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I think as long as money isn't your #1 priority, it's great to push for a fair wage. For me personally, making more money is better than not making more money, but there's plenty of things that come before that; doing something I love, happiniess, time commitment, morals, etc. You should decide how much you want to make at a minimum before you negotiate salary for any job and stick to your guns.

To answer your first questions, I don't think it's propaganda. I think the underlying idea is that money shouldn't be the #1 thing to you.

#Sarcasm I haven't had a lot of success whenever I've decided to yell, "fuck you, gimme a raise". Maybe a more creative approach is in order.




I'm a capitalist. And apparently a bad one, since I choose engineering instead of finance. I'm also an experienced entrepreneur with an understanding of the value of my time and labors. Most startups today are selling advertising. No matter how great their corporate culture is, that means in order to work for them I have to shower twice in the morning, and twice at night to get skim the filth off of me. Therefore, in this startup market, money is my #1 goal, because no amount of happy hippy engineering juju makes up for whoring myself out to the advertising industry. Money helps.. it means I can put more into my daughter's college fund and hope she has the opportunity to do something with her life that's less disgusting than what I'm doing with mine.


And what exactly is "filthy" about advertising?


I can't speak for the parent, or anyone else for that matter, but it does not appeal to me to burn ingenuity trying solely to figure out how better to get people to buy stuff. It's an arms race, where you expend more effort simply for a better chance at winning a zero-sum game. I'd prefer to work on projects where, rather than fighting to capture scraps of consumer disposable income, I become the spring that sources a mighty river of created value.


Is advertisement a zero-sum game? I don't think so, if you figure out how to better match products with customers, you create value for everyone. This is what Google did in a big way.


A large amount of advertising is oriented towards getting customers to buy things they don't want and don't need.

This is negative sum.

I won't even get into the cognitive imbalances created by being constantly assaulted with demanding stimuli in media.


That's marketing, not advertising.

Google matches ads with audiences, not products with customers.


Not all of us strive to be consumer whores. I personally have never set foot in a wal-mart or a target, and have not owned nor watched a television in over a decade, and hope to continue this trend in perpetuity.


Would you get a less paying job in a technology company that's not in advertising, compared to one that sells ads? Why?


No, because I've made that mistake before. I took a job at Napster in 2001 making $80k, turning down a less stressful company for $110k. The year I spent at Napster was the worst year of my life, but I believed in the company and thought it was worth it. It was not. Since Napster, Money is my number one criteria for a job. I'm not 21 and naive anymore.


That makes me really glad that I am working in cleantech, user-pays and a technology that people are more than happy to pay for.




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