The most important part of a job is how much you are paid. It's why you are there. Ignore what "career development" people say. The other parts are important, but even totaled together, they shouldn't exceed the importance of pay. Here's why:

1. If a job didn't pay you at all, would you go there or sit at home?

2. Pay is an indicator of how much you are valued. If they aren't willing to pay you well, then they don't value you.

3. You can solve other problems with money. If the commute is a problem, you can spend money to buy a better car. If your coworkers talk too much, you can buy better headphones.

4. The one clear feature of the job you can evaluate is its pay. It's difficult to evaluate other parts of the job before starting.

5. If it turns out that you hate the job, then you can deal with it because you're getting paid more. If you take a lower-paid job or fall into a lower pay band and also hate the job, that's a problem.

There are other issues you mentioned, but I'll bet YES here. I turned down a job at Accuweather in 2013 despite it being very interesting because they wouldn't match my pay, and because they had a reputation for paying very poorly. I took the highest paying offer and never regretted that decision.

@SteveSokolowski

A long commute is horrifically bad for happiness. Unusually so.

The happiness effect of an hour long commute each way is worth about $40,000 less dollars in salary.

And you don't get used to it with time.

Sacrifice salary for a short commute.

https://www.hottakes.space/p/ditching-your-commute-worth-40kyear

@SteveSokolowski

Ok wow I don't agree with this at all, but maybe I just haven't had enough money in my life to find that sweet sweet pot of happiness at the end of the rainbow.

1. Both jobs pay. This seems more of a binary that both fulfil. We're not comparing it with volunteering for a passion project.

2. This seems reasonable intra-company, but if it'd between different firms then ability to pay is a huge factor of this. You can be immensely valued at a non-profit that pay you $100k, and somebody in big tech they wanna get rid of att $600k. However, if you're getting bumped up or down within those firms that seems more of a tell.

3. I doubt either of these offers will be economically restrictive on gadgets budget from a practical standpoint.

4. I agree with this :)

5. Isn't this exactly what misery from golden handcuffs is trying to describe? Absolute income increase matters much less than proportion, seemingly, so difference would need to be huge at this level to motivate your point.

Would be very surprised if common sense research consensus on this is around people, purpose, management compatibility, company vision, etc, mattering muuuuuch more than money.

@HenriThunberg Well, I think my core point would be that happiness shouldn't be derived mainly from work. You should like your job as much as you can, but you do your job to live, not the other way around.

Every dollar saved is two dollars earned, due to the tax code. I think people would in general be happier if they concentrated more on optimizing their hours to earn as much as possible, and then work fewer hours, using the extra time to be happy. That's much better than trying to find a perfect job and slaving away at the office full time for the same amount.

They can do even more by cutting unnecessary costs on things like new cars and large houses, which don't bring happiness.

I believe the market maker has the wrong question here. He's deriving his identity from work (i.e. whether he will regret it), rather than thinking outside the consumer-based society we live in and seeing the happiest way of all is to get paid a lot for fewer hours while buying less stuff.

@SteveSokolowski Cool, much more sympathetic to this :)
I was gonna say that I think it's unlikely OP can get that kind of tradeoff (I think this is both hard and unlikely for most people, unless contracting?) into their life, but then realized it's literally in the post how the hours would probably be different. So fair!

@HenriThunberg One needs to think outside the box to accomplish what they want. Society wants you to work a full time job and slave away to pay your huge mortgage and car loan so you can spend 1 hour at night watching Netflix and wake up tomorrow to do it again.

So, obviously if you take a salaried position with a "career path" (as the market maker mentions) then that's what you'll get. One needs to give up doing everything to build a résume.

Contracting works, as does starting a business, or searching for work in a different field. The problem with high school guidance counselors is that they basically tell you that your life has to look like a perfect résume, so you end up trying to "avoid gaps" and making sure you tell a story with progressing upwards in roles, always seeking to maximize your value so other people can make money off of you.

After all, that's what you're doing, right? People wouldn't hire you if they couldn't make money off of you. When you try to follow a career path, you are optimizing yourself to be valuable to others. As you become more valuable to others, they move you into positions where you do more for them and make them more money. This is obviously different than optimizing your life for yourself.

@SteveSokolowski I totally agree that happiness should not be mainly derived from work. I also agree with you that people would be happier if they optimize for working fewer hours, and didn’t blow money on fancy cars and houses.

I’m not sure what gave the impression that I’m deriving my happiness / identity from work. I’ve always viewed a job as a means to an end. I’d like to enjoy it if I can but the pay is what matters most at the moment. I’m considering the offer because I think I can get a senior title which comes with a significant pay bump and lots of job mobility. Work life balance might suffer in the short term, but I might not mind since I’m bored in my current position.

I mostly agree with your last post, but I don’t think being in a salaried position means I’ll be working for a paycheck my whole life. My plan is for this to be temporary. I’ve already founded a successful startup. It was a great learning experience, but big tech companies pay way more for very little risk. The only reason I don’t do consulting is I have very little experience and want a reliable source of income while I’m still early in my career, but I plan switch to it in a few years.

And I don’t mind if a company is profiting off my work, so long as my cut is larger than what I could make on my own. Sure, I’ll be optimizing for their interests over my own, but I enjoy the challenge, it keeps things interesting. And if I can make 4x as much working at a company than I can make on my own, I think that’s a fair trade. The freedom that the money gives in the long term more than offsets what I give up in the short term.

@TonyPepperoni I think you have the right ideas in life. But the one thing you might want to keep in mind is that you should not devote your life to a company expecting to be promoted. They don't owe anything to you and will fire you right away if someone else can do the same job for lower pay, or if they can make more money doing something else. That's just the way economics works. I've fired people who were obviously working hard, but we just couldn't earn a profit off them because there wasn't enough work for them to do.

For what it's worth, I'd also caution against saving a large amount of money, and especially against the FIRE principles. It's a good idea to work to get some money to do what you want, but think only in the short term. The risk of your savings being lost due to events like being sued, falling victim to a scam, your brokerage misappropriating funds and declaring bankruptcy, a massive catastrophe like a war, and so on is much higher than most people think. If it's even 3% per year, which I think is on the low side, that means you will statistically go bankrupt after 23 years, on average.

So have a few years of cushion, but don't have a lot to lose if something goes wrong. Work hard enough to enjoy your life with a buffer, but not so hard that you end up vulnerable to black swan events or paying a lot to the progressive tax system.

I might sell my NO shares in this market, as it seems like you don't regret all that much.

what regrets do you have from the past ~5 years? any?

@solomonster Oof, I guess the only big one was taking an internship at a tiny web development contractor. The pay was pretty bad and I was incredibly bored. I basically wasted 6 months of my life there with nothing to show for it. The only good that came of it was that I got my shit together because I never wanted to work at a place like that again 😆

It was pretty terrible, I think if this move were half as bad there’s still a decent chance it’ll resolve yes.

1) Do you have a spouse and/or kids?

2) Are you the sort of person who would one day start your own thing, or are you happier being a follower than a leader (non-derogatory)?

@njmkw good questions!

1) long term relationship, no kids

2) At the moment I’m happy as a follower. I’ve done my own thing in the past but it doesn’t pay as well :P, I’m happy with either as long as I have some autonomy and doing interesting work

People have a bias towards seeing the best about their decisions. I don't think the possible negatives are enough to upset this tendency

@StephenBuggy wrong direction bet then?

@ian Lol, yes. That's just cost me some trade fees

The company isn't doing well, and the pay cut seems suboptimal

How long have you been at Google again? Likely a good move even if TC is a bit less, plus an earlier promo will likely bump you back up.

@case I’ve been there almost 3 years, really hoping for an early promo 🤞 I’m hoping their requirements for senior aren’t too intense

/sub :)

If you get laid off but you had a great time, would you consider that a regret? Asking because I am wondering if it is ultimately your perception of the event rather than the actual event, and trying to get a feeling on how you typically perceive these things.

@zyc I would probably regret it, since I’m unlikely to get laid off in my current role. unless of course the severance package was really good.

@TonyPepperoni Gotcha, wish you best of luck!

Congrats! And good luck with whatever you choose =). Not an obvious choice to me, but at least both options are very good!

@Ziddletwix have you explored options for internal transfer at your current job?

@Ziddletwix Thanks! And I didn’t look too much at internal transfers, the external applications took up a surprising amount of time so I’ve been focusing on them.