There were additional factors, but I left and started my own company within three months and nobody in my old team has anywhere close to my experience.
Jobs and stuff are an annoying necessity, the business is really just a thing I had to build to keep working on my primary tasks.
A lot of what looks like success on the outside is really just stubborn focus on a hard problem across many years. So I’ve had many prestigious jobs and titles, but it’s all just to allow me to do what I want.
Truly one of the worst feelings there is... But I sure would have cared a lot about the 200kUSD/year too.
It is awkward for a person to know that they make substantially more than coworkers. It forms a feeling of guilt and other negative feelings. But what are they supposed to do? Negotiate lower salaries when starting or after working for a while? And it's definitely frustrating knowing other coworkers with the same or less experience and responsibilities as you make a whole lot more. It forms feelings of jealousy, not feeling valued, self worth, and other negative feelings. And all of this is caused by the company simply not caring about actually employing and managing humans.
And it's always been insane to me that companies will let an experienced person leave because they won't raise their salary and then immediately put out a job requisition at a salary that would have kept the experienced person. It makes no sense, and yet, this happens constantly.
This is why I don't discuss my salary, nor do I want to know what my coworkers make. It's not information that is terribly useful, but can make for very awkward situations.
I do want to know whether or not I'm making a salary that is in line with the norms in my area, but I can easily find that information without knowing what any individual is making.
This opinion feels alien to me. Some of the most useful information you can have in a company is around salary/bonus/commission structures. From a purely self interested perspective, knowing this makes you a far better negotiator around review season. And from an organizational perspective, understanding what kind of things get people their bonus or commission goes a long way to understand what kind of decisions they make and how to influence them.
As a manager, though: thanks, employees with this perspective reduce the number of awkward meetings I might have.
As long as I'm being paid at least an amount that I consider fair, it doesn't matter to me what anyone I'm working next to makes. If I disclose my salary and I'm making substantially more or less than my teammates, that can cause reactions in them that make the job much less tolerable regardless of my pay rate. So I don't want to know what they make, and I don't want them to know what I make. I have to work with these people, and want that to be as pleasant as possible.
Now, saying that is not saying that people who prioritize maximizing pay are wrong at all. They just have a different priority.
It’s the feeling that I’ve been hoodwinked that I refuse to tolerate.
How do you usually find that information?
I'm not complaining though, stupid HR and hiring policies are the reason we're consistently getting some really good people from FAANG to join our tiny firm.