Are you influenced by your total salary when it comes to putting effort into your work? #salary #compensation #workethic
Have you come across a job posting for a 4-day work week and are contemplating accepting a lower salary? #jobsearch #worklifebalance #salarynegotiation
**Considerations for Lowering Salary for a 4-Day Work Week**
Factors to consider:
– Impact on work-life balance
– Personal financial goals
– Job satisfaction
– Overall compensation package
Importance of Salary and Work Effort
When faced with a decrease in salary for a change in work hours, it’s crucial to assess how this change could affect your motivation and dedication at work. Balancing financial needs with job satisfaction is key for a successful career decision. How do you view the connection between salary and effort in the workplace? Let’s explore further.
Depends on the hours required for the 4-day work week. Is it still 40 hours, meaning 10 hours a day? Or is it actually 8 hours a day?
If it is 40 hours, then I absolutely want market rate.
If it is 32 hours (because 8 hours a day), then I am willing to get paid a bit under market rate, yes.
You should do whatever you want to do. For me when I agree to take a job you get my good faith effort for the agreed upon work week. That doesn’t mean I never say No to things or overwork myself. I push back all the time against things.
I don’t clock watch as I leave work at natural stopping points. That may be early one day or later the next day. I find it all evens out at the end of the year. I take my PTO appropriately and give weeks or months of advance notice, based on the length.
I consider work anything I do for the company and not just fingers to keyboard coding. That means emails, meetings, documentation, mentoring, etc… that’s all work to me.
My average day for a 40-hour work week is:
* 6-hours work
* 1-hour lunch
* 1-hour of cumulative breaks
If my compensation is below market rate I’m definitely putting in minimal effort
All that matters to me is doing my job and my family justice at the same time. A 4 day work week just means that you end up working longer on the 4 days so you can get an entire day off
Realistically in SE, you don’t clock 40 hrs every week. You get an assigned quantum of work. Some weeks you work 10 hours and on other weeks, you work 60. A good boss and management system will ensure that you’re well compensated and reasonably happy in both these phases
Going to be the person that says no. I used to think the answer was yes but then realized the underlying issue was that I had lost passion for what I was doing years ago. I hit the career reset button and even though I took a salary hit, I ended up much more motivated and happy doing something completely new. The title and compensation bits are easy to achieve if you genuinely love what you do. When you don’t, success will make you miserable. You don’t want to live that way.
ofc total salary (salary per hour) impacts my work ethic (mostly my ethic how i write my hours, not the quality of my work).
There’s two ways to think about it, hourly rate and value-add. If you go by hourly rate, then yes, less hours == less salary. But if you go by value-add, no, the math is a boolean “do you bring enough to justify the price tag”.
But either way, there doesn’t need to be a direct correlation between compensation and effort. Otherwise, a CEO would have to work 100x more than you. Work smart instead.
It did at first.
Going from 7.25 an hour to 11$ an hour definitely meant “50% more effort”. Going to $22 afterwards also meant twice as much. (Since we don’t get paid overtime, it meant more hours per week)
However, after being exposed to people who make 500k+ per week for “keeping clients happy” by saying yes to absolutely anything that’s asked of them while snorting coke off the client’s dick, the connection between compensation and effort kinda disappeared.
The only connection that still exists is profit generated vs compensation. If my team of 10 generates 10m of profit, we better see at least 30% in our paychecks.
As much as people hate to hear it, I think it’s true that salary has very little direct correlation to the day-to-day effort someone puts in. Your pay check is just too decoupled from your daily work to create a good reenforcement mechanism. People tend to have an innate level of motivation or work ethic. That motivation and work ethic varies over time with their personal circumstances, the work environment and how interested they are in what they are doing, etc.
People with a strong work ethic can often successfully demand more money, and companies that pay more can be more selective and focus on hiring and retaining people with a high work ethic, so big picture there’s probably a relationship between productivity and pay, but giving someone a raise tends to only have a short term impact on productivity before they go back to their natural steady state. Cutting someone’s pay, on the other hand, is a lot more likely to cause them to check out and become permanently less productive. That’s related less to salary though and more to someone feeling under-valued. If someone felt like taking a pay cut along with gaining a 4 day work with was a fair deal then my expectation is that they’d retain the same level of productivity overall.
Incidentally, that’s why my advice to people is typically that a 4 day work week is a bad deal. I think most people end up being about the same level of productive and taking a pay cut. Your much better off negotiating some flexibility with your manager directly.
Incidentally, when you’re underpaid that’s usually when your company wants the most from you lol
I probably was available the whole months and they didn’t pay a single penny. 315$ total a month.
And everyone here says programming is the shit
For the first month, yes. Then I’m back to generally slacking.
I _used_ to think I would. In my head, I was getting paid for a normal level of effort and if I had a job that paid me more, I would try harder.
Then, I got a much better paying job. Like, an unfathomably large increase for me (3x the salary I thought was fair). I went from a Midwestern company to a near FAANG level big tech company.
At first, I really thought I would work so much harder. I wanted to be the best I could be. But I very, very quickly realized my large tech company employer was basically dysfunctional. My boss was not technical and seemed to have trouble remembering what I even did. And yet, he was the only voice that mattered during my reviews.
He didn’t have visibility to my work and he mostly didn’t care. I genuinely don’t understand how he got his job or how he has a successful career. He has since been promoted, but I have too, so I’m still reporting to him.
Worse still, the product I work on is inconsequential to this giant company. It’s a rounding error in the revenue they get, even though it’s bringing in *millions* of dollars. The company doesn’t care about it and are actively making it worse, on purpose, because they don’t want customers using it.
Yeah, it’s ridiculous.
So, yeah, money alone wasn’t enough to get me to work hard. The real motivation for me was the belief that there was a direct correlation between my pay and effort. Without that, I just don’t care much. Thankfully, my boss’s incompetence means he has no idea what I’m doing and seems to assume I’m performing adequately.
It’s certainly demotivating. I’m getting paid less at my full-time job than I was getting paid at my internship. It contributed to my burn out I think.
As for working less hours for less pay, it depends on how much less. If you don’t post salary, you’re not gonna get any meaningful answers imo.
Yes, my pay is much higher than I ever thought it would be. When I was applying around, my current job offered me 2 times more than the other 4 job offers I got. I treat my company as if it’s some kind of god I serve and revere.
The more money I’ve made in my career, the less was expected of me. I also wouldn’t take a 4-day work week for less pay, take a normal job and turn it into a 4-day work week. No need to devalue for yourself with something most people do already with the amount of distractions they force upon themselves.
Watch out for 32 hours/week not including/having reduced benefits
Yes, but sometimes that’s a good thing! I recently turned down an offer with a higher TC because I knew the workload and culture wasn’t worth it.
Yes. Unless I’m investing in something valuable that will help me get better compensation in the future, I’m definitely working less if I’m being paid less.
Definitely
If I am making enough then I am taking off weekends and evenings and so more effective in my work. If I am not making enough than I am likely to be working on side hustles nights and weekends and so less effective overall in my work.
Yes, for me in big tech – I will put in 0% extra effort at market rate.
If I’m paid well I will work to protect that.
I have my own standards for the effort I put in at work, or anything else. It’s gonna cost 8 hours of my life no matter what.
Yes lol
It’s the primary factor in my effort and whether or not I’ll stay with that company.
I’m putting maximum effort in order to retain the maximum amount of responsabilities.
Then I will suddenly leave for a shitty small increase.
The blank stare always makes my day.
In general, no. My job has gotten easier the more I have gotten paid.
Salary/Compensation are almost entirely based on three things:
1. **Company you’re working for:** Bigger budget & More competitive -> More pay.
2. **Location:** Higher CoL -> More pay.
3. **Experience:** More YoE / Recognizable company names -> More pay.
Bonus consideration for industry. Passion industries like gamedev pay less.
Yea
there’s a money limit for me, beyond which my effort plateaus. So, not necessarily.
Absolutely. The company is explicitly telling you what value they have assigned you with the comp package. It’s not entitlement to reciprocate the relationship tone they set.
Absolutely. With stocks increasing, I’ve been more motivated than ever to push code.
i dont think that makes a lot of sense. would you take a pay cut equal to the percent of a 401k match? probably not.
I think we all deserve as much money as we can get, and a 4 day work week is just another benefit for you to enjoy, and the point of a benefit is that you dont need to make sacrifices for it, you are entitled to it.
Nice try HR, not telling you!
I work harder when the problem interests me more regardless of money tbh
Yes. I know how to work efficiently and at the same time manage workload to avoid over delivery. Over delivery can lead to inefficiency
not at all, in fact so far in my career for each full time job that i’ve worked, my effort has has a negative correlation with my salary
not to say that thats typical though and i don’t expect it to be that way for my whole career
FWIW I’ve been on a 32 hour work week for a few years. It is awesome. It was completely worth the lower salary to me for a while. I’m kind of done now and willing to work 5 days for higher pay, but if the salary you’re offered is high enough, I say go for it. It’s especially nice if you have a family, or other obligations that take up your weekends.
I don’t think totally compensation doesn’t impact my work effort. Lack of raises does though. When I’ve gone more than a year without getting a raise I wonder what the point is. Shy time I start to consider working outside of work hours, I make myself apply to jobs instead lol.
Yes, as does work life balance. I can handle working a lot for a strong salary but I won’t tolerated never having time off unless I’m HEAVILY compensated.