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>an interesting problem is worth more than 25k, but you haven’t stated where that ends.

It doesn't matter where it ends in the context of the reply to notyourday's assertion that only _one_ thing matters to non-mentally impaired people and that is _money_.

>I hated working for Amazon more than any other job. But I’d do it again for double my previous salary.

Totally understandable and that's why I began my comment that priorities will be different for different people. That's ok. The world needs all types.

My comment is informed by my experience with various tech jobs with wildly different salaries. I earned 2x the Google/Facebook salaries working for finance companies for 10 years. It was the worst 10 years of my life. The massive salary (massive for a programmer) let me buy nice toys, travel to expensive exotic places, and build up a nest egg but it was also soul-sucking misery. I look back at that period with regret. If I had to do it over, I should have taken a lesser paying $150k job with a company working on things that were interesting to me.

However, that doesn't mean other programmers can't accept the miserable finance job with insanely high pay. If it pays big money, they'll be fine with it because they can compartmentalize the job and find meaning elsewhere. Some people can do that, but that's not me. Terrible work and uninspiring colleagues just spills over into personal life even when I'm not physically at the job site.




I'm not disagreeing with you at all, but I'm not disagreeing with notyourday either (except for the idea that if you're interested in anything other than money that you've been dropped on your head, but I read that as hyperbole to make a point). I guess I should have said you're talking past each other.

From the perspective of the recruiter, you can't change the problems you are working on and hiring for, you have little to no control over company culture, location, or any other factor. You can really only pay more money. Sure, you could change working conditions or benefits, but that is just a redirection of money...it's still more money.

From the perspective of the developer, lots of things matter. Money absolutely matters, but so do working conditions, benefits, quality of life, technology, tooling, location, commute options, and on and on. Your position is obvious...but how much control does the recruiter have over all of this? Almost none. If they are having trouble hiring, they need to pay more, full stop.

That means that Space X has a lot of leeway to negotiate on price, whereas SalesForce may be a lot more constrained. SalesForce can't make their business more exciting and enticing, their hand has been forced.


>You can really only pay more money.

No, the company can also _not_ pay more money and use that constraint as a hiring filter. Example from the article:

>There is one motivation that should raise a red flag, though. “The candidates that I don't usually want to spend much time on are folks who are basically just looking for the next big check.

Another personal related story... In my of my past jobs, the hiring manager said upfront that "We pay a lot but we never pay the most, and we never match other offers. We want candidates to look at our whole package and decide we're the right choice."

I have to admit that when I first heard the manager brazenly admit that they didn't pay the most and that they don't get into bidding wars for talent, it seemed like corporate self-sabotage. However, I later realized it was very creative game theory to hire the specific type of people they wanted. I ended up taking that job because they were at the forefront of data warehousing which I really wanted to get into. It was one of the best jobs I ever had. Although they didn't have the highest starting salaries, they did have the highest raises and bonuses but I didn't know that at the time I took the job.

(I'm not recommending that companies not pay people the most. It's just interesting that one company used a seeming "disadvantage" of lower salary and flipped it around as a advantageous hiring tool. Very interesting reverse-psychology.)




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