How often do you actually see people go „oh we have enough, we’re going to take lower paying jobs”? People work these jobs regardless of their partner's income.
My mother's a secretary (they call them administrative assistants now to be correct). She could advance her career by becoming a clerk, which mostly does more of the same, only more. Instead she's happy where she's at
I used to work for Microsoft. I left for a startup (peerdb) & while my pay didn't go down, that meant leaving behind >50k USD in unvested stocks & my salary growth at Microsoft was pretty fast (hired as junior in 2019, was one promo away from principal when I left in 2023) which I don't expect a startup environment to match
I'm broadly unfamiliar with Microsoft's promotion culture, but this strikes me as incredible. But in the "something seems incorrect" sense of the word. Were you hired at an incorrectly low level, were you a one-in-a-million talent, or is there huge title inflation at Microsoft now?
Had ~10 years of experience working at small companies (pointerware, mldsolutions) after dropping out of college (had internship with pointeware where I correctly guessed they'd hire me if I dropped out). Interviewed at Citus a week before they announced being acquired, got shooed in. Junior pay at MS was still 2x salary increase
It's really clear when someone is invited to step up in their job and refuse because it would entice more working hours, but it happen as much when people leave full time position because it doesn't give them enough time.
About two months into this job, they offered me a promotion since "you would be perfect for this position." I looked at the schedules of the people who also had that job and they were booked solid all week. It was pretty obvious to me that it would be basically 40+ hours/week of meetings and tons of stress for pretty much the same pay. The bonuses were probably higher, but nothing about it was worthwhile. Yeah, I like money but you'd probably have to double my salary for me to even think about it.
Had two successive managers suggest the job to me. After about a year, the newest one finally took the hint and left me alone.
Took a 40k/yr paycut, but I knew my income after the experience would be higher.
We have 4 mortgages on 2 properties, by no means we have 'enough' (whatever that means). QOL is for me by far of important metric, especially with kids.