Seems to me that this is one of those messages that managers try to tell each other, but it often gets distorted in the game of “telephone”.
The part about “money isn’t everything, other things can be just as important, perhaps even more” is well understood. The part that is missing is that the “other things” should be something the employee actually cares about (and that it can be different things for different people)… as opposed to a standard set of “benefits” that someone in the HR department decided are cool (and cheap) but many employees see them as mostly worthless.
Examples of benefits I don’t care about: various discounts for services that I mostly don’t need (and which taken all together make less than 1% of my salary, so why are we even wasting time discussing this?)
Examples of benefits I care about (but maybe other people don’t): autonomy, work from home, not working in open space
The other side of this post is to look at what various jobs cost. TIme and effort are the usual costs, but some jobs ask for things like willingness to deal with bullshit (a limited resource!), emotional energy, on-call readiness, various kinds of sensory or moral discomfort, and other things.
Haha, that’s absolutely correct! But without the job I wouldn’t get paid. So I guess the standard deal is getting paid in return for a set of things, and I dream about getting paid for a subset.
I mean, in theory, the employer should care about getting the work done, being there to fix the bugs and provide support, being available in case something else happens, and maybe a few more things… but spending most of my time in an open space is just unnecessary suffering for an introverted person, and a financial expense for the employer, so… haha, nope. For some reason it is important to be surrounded by other people, even when I happen to be the only person on my project (or the only team member not from India).
Seems to me that this is one of those messages that managers try to tell each other, but it often gets distorted in the game of “telephone”.
The part about “money isn’t everything, other things can be just as important, perhaps even more” is well understood. The part that is missing is that the “other things” should be something the employee actually cares about (and that it can be different things for different people)… as opposed to a standard set of “benefits” that someone in the HR department decided are cool (and cheap) but many employees see them as mostly worthless.
Examples of benefits I don’t care about: various discounts for services that I mostly don’t need (and which taken all together make less than 1% of my salary, so why are we even wasting time discussing this?)
Examples of benefits I care about (but maybe other people don’t): autonomy, work from home, not working in open space
I’d call those absences of drawbacks, not benefits—you would have had them without the job.
The other side of this post is to look at what various jobs cost. TIme and effort are the usual costs, but some jobs ask for things like willingness to deal with bullshit (a limited resource!), emotional energy, on-call readiness, various kinds of sensory or moral discomfort, and other things.
Haha, that’s absolutely correct! But without the job I wouldn’t get paid. So I guess the standard deal is getting paid in return for a set of things, and I dream about getting paid for a subset.
I mean, in theory, the employer should care about getting the work done, being there to fix the bugs and provide support, being available in case something else happens, and maybe a few more things… but spending most of my time in an open space is just unnecessary suffering for an introverted person, and a financial expense for the employer, so… haha, nope. For some reason it is important to be surrounded by other people, even when I happen to be the only person on my project (or the only team member not from India).