What Really Matters in Job Satisfaction: Beyond Salary?

[neanderthalphysics]

How satisfied are you with your salary at work? Do you know what your peers are getting based on work gossip or just asking directly? Does your university/company/organization implement a pay transparency policy?

 

[PeroK]

How satisfied are you with your salary at work? Do you know what your peers are getting based on work gossip or just asking directly? Does your university/company/organization implement a pay transparency policy?

The company I worked for made it a disciplinary offence to reveal to anyone else how much you were paid.

 

[neanderthalphysics]

Yikes! For me that's a warning sign.

 

[jbriggs444]

The company I worked for made it a disciplinary offence to reveal to anyone else how much you were paid.

And at tax time when the law requires that you reveal to someone how much you were paid. Then too, your prospective creditors usually want to know these sorts of things.

 

[PeroK]

And at tax time when the law requires that you reveal to someone how much you were paid. Then too, your prospective creditors usually want to know these sorts of things.

It was other employees you weren't allowed to discuss it with. We don't generally do tax returns in the UK. It was all automatic PAYE tax deductions for me.

That said, in the old days, the staff in the computer centre where the payslips were printed could (and did) look at them and they knew what everybody got paid!

 

[Gocalc]

I never have the nerve to ask my colleagues directly but it would be the best thing to do. I just left a company where I knew what my friends in other parts of the company were earning and I wasn't being paid fairly. I think if you stay in a job more than a few years, especially if you're early in your career, then salary doesn't usually keep up with what you could get if you moved.

 

[russ_watters]

The company I worked for made it a disciplinary offence to reveal to anyone else how much you were paid.

I don't know about the UK, but for some types of employers in the US, it is illegal to forbid employees from discussing their pay with each other.

 

[PeroK]

I don't know about the UK, but for some types of employers in the US, it is illegal to forbid employees from discussing their pay with each other.

That might be true here as well, actually. It was probably a bluff, at least legally. But, in a company where everything is unstructured, once you're persona non grata, there's not a lot you can do. Other than leave.

 

[HAYAO]

I never really understood why it's kind of a taboo to talk about salary. Some people get more, some people get less. It's not like I'm trying to compare my salaries to other people so I can feel good or feel bad about myself. I'm rather open to discussing it just for the sake of understanding what differentiates salaries, and in some cases help me improve what I do.

I can, however, kinda understand that some people are quite greedy, and asks for a raise when they hear someone else is getting paid better than they are. I don't like the idea of asking for raise because I think that it's up to the company/institution to decide how productive I am to them. I don't decide how productive I am to the company/institution. That sounds too arrogant. In the case where they are paying literally crap compared to the work I am doing, then other people may be feeling the same way, so we should all just quit that job and let the company/institution rot itself down. I don't try controlling other people. That's stupid. Heck, I'm not even fully capable of controlling myself, so why should I even try?

I also hear my colleagues complaining about the salary, but unless they are trying to live a luxurious life, I don't see how they are not getting paid enough.

I work as an assistant professor (the term may be different in other countries) in a national college in Japan and I'm quite satisfied with what I am being payed. As a matter of fact, I sometimes feel like I don't deserve it. My wife is also an assistant professor in a private college, and she gets paid more than I do. Private institutions tend to pay more than public institutions in Japan. I'm also quite thankful for the work environment, including very competent students, and a very understanding boss, and a flexible work hours (letting me go home early when I want to, and letting me stay in the lab as long as I want to). I really don't have anything to complain.

 

[russ_watters]

I never really understood why it's kind of a taboo to talk about salary. Some people get more, some people get less. It's not like I'm trying to compare my salaries to other people so I can feel good or feel bad about myself. I'm rather open to discussing it just for the sake of understanding what differentiates salaries, and in some cases help me improve what I do.

There are pros and cons on both sides. Many employers don't want people to discuss salaries because it enables them to pay people less than they are worth. Many employees are bad judges of their own worth and will misuse the information.

I don't like the idea of asking for raise because I think that it's up to the company/institution to decide how productive I am to them. I don't decide how productive I am to the company/institution. That sounds too arrogant.

That is not generally a good strategy (caveat: country differences). Companies exist to make a profit for their owners, period. Some are fair because they think it benefits the company, but many are unfair because they know it benefits the company. The best strategy is to know your worth/value and to properly advocate for yourself. If you are underpaid, ask for more or seek a better paying job. And from the other side, if you are an under-performer it would behoove you to recognize it and try to fix it, lest you get fired for being overpaid/underperforming.

 

[HAYAO]

There are pros and cons on both sides. Many employers don't want people to discuss salaries because it enables them to pay people less than they are worth. Many employees are bad judges of their own worth and will misuse the information.

That is not generally a good strategy (caveat: country differences). Companies exist to make a profit for their owners, period. Some are fair because they think it benefits the company, but many are unfair because they know it benefits the company. The best strategy is to know your worth/value and to properly advocate for yourself. If you are underpaid, ask for more or seek a better paying job. And from the other side, if you are an under-performer it would behoove you to recognize it and try to fix it, lest you get fired for being overpaid/underperforming.

I don't know if this is supposed to be a counter-argument with what I said, because most of what I've said overlaps with what you just said.

But anyhow, at least over here in Japan, no employers are ever going to give you a raise even if you ask for it. Average salary has been going down in Japan, tax rates going up, and cost of living is going up. So I have no doubt companies/government aren't doing what they are supposed to be doing, and I understand well how unfair companies/institutions can be, and I'm not denying that whatsoever. But what's the point of asking for a raise if you are almost certain that it's going to be declined? Not to mention employers can be pretty dishonest about reasons for not giving any raise, which means that even if you do ask them, you won't get the right feedback to know anything about your worth.

In such cases, it's either you improve yourself so that you get promoted or get a raise, or just quit and get a different job (or start your own company). My personal take on modern young Japanese people (although I'm relatively young myself) is that many of them just stick with what they have and constantly complain instead of doing things that they have control over. Sure, a change is scary and intimidating, but people should be more scared and intimidated by not changing if they think that they are in a poor situation.

I like to stay humble about myself and if I feel I'm overpaid then I just try to live up to it.

 

[Mondayman]

I put in the absolute bare minimum effort at work. Sometimes that is too much for me to handle. So minimum wage is probably where I belong and where I'll stay, even with my debt.

 

[gmax137]

For a long time where I worked, we (the engineers) were responsible for writing proposals, including the pricing. In order to come up with a price we had to know costs. To come up with labor costs there was a spreadsheet showing cost ($/hour) for each employee. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the costs were based on a simple multiplier of salary, where the multiplier was equal to 2. I think this is pretty typical, the multiplier (*2) covers payroll taxes, the employer's contributions to insurance and 401K, the facilities (office space), non-billable departments (accounting, security, maintenance...) and so on.

So if the spreadsheet showed Bob's cost as 60 $/hour then Bob was making (60/2)*40*52 = $62,400 a year. Anyone with enough interest could determine anyone else's base salary.

Since those days we've had a couple mergers/take overs and the new system uses generic costs (with cost values for "engineer," senior engineer," etc.), and the pricing is done by the "marketing" engineers so who makes what is kind of a mystery. I don't hear people talking about each other's pay, nobody seems to care much.

 

[Choppy]

I think often people tend to fixate on salary sometimes. And though that's not necessarily a bad thing, but there are many things beyond salary that contribute to general satisfaction (or lack thereof) with one's employment. Other factors to consider include:

• The general locale. Where will you be based and does that jive with other dimensions of your life? Not only does this include things like access to the activities you like, but it includes aspects of the two-body or N-body problems (will your spouse/partner be able to work in the same place, schools for children, neighbourhood, etc.)
• Cost of living. Related to the above, but it's something that people rarely seem to talk about. What's the housing market like? Local taxes? How much do groceries and utilities cost?
• Vacation time. This includes both the number of days vacation you earn and flexibility in choosing when you can take them. Also, what are your responsibilities/expectations (if any) while you're on vacation?
• Flexibility with respect to work-life balance. How easily can you flex your time to attend medical appointments, or pick up your kids from school? Can you take a personal day when you need one?
• Commuting time and other commuting related costs (fuel, vehicle maintenance, collision probability, stress, accessibility of public transit, etc.)
• The people you work with.
• Stresses associated with the work. In the position, is your authority commensurate with your responsibility?
• Benefits. What does the health plan look like? Dental plan? Pension and/or structured retirement investment strategy? Is there a professional allowance and/or a travel allowance and what can it be spent on?

There are a lot of reasons why someone may be happy with a lower-than-market-value salary.

 

[George Jones]

Does your university/company/organization implement a pay transparency policy?

Most Canadian universities are (patially) publicly govenment-funded, and thus most have very (almost) transparent and public pay structures for their faculty members.

Examples from the west and east coasts of Canada: Appendix B from
https://www.sfu.ca/content/dam/sfu/faculty-relations/collective-agreement/CA.pdf

and Article 31 from
https://cdn.dal.ca/content/dam/dalhousie/pdf/dept/hr/Academic-Staff-Relations/DFA-2017-20-Collective-Agreement.pdf

The method of moving through the range of salaries for each position (e.g., associate professor) usually is included in these publicly disclosed documents.

There is an aspect of the pay structure that often is not publicly disclosed, "market differential".

 

[jtbell]

And at tax time when the law requires that you reveal to someone how much you were paid.

In some countries (e.g. Norway), everyone's tax returns are a public record.

 

[PAllen]

That is not generally a good strategy (caveat: country differences). Companies exist to make a profit for their owners, period. Some are fair because they think it benefits the company, but many are unfair because they know it benefits the company. The best strategy is to know your worth/value and to properly advocate for yourself. If you are underpaid, ask for more or seek a better paying job. And from the other side, if you are an under-performer it would behoove you to recognize it and try to fix it, lest you get fired for being overpaid/underperforming.

True story: In my first post college technical job, at a group lunch in a Chinese restaurant, I got a fortune cookie that said “you will get a salary increase”. I handed it to my boss. He obliged.

[edit: I answered the poll for my last position before retirement]

 

[jtbell]

At the small private college where I taught (now retired), salaries were not common knowledge. I never knew the salaries of the other faculty in my department, nor salaries offered to candidates for positions, even when I was department chairman. Those matters were handled between the college administration (provost / academic dean, and the HR office) and the person in question.

The only exception was per-course salaries for adjunct instructors, which were uniform across all departments. For a long time this was $2500 per course, not even taking inflation into account. In the last year or so, the college did raise it to $3000 because they were having so much trouble finding people who were willing to commute here (small town with some medium-sized cities about an hour's drive away).

And of course I knew what my wife's salary was (in a different department at the same college) because I do our tax returns.

We always suspected that certain other departments (e.g. business) had higher salaries than ours, but we did OK because of the low cost of living here and our modest lifestyle. And we're doing OK in retirement. FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) wasn't a thing with us; we both retired in our 60s.

 

[Vanadium 50]

It is common that some departments pay more than others: medicine and business, then engineering, then physical sciences, the social sciences, then humanities. You can check this out by looking at publicly available salaries at state schools.

You might notice that these are departments that tend to bring in a lot of external funding.

Choppy is also right - many factors enter into this. A given salary in Boston doesn't go as far as it does in Ames, Iowa.

 

[neanderthalphysics]

Thank you everyone for your insight into this.

I know it might seem somewhat insensitive to talk about salaries now when there is a pandemic raging, people are being laid off and many economies are in trouble. But the times are what they are.

I was previously OK with my salary - the interesting work I did that felt like doing a hobby was a perk that was difficult to quantify, especially having been in jobs where all I could think on Monday was the countdown to Friday.

I am curious if there are any research institutions/companies/organizations out there that allow the inventors of something that is subsequently patented, to receive a share of the royalties or to take part in its business development and commercialization? I have invented a few patents in the course of my work but my research institute takes ownership of them.

 

[Phylosopher]

The company I worked for made it a disciplinary offence to reveal to anyone else how much you were paid.

In my previous job, one of the contract points clearly states that you CANNOT discuss your salary with any other employee in the institution.

 

[mathwonk]

I worked at a public university (math dept) in the US, where all salaries were a matter of public record. Specifically one could go to the library and look up anyone's salary. In 30 years I never cared to do so and never knew anyone else's salary. In fact for years I didn't even know my own gross salary, especially once it began to be automatically deposited, minus deductions, except that it seemed inadequate to my needs.

Later at the end of my career I was tasked with reviewing performance of colleagues and making salary recommendations, whence I learned many others' salaries. I tried to evaluate the salary relative to performance and recommend raises when appropriate (almost always), but was usually unsuccessful, due to inadequate raise money being made available.

One principal reason was that I considered people deserving who made strong academic contributions, in teaching, research, and governance, whereas the higher administration primarily valued generation of outside grant dollars as significant. Since at that time, according to public data, 51% of federal grant money was awarded to biological and medical sciences, and 1.7% to mathematical and physical sciences, this did not help.

My attitude was that a salary is intended to pay my living expenses and make it possible to focus on my work. This was not always the case in some sense, for example neither my colleague nor I felt able to afford buying lunch at work, but we did not starve. Maybe this example is not relevant to this discussion of salaries "at work", if work is thought of as a profit making enterprise, but in academia, salary is not the main focus, and someone especially concerned with salary is advised to look elsewhere for employment.

In answer to question about sharing in the royalties for ones inventions, the university considered the on campus work of developing such inventions as having been funded by the employer, hence they claimed the lion's share of royalties after a certain initial shared portion. Some faculty however generated profitable creative works such as textbooks, by writing them at home on personal computers and working on them only "off the clock", in order to maintain full possession of profits.

 

[hutchphd]

Most employers of mine have demanded full ownership of any my patentable output in any way related to projects under way at the company. I understand this attitude and I was paid well for my work and given a lot of latitude. How can I define "off the clock" when I would come in at noon because I had been working at home til midnight?
And it beats having to hunt a wildebeest for supper.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

I don't generally regard most stuff that happens when comparing salaries as healthy.

I try to avoid it when I can. When I've thought my contributions warranted more compensation, I've asked for a raise. Usually my contributions were rewarded before I had to ask.

Knowing one's market value is healthy. Comparing with those in the same workplace - not so much.

 

[Joshy]

For reference I'm more of a junior employee < 3 years of work experience after bachelors. I would imagine my perspective is very different from more seasoned workers.

I think not talking about your pay is kind of an outdated thing where you trust your employer to pay you what you're worth (gosh must have been some good times). I don't think it's a toxic work environment, but I'm not going to flip a coin on my pay. I feel like knowing more has helped me out tremendously. I don't think I'd be getting paid anywhere near what I'm making now if I didn't know or fight for it.

I don't think it's fair to learn about what your coworker is making... then to go to your boss... "Hey ABC is making XXXX more than me why?! They suck and I hate my job!" Nope. I do think it's okay to know what they are willing to pay others and what kind of numbers they're working with during reviews and promotions; I also take a look at websites like indeed, glassdoor, blind, and levels to see what others are roughly making and then I'll ask for more during interviews too. I think if I'm being too ambitious and wrong about my self worth, then everything will work itself out pretty well the next company would be less willing to hire me for a ridiculous amount more. I've been pretty surprised at what I've been able to achieve so far though.

 

[Zap]

I asked a lot of my colleagues how much they made at my prior job, and many didn't appreciate that, even though I was just curious about my future earnings and was not trying to judge them lol ...

 

[mpresic3]

This happened a long time ago, 1967. A friend of mine got hired at a company. He had moved about 1000 miles from where he went to school and got set up in an apartment. He went to work, met his co-employees, made friends, discussed ideas, plans, did some (early) computer coding etc. After about two weeks, his supervisor came with a pay stub and check. He asked, "What's that?"

His supervisor (the boss) said, " That is your paycheck."

He had totally forgot he was being paid for the job he was doing.

He said to me, after that, he knew he was in the right place. (I assume at the end of the month, when he would have to pay rent, it would have reminded him he was also doing the job for money). Seems like it would be a good thing though if we could all appreciate our profession so much that we would do it well, independent of compensation.

BTW, this enthusiasm did not last forever. He actually retired quite early, in the mid 1990's, but that is still more than 25 years. He told me most of the last 10 years he felt unappreciated.

 

[gmax137]

When I was in school in the 1970s, summer jobs paid at or just above minimum wage ($1.60/hr). One Friday a friend told me he and his brother had just been hired to do construction work at $4/hr, so I hurried over to the site and got myself hired too. We all started Monday morning. The foreman had hired about 15 guys to work on a new building they were putting up (Geo Mason University in Fairfax, VA). Monday thru Thursday they had us moving piles of scrap around, sweeping floors, doing a bunch of easy stuff, it was weird. Then they told us Friday would be a 12 hour day, at least. They were pouring a new concrete floor (fifth floor of the new building). So we all showed up early Friday and worked our asses off, pushing concrete buggies until after dark to get the pour completed.

"Thanks a lot boys, come in Monday to get your checks."

They had hired us all just as the muscle to do that one pour. Back to the fast-food joint making $1.65.

 

[Zap]

It was more difficult to get a job at a fast food restaurant than it was for me to get my current job, if I don't count the time, money and effort spent in getting a degree. I wasn't even interviewed for my current job, but I wouldn't have been eligible for it without a degree, and they asked proof of that, so ... it was easier in that I did not even have to speak to anyone.

 

[gmax137]

My first fast food job: a friend who worked there called me at 4:45 and said the other cook just quit; if I showed up before 5:00 I would have the job. A ten minute walk from home, I made it in time.

 

[Zap]

I worked at Burger King for about 9 months, but I had to fill out an application, get interviewed, etc, just like any other job lol. I think they were bulk hiring at the time. Same way I was able to get a job at Walmart, they just happened to be bulk hiring at the time and hired like 15 people. It's like 90% luck of the draw, man. So stressful no matter which level you are at.

 

[WWGD]

I think often people tend to fixate on salary sometimes. And though that's not necessarily a bad thing, but there are many things beyond salary that contribute to general satisfaction (or lack thereof) with one's employment. Other factors to consider include:

• The general locale. Where will you be based and does that jive with other dimensions of your life? Not only does this include things like access to the activities you like, but it includes aspects of the two-body or N-body problems (will your spouse/partner be able to work in the same place, schools for children, neighbourhood, etc.)
• Cost of living. Related to the above, but it's something that people rarely seem to talk about. What's the housing market like? Local taxes? How much do groceries and utilities cost?
• Vacation time. This includes both the number of days vacation you earn and flexibility in choosing when you can take them. Also, what are your responsibilities/expectations (if any) while you're on vacation?
• Flexibility with respect to work-life balance. How easily can you flex your time to attend medical appointments, or pick up your kids from school? Can you take a personal day when you need one?
• Commuting time and other commuting related costs (fuel, vehicle maintenance, collision probability, stress, accessibility of public transit, etc.)
• The people you work with.
• Stresses associated with the work. In the position, is your authority commensurate with your responsibility?
• Benefits. What does the health plan look like? Dental plan? Pension and/or structured retirement investment strategy? Is there a professional allowance and/or a travel allowance and what can it be spent on?

There are a lot of reasons why someone may be happy with a lower-than-market-value salary.

Interesting. I remember a book a while back " Places Rated Almanac" that ranked cities based on specific criteria. I remember there was a weighted version so that you could put more weight on what mattered to you the most, e.g., if you were childless then availability of day care services would not much matter to you. Would be nice to have some similar way of ranking companies/jobs based on your preferences.