<story><title>Ask HN: Propaganda for creative salary manipulation?</title><text>Every once and a while (at least once a week) I stumble upon some essay heralding the euphoria of working in a good team, or on a good project, or of spending your life solving projects. They all seem to have the same underlying tone, that engineers don&apos;t care about money, they care about the work they do. Sometimes I wonder if these articles are some creative, subtle, under-handed manipulation to convince young engineers to feel guilty for demanding to get paid a fair wage for the value of their services.&lt;p&gt;Am I the only engineer out here that wants to scream, &quot;fuck you, pay me&quot; whenever somebody rambels on and on about how wonderful it is to drink the kool-aid at flickr, google, twitter, or zynga? (and for the record, all of my friends at these 4 companies feel very under-paid).</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>nostrademons</author><text>&quot;Am I the only engineer out here that wants to scream, &quot;fuck you, pay me&quot; whenever somebody rambels on and on about how wonderful it is to drink the kool-aid at flickr, google, twitter, or zynga? (and for the record, all of my friends at these 4 companies feel very under-paid).&quot;&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m one of those engineers that drank the kool-aid.  Yeah, I could probably make more elsewhere.  However, I&apos;m at the stage of my career where I&apos;m optimizing for experience, not for earnings.  I&apos;d rather trade salary for skills now, so that those skills can bring more salary later.  That&apos;s capitalism.&lt;p&gt;Besides, I honestly don&apos;t see the point of going from $100K to $200K (made-up numbers, but presumably the ballpark we&apos;re talking about).  I save half my take-home pay anyway; I can&apos;t really think of what else I&apos;d like to buy with it.  When I choose to optimize for earnings, I&apos;d rather be in the tens of millions, i.e. found a company and grow it - which also happens to be quite satisfying, although lots of hard work.  There&apos;s a material difference between &quot;never has to work again&quot; and &quot;still a wage slave&quot;.  There isn&apos;t one (to me) between &quot;can afford a Beemer&quot; and &quot;can afford a Honda Civic.&quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gorbachev</author><text>I went from $100K to $200K and to $300K and then to $150K in a relatively short period of time. There&apos;s a HUGE difference in lifestyle even with a $100K difference. Obviously it didn&apos;t make me independently wealthy, but the difference was still night and day.&lt;p&gt;The $200K+ allowed me to invest in a house in NYC for my family. At $100K I couldn&apos;t afford one. Before the house purchase the $200K+ allowed me to vacation abroad 2-3 times a year. The experiences I gained doing that can not be measured in money.&lt;p&gt;But most importantly it allowed me to completely avoid worrying about money. I knew that whatever happened, I wouldn&apos;t be in a financial hole. That type of financial freedom is priceless.&lt;p&gt;Obviously if my life situation was different...if I was single or living in less expensive part of the country, I could probably achieve the same financial freedom at $100K.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Propaganda for creative salary manipulation?</title><text>Every once and a while (at least once a week) I stumble upon some essay heralding the euphoria of working in a good team, or on a good project, or of spending your life solving projects. They all seem to have the same underlying tone, that engineers don&apos;t care about money, they care about the work they do. Sometimes I wonder if these articles are some creative, subtle, under-handed manipulation to convince young engineers to feel guilty for demanding to get paid a fair wage for the value of their services.&lt;p&gt;Am I the only engineer out here that wants to scream, &quot;fuck you, pay me&quot; whenever somebody rambels on and on about how wonderful it is to drink the kool-aid at flickr, google, twitter, or zynga? (and for the record, all of my friends at these 4 companies feel very under-paid).</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>nostrademons</author><text>&quot;Am I the only engineer out here that wants to scream, &quot;fuck you, pay me&quot; whenever somebody rambels on and on about how wonderful it is to drink the kool-aid at flickr, google, twitter, or zynga? (and for the record, all of my friends at these 4 companies feel very under-paid).&quot;&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m one of those engineers that drank the kool-aid.  Yeah, I could probably make more elsewhere.  However, I&apos;m at the stage of my career where I&apos;m optimizing for experience, not for earnings.  I&apos;d rather trade salary for skills now, so that those skills can bring more salary later.  That&apos;s capitalism.&lt;p&gt;Besides, I honestly don&apos;t see the point of going from $100K to $200K (made-up numbers, but presumably the ballpark we&apos;re talking about).  I save half my take-home pay anyway; I can&apos;t really think of what else I&apos;d like to buy with it.  When I choose to optimize for earnings, I&apos;d rather be in the tens of millions, i.e. found a company and grow it - which also happens to be quite satisfying, although lots of hard work.  There&apos;s a material difference between &quot;never has to work again&quot; and &quot;still a wage slave&quot;.  There isn&apos;t one (to me) between &quot;can afford a Beemer&quot; and &quot;can afford a Honda Civic.&quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>olalonde</author><text>I totally agree. &quot;How cash in the bank affects your lifestyle: it&apos;s not linear.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.asmartbear.com/rich-vs-king-sold-company.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.asmartbear.com/rich-vs-king-sold-company.html&lt;/a&gt;)</text></comment>