Ask HN: Why did you accept a lower salary?

I accepted a lower salary because I went from maintaining a shitty VB6 apps to a company that uses .NET, hoping I could learn something more marketable working there.

It wasn't worth it, they had a bunch of incredibly stupid systems and maintaining these was even worse than the VB6 apps. On top of that they lied to me - I was supposed to work on a new project and instead I worked on sorting out the mess that other programmers made. I noticed that some other people on the team did more or less the same kind of a job, expect their pay was better since they didn't have "junior" in the title.

I will never accept a pay cut again.

>I will never accept a pay cut again.

Certainly not at the junior level for doing the same thing, but once you approach the cap in your locality, it makes a little more sense to not be miserable every day.

Granted, it would make sense for you to take a lower salary if it was an investment in your future, for example, getting paid to learn the latest technology in whatever you are doing, or doing "Greenfield" projects rather than maintenance programming.

Maintenance programming sucks.

You are explaining a job that I used to work. Visual Basic 6.0. Support and fix bugs in a program. Add new features. Make it more user-friendly -- was my job. I had to deal with a tyrant boss who would watch over me while I would code, belittle me, do everything he thought was "making me a better coder." Only lasted a year and a half... even turned down an offer that was double my salary because if it meant dealing with him... I just couldn't do it.

When I began working there... he was paying me just $10 an hour. The most I ever made there? $12 an hour.

I wonder how similar our experiences are.

Well, your career so far sounds like a Woody Allen script. At least there's that ;-)

I'm in almost the exact same situation as you, except I'll add one thing. I worked a string of really heinous jobs where the work environment was extremely toxic. Bosses yelling in your face, watching you work over your shoulder while drinking their morning coffee, other employees being verbally and physically aggressive. I don't particularly like the company I'm at, but I get to work remotely, it's super relaxed, and I can pretty much put the hours in whenever I want. If I leave to go somewhere else, I have no idea what kind of situation I'd be getting myself into.

I get paid a bit below 100k, which in Los Angeles with 5+ years experience is pretty bad, but my end goal is to build my own business.

Been there done that! http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/the-opportunity/

I took about a 120k paycut to work whenever and wherever I please. My SAAS app provides me a nice middle-class salary and continues to grow mostly on its own. I don't have to deal with being a "true believer", repeated "temporary" crises, unreasonable deadlines, etc. No backstabbing office politics.

More importantly, with a self-enforced 10 hour work week I have lots of time to improve my tradecraft, explore pet projects, take care of my body, etc. I feel in control of my own life, rather than chasing other people's dreams.

Would you mind sharing your Saas product?

I generally prefer not to broadcast the business, but I'm happy to answer questions about my experience :)

My second job was a Linux consultant, Python / Java Developer. At that time the salaries was rather poor as everything with money involved Windows and .Net. But I found Unix technologies a lot more interesting, especially for learning and solving the really hard problems.

I really enjoyed that job, the problems we solved were challenging and fun. And I learned so much, I accepted that lower salary as I bet on Linux, Python and Java knowledge would be in demand later. And today I'm really happy that I specialized in these technologies, because the market has really changed in my favor the last three years.

I recently accepted a 10K/year lower salary ($70K instead of $80K).

Better work/life balance inc. flexible hours, generous paid vacation/sick, closed for Christmas & federal holidays (on top of paid vacation), and unlimited (but optional) telecommuting.

The $80K would have cut my flexible vacation by a third, no closure at Christmas, flexible hours gone, and telecommuting pretty much gone (with a "maybe" they'll start in the future). Plus the commute was fifteen minutes more each way.

I may have made the wrong decision financially, but I have a family, and I get to see them a lot more telecommuting, we get to go on family holidays, we get to spend time together at Christmas, and flexible hours will help picking them up/dropping off at school.

Those are good perks for $10k. based on your post, I think you made the right call.

Not an engineer, just a marketer/writer. Had two jobs offered, one offered 15k more a year. Took the other job: it fell in line with my strengths, I can be full time remote from my forest, and I knew my new boss at lower paying gig, while expecting me to still work hard, would be good about making sure I got off on time to go to gym as well as respecting when I needed to take vacation. Do I sort of wish I had more money? Yes. But I'm in this company for the long haul, and I decided 15k was worth the specific lifestyle I wanted over the long haul.

In my case, this was only for an internship. I study in Canada where the interns in CS and Computer engineering are rather well paid (easily over 20USD per hour for a first internship). I accepted a much lower salary to work in start-up in Copenhagen (its called pleo.io). The experience was amazing and the team was awesome, but it is hard to live in such an expansive city with an intern salary of around 1600USD per month. Only renting a room in a shared apartment usually costs more than 800-900USD per month.

My last job was a political hellhole where they imported new management and new management imported their friends and marginalized the people who built the company pre-aquisition.

Work life balance, lower expectations at work and no internal competition. As bad as it sounds like, that's what I need since I burnt out not a while ago. The pay cut was mostly made on stocks/bonus. I lost a lot of those by leaving my previous employer. My base is actually slightly bigger now. In other words, it feels like I'm really getting paid for what I do everyday and that the salary/productivity expectation is at a sweet spot on both sides.

In my case because it was - own office in a building 15 minute walk from where I live as the only developer working on an interesting problem Vs a 7 mile commute by public transport to work on a less interesting problem in an open office with 30 other Devs.

It just wasn't even a choice for me, the final kicker is employer operates a strict 9-5 policy for work, not had that expectation on a Dev job in a long time.

The last time I jumped ship I did not took a paycut - actually a got a small raise - but took a job where I am paid ca. 15% less than my market value. I was recruited by the VP of IT at a small company. We used to work together in the past and he knows what I am capable of if I work under the right conditions, which excludes discussions about BS and interruptions through "burning issues". I do what I love to do, I set my own priorities and my own deadlines. I have a site in Confluence showing the satus of my current projects, he gets every two weeks an e-mail from me with the actual highlights/achievements and once a month we go for lunch together where I can ask him for guidance. I can take some time learning new technologies during working hours and make homeoffice now and then. Why should I leave? Actually I can imagine working for someone else than me only under these conditions.

I took a 40k paycut moving to New Zealand back in 2001. I don't regret it, since leaving my country of birth, things have only gone backwards there, and NZ is a great place to raise my son.

Since I was here, I took a 10k paycut once, to move from a big company to a small startup.

It was the right call, but I was lucky, and it was by no means guaranteed to work out (2009 was scary).

Company got acquired by a massive one, and compensation ramped back up to the top of the scale (w/ RSUs making total comp p.a. something I can't match elsewhere in the local market - I interviewed around, and found out I was making substantially more than the CEO of the startup I interviewed at).

But thinking of making the move again, since I'm feeling my skills atrophy a bit, and financially now on a solid footing, so I'd like to work somewhere a little more fast-paced.

My employer has good policies on ADA accommodations. I still need to go into the office, but I feel good that when I can't anymore I'll still have a job with them.

Plus, I went from being responsible for the PM side of data architecture to natural language processing. Way less stress, way better skill set.

I'm definitely paid less than I could be, by maybe 20-30k, but cost of living is quite low, found a 1/2 acre ranch house (totally decent) for $140k, I bike to work and the only a traffic I deal with are pedestrians, I choose my own tools, choose how and when I want to work, work on interesting stuff, have lots of paid leave, and receive solid benefits including an old-style pension. Money is tight sometimes, but can't otherwise complain, unless its that I sometimes miss city life, and I end up working on too many different things (javascript, python, bash, matlab, php; web dev, data analysis, file management, elementary IT). And the boss has agreed to a raise, on condition that expected funding does come in (pretty sure it will) ... so getting better.

To move from union to mgmt. Yes, I was a ditch digger 16 yrs ago. Now i'm a PM in Tech Svcs. The 10k/yr paycut hurt, especially in Seattle right now, but work remote on somewhat interesting projects, no commute, get so spend time in the presence of family.

OP, you're basically describing a dream scenario I'm sure many of us developers have. I'd be very willing to take a lower salary if it means a 10-minute commute, and having a lot of time for side projects.

I took up a job that's fairly middle-of-the-road in terms of salary -- plenty of lower, and plenty of higher, around the bay area. I took it at the time mostly because of working with some friends that I knew I liked working with, so I knew at least that part won't be bad. It's still a long commute though and I'm starting to question if it's worth it, especially if there's closer jobs that are potentially higher salary.

Scope of challenge and room to learn, coupled with sufficient support to enable meaningful impact on a world-class problem.

With the right mix of global problem plus virtually unlimited resources, and depending on your personal values and the company culture, a big co with built-in funding and mass market can be more rewarding than “home run” startup money.

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Don't forget that if you want to start your own company, the more money you have saved up the better. Then you have a longer runway before you have to start talking to investors, etc. Having a higher salary now will help you do that.

My first full time job was for CAD 70k at Research In Motion. I knew other local employers (e.g. Google, Sortable) were paying more to new grad but I didn't care because I got to write C code and was hoping to sidestep onto the security team.

My next job I took a full-stack webdev role for GBP 41k (got a raise to GBP 43k the next year). That was around CAD 7k less than another offer I got in Vancouver. But I wanted to travel a bit, plus I knew that company paid their Sillicon Valley employees twice that.

I accepted a lower salary (than another offer, but more than what I make right now) at a company whose product I'm excited about, they had a team of more experienced people than my current company and I moved from frontend to a fullstack position. Of course, only time would tell if this was a good decision.

Last time I was interviewing for jobs I took the lowest of my 3 offers. There were several reasons for this, I will refer to the accepted offer as A and other offers as B and C.

1) Large corporation vs small corporation, offers B and C were for very large corporations (one private and one public) and I took job A because I do not enjoy bureaucracy.

2) Challenge. Offer B was a job I felt I could already do 100% and everything I really wanted to do was offered as a "maybe if things go the right way you'll get to build something cool." Offer C seemed challenging, but was a different direction for my career. Offer A offered as much challenge as I was willing to accept and was very aligned with my career goals.

3) Flexibility. Offer B - no work from home until after a year, but even then it's not guaranteed and at most once a week. Offer C - it seemed like people were only allowed to work from home when there was a state of emergency/snow-closures, etc. Offer A - we are as flexible as possible, we are more concerned with getting the work done.

Also worth noting, I was the youngest person on staff when I was hired at company A. At B and C there were tons of people my age - I think this is why they had a worse work/life balance. I'm single and no kids, but most people I work with are pretty established in that regard. I believe I benefit a lot from the fact that my older coworkers won't accept crappy work/life balance.

4) Connecting with people. I definitely connected with those at company A moreso than those at company B and C. I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that at companies B and C people were just going through the motions during the hiring process, so it felt very robotic.

Also, while interviewing at company A it was very acceptable to discuss the displeasures of working at public corporations (I was able to have a very blunt convo with a CxO during my interview - and we commiserated a bit on our non-optimal experiences working at them).

I accepted a lower salary (135k vs 150k) and a lower title (lead for a project rather than lead for the department on every project) because of work culture.

I can fix code etc, but it's very hard to change culture. It would have been a big step up in many regards but culture is a huge part of accepting a job.

I took a 30k paycut for my current job.

Why? because they gave me the ultimate perk, 100% remote!

I'm heading to thailand next week and plan to just travel around the world. As a bonus, my total living cost in southeast asia (including rent food and plane tickets) is going to be less than what I pay in rent right now.

What do you do with your rental?

I cut my salary in half going back to research after some years in a HFT gig. I'm gaining quality of work (wider breadth of topics), quality of people (world class researchers) and quality of life (office 10 min from home instead of 90, travel to conferences, ...).

What area of research do you work in? Did you go back to working at a university?

I work in systems and no, I went back to industrial research.

I relocated from the NE back to Austin and took a lower pay. I grew up in the South and didn't like how impolite people are in the NE. I actually didn't fit w the regional culture. Goes to show how important culture fit is for work too.

1. I could work from home most days of the week. 2. I enjoyed the work. 3. The expectation was a maximum of 40 hours/week, which I thought I wanted at the time. When I worked more, my manager explicitly told me to work less.

I really wanted to be part of the team I'm currently in. I thought I would learn a lot with them and become a much better developer, turned out to be true.

I asked for less money just to make sure I would still be hired.

I had 6 offers 2 years ago. I chose the third highest salary option because of the unique company culture and people. Totally correct decision in hindsight.

Being able to work from home full time is my number one factor. The multiplier of work I get done is so high that many weeks I work around 10 hours.

Genuinely curious: do really only work 10 hours, including email and other forms of communication?

Do you think you could get more done working 20 hours / week, or do you only think you have about 2 good hours of coding work in you per day?

I spend the rest of my time reading on engineering related topics that I care about. These may or may not be relevant to my work

I could get much more done, but realistically there's rarely enough work to keep me actually busy for 40 hours a week

I did it to fulfil my dream of working in the games industry (AAA games for PlayStation/Xbox etc). Six years later I'm ready to leave.

Because it was a life goal to move from the US to Europe for a while and because my wife is much less fearful.

There basically aren't any senior dev positions (that I've ever seen) where the money is low enough to even factor into my decision. Every other thing people commonly look for in a job is a higher priority to me.