
Ask HN: Why did you accept a lower salary? - mattbgates
Anyone who has settled for a lower salary when they know they could probably go and earn more elsewhere, what are your reasons?<p>For me, I work with my fiancee... for over 5 years now. This is our second job together and this is the longest job I&#x27;ve ever held in my career. I make way less than what I could be making as a web developer. I know I could probably go to another company and make more, which may be an assumption, but I like my company and I like working with my lady.<p>My job is fairly laid back; less than 10 minutes from home; Friday nights I get to work from home; I get about 4-5 weeks paid vacation a year; no one bothers me too much; and I have so much downtime, I spend a majority of the time working on side projects.<p>I also have a dream that someday I will finally be able to work for myself and not someone else hence the side projects. To go to another job means a whole new environment and I am just developing and supporting a product for yet another company. So I willingly accept my lower salary.
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ManlyBread
I accepted a lower salary because I went from maintaining a shitty VB6 apps to
a company that uses .NET, hoping I could learn something more marketable
working there.

It wasn't worth it, they had a bunch of incredibly stupid systems and
maintaining these was even worse than the VB6 apps. On top of that they lied
to me - I was supposed to work on a new project and instead I worked on
sorting out the mess that other programmers made. I noticed that some other
people on the team did more or less the same kind of a job, expect their pay
was better since they didn't have "junior" in the title.

I will never accept a pay cut again.

~~~
mattbgates
You are explaining a job that I used to work. Visual Basic 6.0. Support and
fix bugs in a program. Add new features. Make it more user-friendly -- was my
job. I had to deal with a tyrant boss who would watch over me while I would
code, belittle me, do everything he thought was "making me a better coder."
Only lasted a year and a half... even turned down an offer that was double my
salary because if it meant dealing with him... I just couldn't do it.

When I began working there... he was paying me just $10 an hour. The most I
ever made there? $12 an hour.

Read more about it here: [http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/the-
opportunity/](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/the-opportunity/)

I wonder how similar our experiences are.

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mrdependable
I'm in almost the exact same situation as you, except I'll add one thing. I
worked a string of really heinous jobs where the work environment was
extremely toxic. Bosses yelling in your face, watching you work over your
shoulder while drinking their morning coffee, other employees being verbally
and physically aggressive. I don't particularly like the company I'm at, but I
get to work remotely, it's super relaxed, and I can pretty much put the hours
in whenever I want. If I leave to go somewhere else, I have no idea what kind
of situation I'd be getting myself into.

I get paid a bit below 100k, which in Los Angeles with 5+ years experience is
pretty bad, but my end goal is to build my own business.

~~~
mattbgates
Been there done that! [http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/the-
opportunity/](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/the-opportunity/)

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glancast
I took about a 120k paycut to work whenever and wherever I please. My SAAS app
provides me a nice middle-class salary and continues to grow mostly on its
own. I don't have to deal with being a "true believer", repeated "temporary"
crises, unreasonable deadlines, etc. No backstabbing office politics.

More importantly, with a self-enforced 10 hour work week I have lots of time
to improve my tradecraft, explore pet projects, take care of my body, etc. I
feel in control of my own life, rather than chasing other people's dreams.

~~~
mattbgates
Would you mind sharing your Saas product?

~~~
glancast
I generally prefer not to broadcast the business, but I'm happy to answer
questions about my experience :)

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olavgg
My second job was a Linux consultant, Python / Java Developer. At that time
the salaries was rather poor as everything with money involved Windows and
.Net. But I found Unix technologies a lot more interesting, especially for
learning and solving the really hard problems.

I really enjoyed that job, the problems we solved were challenging and fun.
And I learned so much, I accepted that lower salary as I bet on Linux, Python
and Java knowledge would be in demand later. And today I'm really happy that I
specialized in these technologies, because the market has really changed in my
favor the last three years.

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UnoriginalGuy
I recently accepted a 10K/year lower salary ($70K instead of $80K).

Better work/life balance inc. flexible hours, generous paid vacation/sick,
closed for Christmas & federal holidays (on top of paid vacation), and
unlimited (but optional) telecommuting.

The $80K would have cut my flexible vacation by a third, no closure at
Christmas, flexible hours gone, and telecommuting pretty much gone (with a
"maybe" they'll start in the future). Plus the commute was fifteen minutes
more each way.

I may have made the wrong decision financially, but I have a family, and I get
to see them a lot more telecommuting, we get to go on family holidays, we get
to spend time together at Christmas, and flexible hours will help picking them
up/dropping off at school.

~~~
pcurve
Those are good perks for $10k. based on your post, I think you made the right
call.

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exotree
Not an engineer, just a marketer/writer. Had two jobs offered, one offered 15k
more a year. Took the other job: it fell in line with my strengths, I can be
full time remote from my forest, and I knew my new boss at lower paying gig,
while expecting me to still work hard, would be good about making sure I got
off on time to go to gym as well as respecting when I needed to take vacation.
Do I sort of wish I had more money? Yes. But I'm in this company for the long
haul, and I decided 15k was worth the specific lifestyle I wanted over the
long haul.

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Sytten
In my case, this was only for an internship. I study in Canada where the
interns in CS and Computer engineering are rather well paid (easily over 20USD
per hour for a first internship). I accepted a much lower salary to work in
start-up in Copenhagen (its called pleo.io). The experience was amazing and
the team was awesome, but it is hard to live in such an expansive city with an
intern salary of around 1600USD per month. Only renting a room in a shared
apartment usually costs more than 800-900USD per month.

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Clubber
My last job was a political hellhole where they imported new management and
new management imported their friends and marginalized the people who built
the company pre-aquisition.

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bsvalley
Work life balance, lower expectations at work and no internal competition. As
bad as it sounds like, that's what I need since I burnt out not a while ago.
The pay cut was mostly made on stocks/bonus. I lost a lot of those by leaving
my previous employer. My base is actually slightly bigger now. In other words,
it feels like I'm really getting paid for what I do everyday and that the
salary/productivity expectation is at a sweet spot on both sides.

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noir_lord
In my case because it was - own office in a building 15 minute walk from where
I live as the only developer working on an interesting problem Vs a 7 mile
commute by public transport to work on a less interesting problem in an open
office with 30 other Devs.

It just wasn't even a choice for me, the final kicker is employer operates a
strict 9-5 policy for work, not had that expectation on a Dev job in a long
time.

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NumberCruncher
The last time I jumped ship I did not took a paycut - actually a got a small
raise - but took a job where I am paid ca. 15% less than my market value. I
was recruited by the VP of IT at a small company. We used to work together in
the past and he knows what I am capable of if I work under the right
conditions, which excludes discussions about BS and interruptions through
"burning issues". I do what I love to do, I set my own priorities and my own
deadlines. I have a site in Confluence showing the satus of my current
projects, he gets every two weeks an e-mail from me with the actual
highlights/achievements and once a month we go for lunch together where I can
ask him for guidance. I can take some time learning new technologies during
working hours and make homeoffice now and then. Why should I leave? Actually I
can imagine working for someone else than me only under these conditions.

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indemnity
I took a 40k paycut moving to New Zealand back in 2001. I don't regret it,
since leaving my country of birth, things have only gone backwards there, and
NZ is a great place to raise my son.

Since I was here, I took a 10k paycut once, to move from a big company to a
small startup.

It was the right call, but I was lucky, and it was by no means guaranteed to
work out (2009 was scary).

Company got acquired by a massive one, and compensation ramped back up to the
top of the scale (w/ RSUs making total comp p.a. something I can't match
elsewhere in the local market - I interviewed around, and found out I was
making substantially more than the CEO of the startup I interviewed at).

But thinking of making the move again, since I'm feeling my skills atrophy a
bit, and financially now on a solid footing, so I'd like to work somewhere a
little more fast-paced.

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allhailkatt
My employer has good policies on ADA accommodations. I still need to go into
the office, but I feel good that when I can't anymore I'll still have a job
with them.

Plus, I went from being responsible for the PM side of data architecture to
natural language processing. Way less stress, way better skill set.

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jonnycomputer
I'm definitely paid less than I could be, by maybe 20-30k, but cost of living
is quite low, found a 1/2 acre ranch house (totally decent) for $140k, I bike
to work and the only a traffic I deal with are pedestrians, I choose my own
tools, choose how and when I want to work, work on interesting stuff, have
lots of paid leave, and receive solid benefits including an old-style pension.
Money is tight sometimes, but can't otherwise complain, unless its that I
sometimes miss city life, and I end up working on too many different things
(javascript, python, bash, matlab, php; web dev, data analysis, file
management, elementary IT). And the boss has agreed to a raise, on condition
that expected funding does come in (pretty sure it will) ... so getting
better.

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SeaDude
To move from union to mgmt. Yes, I was a ditch digger 16 yrs ago. Now i'm a PM
in Tech Svcs. The 10k/yr paycut hurt, especially in Seattle right now, but
work remote on somewhat interesting projects, no commute, get so spend time in
the presence of family.

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godot
OP, you're basically describing a dream scenario I'm sure many of us
developers have. I'd be very willing to take a lower salary if it means a
10-minute commute, and having a lot of time for side projects.

I took up a job that's fairly middle-of-the-road in terms of salary -- plenty
of lower, and plenty of higher, around the bay area. I took it at the time
mostly because of working with some friends that I knew I liked working with,
so I knew at least that part won't be bad. It's still a long commute though
and I'm starting to question if it's worth it, especially if there's closer
jobs that are potentially higher salary.

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Terretta
Scope of challenge and room to learn, coupled with sufficient support to
enable meaningful impact on a world-class problem.

With the right mix of global problem plus virtually unlimited resources, and
depending on your personal values and the company culture, a big co with
built-in funding and mass market can be more rewarding than “home run” startup
money.

// If that sounds right to you, maybe you’ve already cashed out and now want
to really change the world, consider joining us. We intend to fix banking from
vantage of 5th largest bank in world with 2.5 trillion in deposits. And if you
haven’t cashed in yet you probably can enjoy a pay bump, not cut. Email in
profile.

------
adrianmsmith
Don't forget that if you want to start your own company, the more money you
have saved up the better. Then you have a longer runway before you have to
start talking to investors, etc. Having a higher salary now will help you do
that.

------
spoonie
My first full time job was for CAD 70k at Research In Motion. I knew other
local employers (e.g. Google, Sortable) were paying more to new grad but I
didn't care because I got to write C code and was hoping to sidestep onto the
security team.

My next job I took a full-stack webdev role for GBP 41k (got a raise to GBP
43k the next year). That was around CAD 7k less than another offer I got in
Vancouver. But I wanted to travel a bit, plus I knew that company paid their
Sillicon Valley employees twice that.

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wreath
I accepted a lower salary (than another offer, but more than what I make right
now) at a company whose product I'm excited about, they had a team of more
experienced people than my current company and I moved from frontend to a
fullstack position. Of course, only time would tell if this was a good
decision.

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tiggybear
Last time I was interviewing for jobs I took the lowest of my 3 offers. There
were several reasons for this, I will refer to the accepted offer as A and
other offers as B and C.

1) Large corporation vs small corporation, offers B and C were for very large
corporations (one private and one public) and I took job A because I do not
enjoy bureaucracy.

2) Challenge. Offer B was a job I felt I could already do 100% and everything
I really wanted to do was offered as a "maybe if things go the right way
you'll get to build something cool." Offer C seemed challenging, but was a
different direction for my career. Offer A offered as much challenge as I was
willing to accept and was very aligned with my career goals.

3) Flexibility. Offer B - no work from home until after a year, but even then
it's not guaranteed and at most once a week. Offer C - it seemed like people
were only allowed to work from home when there was a state of emergency/snow-
closures, etc. Offer A - we are as flexible as possible, we are more concerned
with getting the work done.

Also worth noting, I was the youngest person on staff when I was hired at
company A. At B and C there were tons of people my age - I think this is why
they had a worse work/life balance. I'm single and no kids, but most people I
work with are pretty established in that regard. I believe I benefit a lot
from the fact that my older coworkers won't accept crappy work/life balance.

4) Connecting with people. I definitely connected with those at company A
moreso than those at company B and C. I think a lot of that had to do with the
fact that at companies B and C people were just going through the motions
during the hiring process, so it felt very robotic.

Also, while interviewing at company A it was very acceptable to discuss the
displeasures of working at public corporations (I was able to have a very
blunt convo with a CxO during my interview - and we commiserated a bit on our
non-optimal experiences working at them).

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dagmx
I accepted a lower salary (135k vs 150k) and a lower title (lead for a project
rather than lead for the department on every project) because of work culture.

I can fix code etc, but it's very hard to change culture. It would have been a
big step up in many regards but culture is a huge part of accepting a job.

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cultofmetatron
I took a 30k paycut for my current job.

Why? because they gave me the ultimate perk, 100% remote!

I'm heading to thailand next week and plan to just travel around the world. As
a bonus, my total living cost in southeast asia (including rent food and plane
tickets) is going to be less than what I pay in rent right now.

~~~
borplk
What do you do with your rental?

------
eeks
I cut my salary in half going back to research after some years in a HFT gig.
I'm gaining quality of work (wider breadth of topics), quality of people
(world class researchers) and quality of life (office 10 min from home instead
of 90, travel to conferences, ...).

~~~
calstad
What area of research do you work in? Did you go back to working at a
university?

~~~
eeks
I work in systems and no, I went back to industrial research.

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nastypants
I relocated from the NE back to Austin and took a lower pay. I grew up in the
South and didn't like how impolite people are in the NE. I actually didn't fit
w the regional culture. Goes to show how important culture fit is for work
too.

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briandrupieski
1\. I could work from home most days of the week. 2\. I enjoyed the work. 3\.
The expectation was a maximum of 40 hours/week, which I thought I wanted at
the time. When I worked more, my manager explicitly told me to work less.

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jdmoreira
I really wanted to be part of the team I'm currently in. I thought I would
learn a lot with them and become a much better developer, turned out to be
true.

I asked for less money just to make sure I would still be hired.

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sidcool
I had 6 offers 2 years ago. I chose the third highest salary option because of
the unique company culture and people. Totally correct decision in hindsight.

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thdxr
Being able to work from home full time is my number one factor. The multiplier
of work I get done is so high that many weeks I work around 10 hours.

~~~
QuercusMax
Genuinely curious: do really only work 10 hours, including email and other
forms of communication?

Do you think you could get more done working 20 hours / week, or do you only
think you have about 2 good hours of coding work in you per day?

~~~
thdxr
I spend the rest of my time reading on engineering related topics that I care
about. These may or may not be relevant to my work

I could get much more done, but realistically there's rarely enough work to
keep me actually busy for 40 hours a week

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ajeet_dhaliwal
I did it to fulfil my dream of working in the games industry (AAA games for
PlayStation/Xbox etc). Six years later I'm ready to leave.

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afarrell
Because it was a life goal to move from the US to Europe for a while and
because my wife is much less fearful.

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psyc
There basically aren't any senior dev positions (that I've ever seen) where
the money is low enough to even factor into my decision. Every other thing
people commonly look for in a job is a higher priority to me.

