The link between Salary and Importance.
When looking for a job, I will always check the salary range first. If there is no salary range, I’ll not even open the job description. Why waste time on a company that clearly has no intention of being upfront and open with me? Why waste my time on a job that probably pays poorly?
The other day I overheard a conversation at work. We are hiring and need to draw up some job advertisements. A consultant was hired to help us think about nice job descriptions and the feeling we want to get across to a potential candidate. To people who have a real job, all this talk about getting the feeling across and job descriptions sounds like a lot of hog wash. Just tell people what you will pay and what you want from them, and of course, if salary alone isn’t justifying somebody’s input alone, tell them about the free fruit and high-quality coffee for example.
When I mentioned this to a friend, I told him I could never do such a silly thing as that consultant was doing. I could never sit at a table and talk for two hours with a straight face about how a job description should make somebody feel. Unless it paid a lot. I mean a lot a lot. If it really paid buckets of money, I could probably silence that voice inside that told me I wasn’t adding value to humanity, or making the world more beautiful, or even helping a company make next quarters numbers look better.
And then something clicked for me.
Something I’ve been wondering about for a long time. Why do the most bullshitish jobs pay the best? It’s because they must! How else can anybody be convinced to come and do the work that they, their family and friends and all their colleagues know is nonsense? They can only be persuaded to do the useless work if, and only if their inner voice is silenced by lots of money.
The lesson here? Next time you meet a consultant, don’t look down on them for doing nonsense work.
A little sidetrack here: how can you spot workers who add no value to the world? It’s simple really, once you realize they get paid the highest salaries. They will look the part. Their car will be unnecessarily bulky and shiny and so will their clothes. They must compensate for so much, after all.
So, when you are forced to interact with them, don’t make them feel bad. If they want to talk about how to increase shareholder value, just give them your list of 13 things you think the company can save money and time on and tell them to read through it and only come back with questions. This way they can feel important (they have something of substance to read) and your valuable time is saved. If they are paid enough (if their inner voice is silenced) they might even use your list and claim it as their own.
That a win-win. Your time isn’t wasted and maybe your company will also prosper more, because bosses tend to listen to highly paid consultants, at least as long as they are within eyesight.
If you aren’t sure if this article is very serious advice, or a sarcastic piece of inner life of a desk jock, then my point came across well enough. We live in a deeply sinical world. If we take ourselves too seriously or see our jobs as important, our mental health will suffer.
Also, if anybody wants to hire me as a public speaker, it’s just € 200 per hour plus travel expenses.