent but not independent.
Some people with large incomes are still up to their eyeballs in debt, or at least not living within their means.
IMO financial independence requires living within your means until the point where you never need to work again to continue that lifestyle for the rest of your life.
2. I can't imagine being independently wealthy & keeping my day job but I suppose it's conceivable!
2. For example, all employees at the VP and up level at Google, Facebook, etc., make more than a million dollars are year. It doesn't take long at this level of compensation to have more wealth than any reasonable person could spend. Yet they still work, normally not to satisfy an unmet financial need.
Money may not motivate me in small numbers, but this goal of financial independence (what they call fuck you money) is definitely a motivator.
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/
And this nifty calculator: https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement
It's mostly about the savings rate.
However, if someone offered me $200k today for a full-time position at a private company, I would almost certainly accept. I can deal with less than ideal or even boring work as long as there's a good work/life balance that lets me keep working on projects at home. And even if the work isn't glamorous, I'm the type of person that enjoys all kinds of work, physical or mental. Before I got into security I did everything from shovel half-rotten fish into buckets for a living to running network cable. As a caveat, if its a government/contracting job, it would probably have to be $300k (which is probably unrealistic). There are aspects of government work that are interesting, but from my experience the negatives almost always outweigh the positives.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US$100000+2017+in+1980+...
$100,000 today would have been $33,000 in 1980, $53,000 in 1990, $70,000 in 2000, and only $84,000 in 2007.
You are totally right about the $200k mark feeling comfortable. $200k is the new $100k.
Want to cure polio, go to Mars, put LED lighting in every home in Africa, fund research into fusion reactors, build flying cars, or push VR into the mainstream? You'd better have some cash.
That might have been more accurately stated as:
"Want to hire people to cure polio, go to Mars, put LED lighting in every home in Africa, fund research into fusion reactors, build flying cars, or push VR into the mainstream? You'd better have some cash."
It's rarely the people with the big money that are doing these things, they're just hiring people and having influence on direction. Sure, they might get credit for being a "visionary" or "innovator", but the people doing the real work rarely make the big bucks (or get much credit, unless they're very lucky).
But, in fact, the very people with lots of money who are influencing these developments are themselves influenced: often by people with not nearly as much money -- such as relatively poor authors, or other "real" visionaries.
So you could also say something like: "Want to have some really significant influence on the world? Write a book." It doesn't take a lot of money, and it's not certain that you will be influential, but if you have some really great ideas you might stand more of a chance of changing the world by writing than by trying to compete with the likes of Gates or Musk for the really big bucks.
Of course, lots of other cultural artifacts have also been hugely influential. How much of our modern world has been influenced by Star Wars or Star Trek, or by mathematics -- which really makes all those Mars journeys possible in the first place. How many people have been influenced and inspired by music? All of the arts really feed in to and greatly influence each other.
So there are plenty of ways to influence and change the world apart from being rich -- and many of them are even more effective, as these other means could influence many generations of people -- poor, rich, and otherwise.
That being said, if Bill Gates wants to cure polio, he should spend his money on immunisations rather than artist workshops and publishing houses. Someone in the chain between thought and deed needs to apply human effort to the problem, and when the effort required is massive, the easiest way to coordinate it is by buying it.
That being said, motivation is a complex thing, and most people are motivated by many different things at once. Money itself may not be the only motivator, but it's definitely one of them, and an important one. Trying to skimp out on it is a recipe for failure.
I see complaining itself as nothing but an act of trying to weasel out of the responsibility. If a company is really hurt by the turnover, it either dies or starts solving the problem - by e.g. paying people more, or reducing the impact of turnover on the business (e.g. by choosing tech stacks so that developers are easily replaceable). Complaining loudly about turnover seems to be done in hope that someone steps in and solves it without the company having to pay for it.
- the one meaning "the stuff that will get you involved"; - the one meaning "the stuff that you'll want to get".
The first one will drive you enthusiasm to work, your professionalism, the quality of what your produce and your loyalty. It's a "motor" kind of motivation, and money can't buy it. Only a sense of purpose can.
The second one is just bound to the reality of life : you need money for food, shelter, logistic, health, hobbies, then a growing family, and an evolving lifestyle. This will make you choose something. It's more a "motive" kind of motivation.
You can get a lot of people with only the second one. You can get some people for some time with only the first one. But to get the best, and for them to stay, you need a balance of both.
But if it doesn't make you happy and you always want more, that desire must motivate you, right? Make up your mind!
You live my dream life.
The rank and file tend to be told that we're not motivated by money, so we shouldn't expect any, whilst c-level salaries have to be "competitive to attract the best talent".
I did note that many of my peers where COMPLETELY freaked out by my decision that I mentioned above. My choice to step back from the game freaked them out. No over aggression but a mix of outright confusion as well as somewhat confused jealousy.
He said he ran into some Coca-Cola executives after they purchased the company and he was sort of crowing about all the money they had just made him. I guess two of the executives were like, "Huh, $400 million, not a bad start Curtis. Let us know once you get in the $800 million or even the billion dollar range."
He said it made him a little more humble, but at the same time, he said there's a sort of pissing game when you're at those income levels with people like that.
But, ok, that's a fairly prohibitive expense. Musicians can get that and have the audience pay for the privilege. They can do so repeatedly, which certainly qualifies as some kind of asset.
So call it a type of capital, a social capital, maybe... ability to muster crowds?
It would be interesting to see a graph of how much "muster" varies across a given population.
Follows Zipf's Law like everything else, I'd wager. Most people would have to buy an audience. A tiny few can get audiences to pay. There's a growing middle-class sitting at the zero-pivot--emerging indie bands and popular academics--they pull in audiences, but only for free.
Once we formalize all that we'll of course need some sort of exchange rate for muster, USD:MST, before we can get down to the important work of comparing the relative capital of a superstar and the super-rich.
Take note young econ grad students: the to-be-written papers on the liquidity of muster are the stuff careers are made of!