The Salary Trap (2021) | Hacker News Reader

The Salary Trap (2021)

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14 pointsamrrs13 comments

"10x learning opportunity with only 50% reduction in salary"

I already may be too cynical for this author but unless this new opportunity gives me a substantial equity stake I'm going for the money 100% of the time. Learning is great and all, but unless you are learning at a FAANG (in which case I'm sure you aren't getting a reduction in salary) at the end of the day cash is king.

I've done my own fair share of startups and yeah I've learned a ton. Mostly I've learned that you very rarely get a payout with a startup and that you should just go for more money.

I see these type of posts as a hybrid of the "life is more about work" and "make your work meaningful" arguments. I can see how this is a valuable strategy, but the use cases are pretty narrow. It presumes greater knowledge translates into greater salaries at a later date. imo, better advice would be "don't make your income your self worth" and/or "salary is just one aspect of compensation; knowledge, skills, networks, and opportunities are some other ones."

> When you focus on learning over earning, it brings a sense of fulfillment that no money can buy.

yeah but i can't buy the tesla model s i want and keep my lifestyle with the fulfillment of learning, and as long as there are engineers making enough more than me to do both of those things, i will continue to work to justify more money

fortunately, learning pays off :)

Perhaps it's because of an obsessive love of games with an economic element, but I'm rather comfortable doing things like taking a paycut if I feel it's the right move. If anything I have an irrational bias towards such manoeuvres and feel I'm a bit "Greedy" valuing money tomorrow so much over money today. It's more exciting to gamble for the big bucks than to go for the boring stable route.

Here's the issue with the strategy. If you can live off half your salary, why do you need 100x your salary? To buy a solid gold ass scratcher? In your current role you can likely expect your salary to increase anyways, lets say another 50%, so why suffer through living off half your salary into a potential recession?

Additionally, how many opportunities are there genuinely to halve your salary and learn 10x to earn 100x? The job market is competitive, it's not like there's many oppertunities to make 100x your salary just laying around, somebody is going to jump on it.

My experience has run contrary to this. No matter how good of a job I do at work, I've never gotten a significant pay bump, certainly nothing on the order of 50%.

Your other points reasonate strongly - financial security is nice but for most of us, at some point it's overkill and just becomes money hoarding.

I think they means overall? Like in the medium future. Based off standard and sometimes specific pay bumps.

Otherwise the line is saying every one can get a 50% pay bump in the next year. Doesn’t make sense.

Yeah that’s what I’m driving at… you start out a junior programmer and later become a team lead within the same career while jumping up in salary the entire way. I misspoke a bit.

50% seems low then, no? For pay bump? I’m only starting to prep for my first software engineer job so I don’t have personal info on this

> My experience has run contrary to this. No matter how good of a job I do at work, I've never gotten a significant pay bump, certainly nothing on the order of 50%.

And you most likely never will.

That's when you realize you've out-grown your position and you jump ship to a new job.

Good advice, and timely. Thanks!

I need to buy a house? Taking paycuts is a luxury many cannot afford.

I do get the point, i took a pay cut in my current job. But that was after a long period of unemployment and i had to re skill.

During said unemployment i was under a lot of pressure to take any job, including those, that quite frankly, would have damaged future prospects by depriving me of time and on job knowledge.

But tbh, before i lost my job, i was already retraining myself as i didn’t see much future in where i was going

In god we trust, all others pay cash.

Take the money, leave the cannoli.

It's all relative.

Someone making $40K/year is going to be HEAVILY incentivized by a higher salary. Someone making $400K less so.

There are plenty of people here on HN that have made enough money that they could take a 50% pay cut and not have a significant change of lifestyle. These ones are pretty unlikely to salivate over a job offer with a higher salary.

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