> I feel too underpaid to be stressed. In that sense, being underpaid is much more of a good thing than a bad thing, since my performance is good enough
Being underpaid allows me to switch jobs very easy so that I don't have to compromise on my values. I now see the ones being overpaid as being in a trap.
I wouldn't necessarily call that underpaid. Being underpaid is when you have to choose between the present and the future. If you can both have good and sustainable living conditions, job security and pension with a decent margin you aren't generally underpaid as such. The exception being if your relative wage affects things worth caring about, like being valued by the people around you.
> Every place I have worked needs me more than I need them.
If this is actually true, in any situation where this happens, you are being underpaid, because it implies the employer is getting more out of your employment arrangement than you are.
I know what you meant, it is just the semantics of economics are precarious and a lot of people would fight tooth and nail to be in a position to bargain for more because of a situation where an employer values the worker much more than the worker values the employer. You want equilibrium where the worker gets as much from the employer as they can, which is when employer and work both get as much out as one another.
> I was underpaid relative to what I could make in another industry, but I wasn't underpaid by my game-dev company.
If a company underpays all its employees equally, it's still underpaying. Companies that do this are taking advantage of how people are not rational actors.
>If you're happy to make $88k and the guy doing the same job next to you is making $110k, I don't see any problem
One problem is that the first person is often female, not white or foreign.
Another is the demotivational effect when the first person eventually does find out they are underpaid versus colleagues or the market - and they generally do. And then they will leave.
It gets worse when the lower paid person is clearly outperforming the higher paid person, or where the higher paid person is clearly under performing.
And finally it's just not the right thing to treat people unfairly versus their peers. If the lower paid person is being underpaid then quietly fix the issue.
> trillion dollar company with some/many employees delivering quite a bit more value than they are paid
Companies structurally and intentionally pay the average employee less than that employee generates in value. (If they paid more on average, they'd obviously either decide to never start or would go bankrupt. If they paid people working equal to their contributions on average, they'd show no profit and would have no reserves to cover for employees who are out on paid leaves that society or the employees want companies to cover the costs of.)
The underpayment relative to value delivered is a necessary condition (at least in my opinion, by simple math above). If you want to capture all the net value you create, you should work for yourself. For many (including me), I'd rather trade away some of the upside in exchange for a much lower stress existence.
> The last time I switched jobs, I got a 40% pay increase. That's ridiculous. I even told the company I was underpaid and they asked if I could wait a year for a raise.
As far as I can tell, management that can see beyond the idea that your current payscale is what you should be payed is pretty rare. There's just something about anchoring on a price once it's negotiated.
> employees might more likely to quit a company that generally pays other employees poorly
For me, finding out that my more skilled colleagues make more money than me would be encouraging. It would mean that if I learn more, I could possibly get a raise.
The bad news is to find out that the people whom I admire because of their god-like skills actually make the same money as I do. That means that I have most likely already hit the financial ceiling.
> if you expect to be getting paid $400k total compensation or more
I may be weird, but getting that level of compensation is honestly not something that would be that compelling to me. I mean, all else being equal, more money is better -- but all else is rarely equal.
What I want from a job is to engage in fulfilling work at a company I can be proud to be a part of, while making enough money that I don't have to worry about money very often. For me, where I live, that amount is around $80k (although I currently make a good deal more than that).
If I don't wake up in the morning happy to be going to work, then I'm in the wrong job, regardless of what it pays.
> You can't really know if you're underpaid for what you're doing if nobody else is paying more.
I was talking relative to my coworkers at the same job.
It can quickly become apparent how much your coworkers are making relative to you if you pay attention to subtle things like vacations they take, what they did on their weekends, the cars they drive, where they live, etc.
In my case, teams had been "right-sized" such that I solely owned systems that at one point had a total of 13 people assigned to them, with no help. Yes, I held myself to a constrained budget to contribute to 401k, save as much as I could elsewhere and had a modest, yet nice apartment. Yet, my older coworkers had less responsibility, worked shorter hours, drove nicer cars, owned houses and took extravagant vacations where I drove a modest used car, rented and my "vacations" were to visit my parents (although, admittedly, airfare to visit my parents is high - it'd be cheaper to fly to Europe than visit my parents in the US, and I live in the US).
Thing is, for years, at comp time, I'd been arguing for a larger raise than bonus. I was getting a token $5k/year raise, but several 10Ks in bonus. Salary is generally a given (sure, they could in theory lower it, but rarely do healthy companies do that if you're performing), plus, typically your slice of the bonus pool is also partially determined by your salary.
So, yeah, it took trying to quit, with an offer in hand, to get my salary adjusted to where it should have been given my tenure at the company and the level of responsibility I had. Once they realized I was serious and was ready to walk, over a weekend, they gave me a nearly 30% intrayear raise. It wasn't quite what I wanted, but it put me on par with my coworkers and it was several 10s of thousands over the offer I was willing to walk for.
Also, the offer I walked away from was from one of the FAANG, and I won't say which. Apparently, having walked away from the offer has effectively black balled me from progressing in interviews with them. I've had a few phone screens with them since that I think I did well in, just to get radio silence from them. Not even a response from the initial recruiter. I've stopped entertaining of even responding to inquiries from the particular company.
>I feel like paying attention to salary signals is actually close to the optimal strategy, most of the time.
Yeah, when I was starting out? I was always shocked at how closely the salary correlated with how well you are treated in general. I mean, personally? If I feel like I'm overpaid, I am okay dealing with more bullshit, but that's not how it works. If anything, as I got paid more, less was expected of me. I mean, less of the hard stuff. Showing up on time, for example, became much less of a big deal as I got paid more. (For me, showing up on time is often the hardest part of the job.) - I mean, sure, I was expected to solve harder problems... and I was expected to actually come up with a working solution more often... but that was never the hard part for me.
> This is a self inflicted problem across all companies. As long as companies are not willing to pay the market salary, people will move elsewhere.
Why do you say this? Surely underpaying people is one way to make them leave but not the only reason. Some people think “the grass is always greener” elsewhere. Others don’t last long because they are not easy to work with. Others are not great employees and so are encouraged to move along sooner rather than later. Lots of possible reasons. Most do not signal the type of person I want to hire.
> If people don’t want to take the job at the posted rate then they are underpaying.
Well, that's why they're going to robots I guess.
> Instead of comparing if your pay has gone up 25%, ask if you’d rather take one of those jobs than yours. Because apparently that’s an option if you want.
I worked a much worse factory job for years. I don't blame people for not wanting such a thing, but sometimes it isn't all about pay, either. You couldn't pay me to go back to my old job.
What do you mean? Either you got a bad deal being underpaid which means your boss got a good deal, or you’re getting paid a lot and your boss got a bad deal but you got a good one.
Being underpaid allows me to switch jobs very easy so that I don't have to compromise on my values. I now see the ones being overpaid as being in a trap.
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