I used to manage a team within the Visual Studio team, and we regularly had people come in looking at a 2x-4x pay cut (because they were going from "CTO" or "Chief Architect" titles to "Software Development Engineer" positions). I never had any experienced developers fail to accept a position based on the lower salaries I could offer at MSFT vs. what they were making in other fields or higher organizational positions. Further, I made it clear at the time they were applying that we couldn't come close to their current salaries, and while it's been a long time, I can't remember anyone turned off by that.
Many people, particularly those at the top of their field, seem to be motivated by the opportunity to work on hard problems with people smarter than they are, so long as the pay is sufficient to maintain their family's lifestyle.
The "value of money" for an individual begins to diminish quickly once it surpasses the quantity required to comfortably survive. If you make $250,000 a year, it would be reasonable to take a 2x-4x pay cut for a more satisfying job. If you make $40,000 a year that's probably not the case.
This is something I discovered by accident over the last decade. At first I spent most of my income. After normal expenses I would spend what's left over on entertainment and status symbols like newer cars, etc.
Eventually I discovered that I have no real desire or need to spend more than $1500-1800 a month. That's probably very cheap to those living in silicon valley but I'm in the midwest and earn more than triple that amount after taxes.
Watching savings pile up is satisfying for a while, but eventually I had to come to terms with what I'd like to achieve in my professional and personal life, aside from money. I'm currently going back to school and it's the best decision I ever made.
Just out of curiosity: how old are you? I feel like I'm in the same situation, I make more money than I can comfortably spend and so I save it. But I do like seeing my savings rise, and thinking/dreaming about buying a house with no mortgage in the future. At what point did you stop caring about how much money you had saved?
This is the essence of lifestyle design. Finding the optimal balance between income, free time and mobility. (For me, free time is the most important one by far).
I have a pet theory: after a certain point, salary increases become a proxy for "what is my status in society?". If you don't give a shit about that, or derive your status from something completely different, the need to pursue money in a frantic manner goes away.
Probably none, though I'm putting words into their mouths. Many seemed to be looking for the mentoring, "office next door to <X>," and team aspects as well. Modulo health insurance, many of these people probably didn't really need any income at their wealth levels.
Extending that, a huge number of people I worked with at MSFT were quite wealthy and just hanging around because it (developer divison) was a fun place to hack. I think the biggest cause of retirement was reaching that point where the children head off to college and the spouse wants to move someplace less dark and dreary.
But, my experiences are certainly not a representative sample of the population!
That's a bit of a platitude, though, isn't it? You could say the same about anyone -- nearly all of us could be making more money, if only we'd give up family time, relationships, hobbies, whatever. But we don't judge those things in pure dollar terms, they're intangibles.
That's what makes stories like larsberg's interesting -- if we really were "just trading money for something else they valued greatly." then we'd see these types of stories more often -- but we don't.
Well how much of "just trading money for something else they valued greatly" works in real life is worth pondering.
After a while most people will realize that your spouse/kids would rather need money not time from you. Its far better to have a rich dad/husband than poor one who spends more time.
Over time even the guy who made this choices will know that, every time he sees someone buying a new car, going on a costly vacation, sending kids to a Ivy league and all the big money luxuries. Inevitable peer comparisons happen, and things get out of hand pretty quickly.
You generally get to hear 'How I learned to be happy with little' kind of stories from such people.
Its far better to have a rich dad/husband than poor one who spends more time.
No. And I don't even know where to begin to answer that, more than that you guys are talking extremes. From a millionaire that's never home to a guy not being able to pay his share of the rent but stalks his kids wherever they go.
Both would be far better of, in my opinion, by settling for something more in the middle.
We're not talking about working 100 hours a week at the investment firm vs. part-time at the burger shack here, though. larsberg's talking about managing a team at microsoft -- presumably the pay there is okay.
"Over time even the guy who made this choices will know that, every time he sees someone buying a new car, going on a costly vacation, sending kids to a Ivy league and all the big money luxuries. Inevitable peer comparisons happen, and things get out of hand pretty quickly."
I really don't know what to make of this? My family can't be happy if my kids don't go to Princeton? What are these "inevitable peer comparisons"? Will you really have a ton of marital strife if your wife isn't driving a German luxury car?
"Its far better to have a rich dad/husband than poor one who spends more time."
This is just plain wrong. Wrong and stupid. If you honestly think this... I feel really bad for you. I can't imagine what might have occurred in your life to lead you to this conclusion.
I think more than anything, the metaphysical view of what money is is totally bizarre. It's like money gets lumped into this special category of its own.
Money is just society's tickets to gain access to the collective productive capital that is the the totality of the economy. Money is just crystallized favors.
Try to replace "money" in your head with "favors" and you will see just how bizarre many beliefs about it are.
You may imagine that to be true, but more likely than not, you don't know what you are talking about. For one thing, Ferarri's aren't known for comfort...
OTOH, underground trains never suffer from traffic congestions. I feel more comfortable spending constant 0.5 hours in the underground than spending variable 0.3–2.5 hours in a traffic jam.
Sometimes it happens that you have made all the money in the world after a hectic period of years. And by his definition "CTO" and "Chief Architect" perfectly fill in those roles .Anything more than that becomes delta. So you now decide to keep yourself busy in a less stressful job, for little money. And then do whatever you want to do, as you have all the money in the world to back you up. You can fail, get fired or go on long vacations without worrying much about your employment.
Not just developers, and not just people on top of their field, will take less money if it means a better quality of life, all the time.
This can be as simple as a shorter commute, or simply a less stressful job. As long as this still results in a minimum level of income they've decided they need.
I used to manage a team within the Visual Studio team, and we regularly had people come in looking at a 2x-4x pay cut (because they were going from "CTO" or "Chief Architect" titles to "Software Development Engineer" positions). I never had any experienced developers fail to accept a position based on the lower salaries I could offer at MSFT vs. what they were making in other fields or higher organizational positions. Further, I made it clear at the time they were applying that we couldn't come close to their current salaries, and while it's been a long time, I can't remember anyone turned off by that.
Many people, particularly those at the top of their field, seem to be motivated by the opportunity to work on hard problems with people smarter than they are, so long as the pay is sufficient to maintain their family's lifestyle.