Two resignations and a few realizations

There have been a couple of resignations in my office this week and although they haven’t been accepted yet (the company has asked for time to resolve the issues these folks are facing), it got me thinking.

I’ve faced this from colleagues before; water cooler conversations about how someone else gets paid so much more for apparently doing so much less, and every single time I hear someone saying this I feel like giving them a piece of my mind. It’s not that they’re saying bad things about me (they maybe, although I don’t really give a damn anyway), it’s just that I find this way of thinking totally destructive and can’t really picture a person ever being happy if they thought this way.

I’m not a wise person, and I don’t pretend to be, but I have had the privilege of working with some of the greatest minds in my industry and they have taught me many of the principles I live my life by. One of the most important things I’ve learnt is never to compare. You don’t know why someone gets paid more. You don’t know exactly what work they do, you don’t know exactly how talented they are, and you’re probably not aware under what circumstances they were recruited. For instance I joined as a fresher. I have a colleague who joined in the same position as me, and is doing the same work, but had 7 years of work experience before he joined here. Now it is natural that someone like that would have a higher starting salary than I do, and would consequently, a few years down the line, earn more than me. This is something that so many folks just never stop to consider. And even if I leave that aside, there’s always going to be someone who makes more money than you, right? How’re you ever going to be happy if you’re constantly playing these mind-games with yourself?

I’ve always been told, instead of looking at what someone else makes, look at how much you make, and whether it is, first, enough for your needs, and second, the honest value of what you contribute. If the answer to both these questions is yes, then you’re fine, nothing to worry about, no insane jealousy issues. If one the other hand, you’re not getting paid enough, or you think you deserve more for the work that you do, you should do something about it, but even in that case, I think people should be wary.

We have organizations here that have a thing about poaching employees from other companies. It works like this…you call up a guy from another company that’s doing reasonably well over there, and offer them two, or sometimes even three times of what they’re making to switch over to your company. In the vast majority of cases, employees who switch like this get fired, or end up quitting because they realize that the company they’ve switched to, is just awful. What I’ve learnt over time is that if someone gives you twice of what you’re making, then that cannot be your real worth. You’d have to be pretty stupid to work in a place which pays you exactly half of what your real value is. And if you are stupid, and you are working for half the money, don’t switch to a smarter company, because they’ll fire you pretty soon for being that stupid. Besides, if a company is prepared to offer you so much more money, then they’re prepared to go to any lengths to recover that investment, and will, in all probability, exploit you. So you’ll end up having pots of money and no time in which to enjoy it.

But I have to stress that my employment experience is very different from most. I have had a full time job from the age of 20, and I have stuck to that same job for 8 years. I am happy, I am satisfied, I consider myself well-paid, and I don’t think I’m ever going to leave this job unless something very serious happens. There are tons of people out there who live lives which are very different from mine, but still, I think some basic rules apply to everyone, right?