Assuming you are correct, which I suspect you are, that means the group of people that aren't really motivated by money make up a tiny percentage of the work force. Therefore anyone running a business can safely disregard any idiot making the claim that money isn't a motivator, except on the rare occasions which they find themselves hiring executives that make north of $500k.
For normal people, its infuriating to hear businesses complain about turnover and a lack of loyalty when their "performance" raises amount to a cost of living increase, and their promotion raises don't bring them in line with the salaries that people getting hired at the more senior position make coming through the door. Money isn't the only reason I work, but it is one of the reasons. Its more about the principle. A company that wants loyalty should show loyalty and not attempt to nickel and dime the talent.
Tech companies are usually responsible for creating the turnover they complain about.
> Tech companies are usually responsible for creating the turnover they complain about.
I see complaining itself as nothing but an act of trying to weasel out of the responsibility. If a company is really hurt by the turnover, it either dies or starts solving the problem - by e.g. paying people more, or reducing the impact of turnover on the business (e.g. by choosing tech stacks so that developers are easily replaceable). Complaining loudly about turnover seems to be done in hope that someone steps in and solves it without the company having to pay for it.
I was strongly influenced in my thinking by Jason Cohen's "Rich vs King" article, he talks about the S-curve of wealth utilization. Once you hit a few million in the bank, you have enough money to fund a reasonably lavish lifestyle, without working, for the rest of your life. At that point, how do you motivate someone?
There's a point where salary stops meaning increased consumption, and starts meaning increased control - not control in the narrow sense that "Rich vs King" discusses, but in the broader sense of being able to push your ideas.
Want to cure polio, go to Mars, put LED lighting in every home in Africa, fund research into fusion reactors, build flying cars, or push VR into the mainstream? You'd better have some cash.
"Want to cure polio, go to Mars, put LED lighting in every home in Africa, fund research into fusion reactors, build flying cars, or push VR into the mainstream? You'd better have some cash."
That might have been more accurately stated as:
"Want to hire people to cure polio, go to Mars, put LED lighting in every home in Africa, fund research into fusion reactors, build flying cars, or push VR into the mainstream? You'd better have some cash."
It's rarely the people with the big money that are doing these things, they're just hiring people and having influence on direction. Sure, they might get credit for being a "visionary" or "innovator", but the people doing the real work rarely make the big bucks (or get much credit, unless they're very lucky).
But, in fact, the very people with lots of money who are influencing these developments are themselves influenced: often by people with not nearly as much money -- such as relatively poor authors, or other "real" visionaries.
So you could also say something like: "Want to have some really significant influence on the world? Write a book." It doesn't take a lot of money, and it's not certain that you will be influential, but if you have some really great ideas you might stand more of a chance of changing the world by writing than by trying to compete with the likes of Gates or Musk for the really big bucks.
Of course, lots of other cultural artifacts have also been hugely influential. How much of our modern world has been influenced by Star Wars or Star Trek, or by mathematics -- which really makes all those Mars journeys possible in the first place. How many people have been influenced and inspired by music? All of the arts really feed in to and greatly influence each other.
So there are plenty of ways to influence and change the world apart from being rich -- and many of them are even more effective, as these other means could influence many generations of people -- poor, rich, and otherwise.
I think it's a bit more complicated than that. Books can't travel to Mars - they can't even move - and yet without the influence of creative works such as books, far fewer people would even want to go in the first place. The relationship seems symbiotic rather than confrontational.
That being said, if Bill Gates wants to cure polio, he should spend his money on immunisations rather than artist workshops and publishing houses. Someone in the chain between thought and deed needs to apply human effort to the problem, and when the effort required is massive, the easiest way to coordinate it is by buying it.
I make low 6 figures doing network security. If I hit 200k, literally the only thing you could do to motivate me would be to treat me well and give me interesting things to do.
Fortunately, my employer already does both of those. I just wish it wasn't almost a requirement to leave in order to get a decent raise.
Note: I'm not expecting to make $200k in a technical role as a security analyst any time soon, its just hypothetical.
I see $100k USD being thrown around as a large salary in discussions, and compared to the median US household income it is. But people have been using this figure as a convenient anchor point in arguments for decades now, and if you look at inflation, $100k should not be considered a high salary today, and if you are a programmer you should demand more:
I used to think that, but now I make $500k and I think you could convince me to work on something I like slightly less well for $700k. Once I achieve financial independence, it will be different, but until then, changes that significantly impact the distance to that goal are motivating.
The interesting thing though is that you wouldn't really want to entice me that way, because I'd guess you'd get a worse product out of me. So there are different types of motivation that are important. The motivation to make a choice, versus the motivation to work hard on a choice.
It only makes you independent for chunks of 6 months per month worked. You still have to work some 5-10 years before you are independent for the rest of your life.
Hi downvoters, I don't understand why 'retirement' isn't an appropriate term, please help me grow my understanding by commenting instead. Thanks, --falsedan
1. That's not the common meaning of 'financial independence' no matter how much you repeat it, it's really closely-associated with the coming-of-age rite when you no longer rely on financial support to survive
2. I can't imagine being independently wealthy & keeping my day job but I suppose it's conceivable!
1. How do you explain that your view is being downvoted, and mine, upvoted? This is the common understanding in the circles I run in. I think you may be the one whose definitions need an update.
2. For example, all employees at the VP and up level at Google, Facebook, etc., make more than a million dollars are year. It doesn't take long at this level of compensation to have more wealth than any reasonable person could spend. Yet they still work, normally not to satisfy an unmet financial need.
I thought it meant having enough investments to live off dividends/interest/rent without having to touch your principle such that it continues growing on its own?
I would say yes. Well, maybe not dependent but not independent.
Some people with large incomes are still up to their eyeballs in debt, or at least not living within their means.
IMO financial independence requires living within your means until the point where you never need to work again to continue that lifestyle for the rest of your life.
Hi downvoter, I'm not going to increase my understanding of 'time != money' without some explanation. Could you please comment so I might learn something? thanks, --falsedan
I'm not the downvoter but I'm pretty sure the original poster meant that a financially independent person no longer has to exchange their time for money, ie they can choose whatever they want to do with their time and no longer have to work just for food/shelter/etc.
With some very basic math and assuming an expenditure of about 120k in today's value per year (millionaire remember), taking into account 4% inflation and a 4% return rate, you need about 20MM+ to settle down with 100% financial independence. I made a bunch of assumptions like you need this for 50 years and 120k lifestyle today will be worth much more like 1.2MM in 50 years and so on. As much as I would love to be proven wrong on this math, 500k per month puts you very far indeed.
Money may not motivate me in small numbers, but this goal of financial independence (what they call fuck you money) is definitely a motivator.
Yes, I have been following him for some time. He inspired me to begin saving even harder than I was already naturally predisposed to. My savings rate is nearly eighty percent these days, so we're quite close. This calculator gives me a year based on rough numbers, which is about what I had calculated. I will probably engage in the standard one-more-year thing to make things even more certain.
My number's based on cost of living. At $100k, in the area I live in, I have a good standard of middle class living but I still have to work hard to save, go on vacations, and make major purchases.
At $200k, I could maintain the same standard of living, easily pay off all of my student debt in about a year (without sacrificing anything), easily buy a house, buy a new car outright after saving excess money for 3-4 months, pay for my kid's college education outright, and save a ton of money for retirement. At $100k, I constantly have to pick and choose which of these things I work on.
If I made $200k, living in the same area, I might not be wealthy in the grand scheme of things, but I sure would feel like it. About 70% of the negative stress in my life comes from anxiety about being able to afford everything my family will want and/or need eventually.
Interestingly enough, I have already lived through the experience of having my salary double almost overnight. I used to live in a relatively low-cost area, but I was still getting paid about $25k below market. Then I moved to a higher-cost area, and took a more advanced position at a company that paid a little more than market rate. Went from below $50k to just under $100k. The impact on my life was significant. I went from feeling poor and helpless to finally being able to breathe. I used to be depressed and angry all the time because I could barely take care of my family and my household. Now I'm more or less happy.
18-year-old self would be comparing with entry level, rather than senior level, salaries. If you account for both that and inflation, the right question is "how would your 18yo self feel about $45k/y?"
Would you now take 200k job but kind of okay project not very interesting? That is what we are talking. BTW, You can make 200k soon depending on how good you are in the security domain
The situation I'm in now is that I'm very good at several aspects of security, but I'm not an rock-star at any of them (although in many ways I feel just a step or two away). In a way, being a jack-of-all trades is very useful for my current role, which involves a lot of incident response type things: network forensics, host-based malware forensics, log analysis, etc. I get great performance reviews in a company full of talent, but its hard to accurately assess yourself (and like many I struggle with impostor syndrome). This year, I'm focusing on getting better at programming and going beyond the basic aspects of reverse engineering. Basically, I'm trying to find a path to specialization in order to progress. I could probably easily land a job making ~50k more than I do now, but I'm planning on attempting to negotiate for a decent raise the next time I get promoted. I like everything else about the company,so if we could come to some kind of an acceptable situation I would love to stay.
However, if someone offered me $200k today for a full-time position at a private company, I would almost certainly accept. I can deal with less than ideal or even boring work as long as there's a good work/life balance that lets me keep working on projects at home. And even if the work isn't glamorous, I'm the type of person that enjoys all kinds of work, physical or mental. Before I got into security I did everything from shovel half-rotten fish into buckets for a living to running network cable. As a caveat, if its a government/contracting job, it would probably have to be $300k (which is probably unrealistic). There are aspects of government work that are interesting, but from my experience the negatives almost always outweigh the positives.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that some 85% of people reading this do not have 1 million in the bank, let alone a few. So that's just worrying about a problem that most are never really going to encounter.
That being said, motivation is a complex thing, and most people are motivated by many different things at once. Money itself may not be the only motivator, but it's definitely one of them, and an important one. Trying to skimp out on it is a recipe for failure.
For normal people, its infuriating to hear businesses complain about turnover and a lack of loyalty when their "performance" raises amount to a cost of living increase, and their promotion raises don't bring them in line with the salaries that people getting hired at the more senior position make coming through the door. Money isn't the only reason I work, but it is one of the reasons. Its more about the principle. A company that wants loyalty should show loyalty and not attempt to nickel and dime the talent.
Tech companies are usually responsible for creating the turnover they complain about.