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Poll: What matters most when considering a job?

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Re: Poll: What matters most when considering a job?

#21

Post by petercooper »

I think the environment/atmosphere is key. If you're getting hassled all day, horrible coworkers, management issues, etc, it takes a really resilient personality to deal with that just for the money.

As such, it surprises me that compensation and challenging work go above it. Even if I were being paid $200,000 a year to do cool work, if I had to deal with mega social and management issues, if I had to stay there I'd be deeply unhappy.

(Of course, the flip side is if the perfect environment offered a salary of, say, $10000 a year, that might be just as useless.. which makes polls like these a bit pointless really).

Re: Poll: What matters most when considering a job?

#22

Post by [deleted] »

swombat wrote: post #7
inerte wrote: post #6

Money, but until a certain treshold. After X per month other factors kick in, specially whom am I working with and what. Boring work can be made awesome with the right people, the opposite ain't true. People will crush you even if you're doing what you love.

Boring work can be made awesome with the right people, the opposite ain't true You mean the opposite is true.

[deleted]

Re: Poll: What matters most when considering a job?

#25

Post by yan »

inerte wrote: post #6

Money, but until a certain treshold. After X per month other factors kick in, specially whom am I working with and what. Boring work can be made awesome with the right people, the opposite ain't true. People will crush you even if you're doing what you love.

"Money, but until a certain threshold."

You're referring to backward-bending supply curve of labor[1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_bending_supply_curve_o...

Re: Poll: What matters most when considering a job?

#26

Post by CUViper »

Femur wrote: post #17

One option not listed is 401k match. Next to base compensation, that is the metric I am most interested in.

It's better to consider total compensation. A $100k salary with up to 5% 401k matching is roughly the same as a $105k salary with no 401k matching.

The latter might be preferred since it gives you the choice of what to do with that extra $5k, but it gets tricky if you're nearing the contribution limits.

Re: Poll: What matters most when considering a job?

#28

Post by Femur »

CUViper wrote: post #26
Femur wrote: post #17

One option not listed is 401k match. Next to base compensation, that is the metric I am most interested in.

It's better to consider total compensation. A $100k salary with up to 5% 401k matching is roughly the same as a $105k salary with no 401k matching. The latter might be preferred since it gives you the choice of what to do with that extra $5k, but it gets tricky if you're nearing the contribution limits.

I completely agree that total compensation is paramount. That is why i said "Next to base compensation..."

I take both into consideration.

Re: Poll: What matters most when considering a job?

#29

Post by DavidSJ »

swombat wrote: post #7
inerte wrote: post #6

Money, but until a certain treshold. After X per month other factors kick in, specially whom am I working with and what. Boring work can be made awesome with the right people, the opposite ain't true. People will crush you even if you're doing what you love.

Boring work can be made awesome with the right people, the opposite ain't true You mean the opposite is true.

He means even fascinating work can't make working with the wrong people awesome.

Re: Poll: What matters most when considering a job?

#30

Post by whacked_new »

First to suggest that this is a horrible poll? Why: how would you answer this?

Accept = A x compensation + B x environment + C... + H x responsibility... + ... Z unknown factors + $alpha$ Hidden factor 1 + $beta$ Hidden factor 2

Step 1: Ignore all factors beyond H. Fair enough, given how you're framing the question with respect to only these variables.

Step 2: Compare several jobs and then what, minimize the errors, and find the largest coefficient, ignoring any and all covariates!?

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