Strange article, as if people needed to be "shielded" into their jobs.
Also I'd argue that you can be perfectly happy and still resign. Sometimes someone simply comes along and offers more money.
Also I'd argue that you can be perfectly happy and still resign. Sometimes someone simply comes along and offers more money.
If someone comes along and offers you 50% more than you're currently making, doesn't that implicitly mean you're not being properly compensated at your current job?
I guess that's the "shields down" moment, when you realize that you'll become chronically underpaid if you stick around.
Yes, in a sense that your market value seems to be higher than what you were making. However you might have been earning appropriately considering your current environment (based on your work, compared to peers and what company itself can actually make).
Last year I turned down an offer that would be 2.5x increase on what I was making. This year I will nevertheless reduce my involvement in my current company to work on other things (while certainly earning less than the offer I turned down).
The reason for change isn't that I would suddenly be unhappy. I have a habit of regularly re-evaluating what I do and it just happened that last autumn it became clear to me that working in international development exclusively will severely limit my options as developer in future in ways that I am not comfortable.
I have been doing this evaluations for years and certainly all the while I was happily working at the company even though I was happy on an assumption that things change and someday I might come to a different conclusion. As I did.
But even in just the realm of money and career, there are companies that offer benefits beyond money - like a certain freedom and culture - so you might feel "properly compensated" there. A monetary crisis(children, health issues, accidents..) could easily force you to take a higher paying job and leave your dream workplace, though.
Otherwise you'd be implying that the 'proper' rate is whatever the best paying company is offering in that field.
I had a job years ago where I was happy enough but completely unaware that I was massively underpaid. Once I realized that, I left as the pay difference did not warrant my comfort level I had with that job.
My current job is such that i could easily go find more money but there's no guarantee an offer would exceed my salary, let's call it the lower end of average. However I'm very happy. I'd consider leaving, but it'd have to be a lot of money, 10% isn't going to do it. There are certainly companies out there that could offer me a 50% increase though and while I won't go seeking them out I'd consider it if they came calling
I'd easily take a 20% pay cut (all else being equal) if I could find a job I don't need to commute into Seattle, Redmond or Bellevue for. Unfortunately, I've had zilch luck so far.
Warding off thoughts about other possible futures seems like a classic bias: in order to protect your self-image, you handicap yourself when evaluating other offers. This may be "natural", but it seems bad, like a fully actualized person would not need to do that.
And then the author of the blogpost takes advantage of this psychological tendency in order to keep people working for him even when they would have better options. The whole metaphor gives off manipulative, cult-like vibes to me.
I mean, take, for example, learning computer related stuff. Learning six languages at the same time, togther with operating systems, shells, databases, network protocols, frameworks, all at the same time. For me, that does not work. It is better to find some area to grow in, and to stick to that area for a while. Pretend the rest of all-the-things-to-learn does not exist. Only after becoming fluent, it pays to take on a different thing.
I guess the same goes for relationships; with significant others as well as with employers.