If we are asked to do something that in abstract we would consider stupid or pointless, but is now accompanied by a large amount of money, we accept with the presumption that no one would offer so much money if it weren't very important.
Money provides a very simple, neat way of valuing every item or service on Earth. Deceptively simple.
That seems to be overthinking motivation.
If a sponsor was offering $500k for someone to stand on a streetcorner and sing Weird Al songs most people wouldn't consider that was an important job but they'd still do it for the money. Because the money provides opportunity to buy or do things that are worthwhile.
Money is a simple way of valuing objective time vs opportunity.
The 2008 financial crash, for instance, arguably demonstrated that a lot of practices in the finance industry weren't really creating value for anyone, just deceptively pushing up the value of something worthless in order to profit from it. But if you had approached someone making $500k at Bear Sterns in 2007 and said that, it would have touched off a whole string of rationalizations that basically amount to: "I'm being paid a lot of money, so this must be useful, otherwise I wouldn't be so rich" and potentially even "if you are so smart, why aren't you making $500k?"
And it's not just finance. I've had a version of that conversation often with Googlers when I criticize the company's bizarre and inexplicably messaging strategy were they seem to deliberately blow up any semblance of a good product. Their argument is ultimately, "we get paid $200k+ to do this and you work in a power plant, how could you possibly know any better than us?"
That's what I'm trying to get at with "money as merit".
But they're just new grads, so obviously they can't know much, right?
I haven't looked deep into it because I just don't care at this point, but 200k in Mountain View isn't the same 200k in other places.
But also, compensation is a sensitive topic. I don't know of the other posts you're speaking of, but people don't like having compensation history go with their comments.
Compensation is an intense topic for obvious reasons. There is a lot of variance in the data and it is anything but transparent. It's not surprising that people would create accounts to post sensitive information about it. I haven't seen examples of abuse in this area, but if you or anyone think you're seeing some, please email hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate.
Just because the company got wiped out by a black swan style event means nothing about whether their employees were providing a lot of value to the firm.
Progressive betting strategies for example can appear to work in the short term, but anyone executing them is destroying value.
The same applies to traders, etc.
My dentist fixing my toothache still provided value to me even if I die of a massive heart attack in two months.
Really, the company did not die in "100 hours." People just noticed it was already dead.
I imagine this is especially true for people who have a high score on this metric. It appeals to ego and vanity.
oh boy I'd take a higher paying job to pay my mortgage or ease vacation with kids. No need to have a higher value than that.
Isn't that the very concept of money? :)
Edit: newlines
If we traded in goats, it'd be how many goats you have. It doesn't matter at all the medium, as long as the value is tenable.