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Manuele J Sarfatti
Manuele J Sarfatti

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I'm slashing my salary to 1/3 of what I make. Here's why (and ask me anything, ofc):

"Really?"

Yes.

"But why?"

I believe the Real Life Value™ of my next job is at least 5x the salary on paper. I'm scaling up.

"What's Real Life Value?"

People you get to meet, network you get to grow, experiences you get to make, lessons you get to teach, and most of all lessons you get to learn. Can you honestly put a price tag on that?

It's time we start changing the language around (tech) salaries.

Top comments (4)

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Filipe Herculano

How do you accurately measure real life value before experiencing it? I guess maybe the question is, what strong indicators made you realize that it was the right call even though there’s always the uncertainty of getting into a new job?

I know you kinda said those indicators already in your why so what I’m asking is: can you go in a bit more depth towards your process for evaluating those points during this decision?

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Manuele J Sarfatti

The first thing that happened, and this was in the past months, is that I "paused" and started reflecting on what I actually wanted from my life and career, rather than keep auto-piloting based on goals I had set years ago.

More or less at the same time I was approached for this new job, which by the way has teaching at its core. So, considerably different from the "crunching code" I have been doing until now.

I had built (just in my head, nothing super defined or official) a sort of list of new medium-and-long-term goals, as well as a list of things I was missing (one example: "I want a place with more human interactions than my home desk").

If you see where I'm going, this "non-$ value" has mostly to do with what my own specific needs and goals are. This new job (and the organisation, and the people) aligned a lot with what I figured I wanted (both life- and career-wise) - call it luck, coincidence, destiny or serendipity ツ

The only more objective type of value-added is that I also think it will open many doors, possibilities and opportunities in the medium/far future. That's kind of a good thing for most of us I imagine.

And yes there is always a lot of uncertainty, but some workplaces are particularly transparent, and you can get a very good idea of what it will look like working there.

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This Dot Media • Edited

Sounds like a tough decision, but a really important one. Hope you have the best of times with your new job 🙏😊

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Manuele J Sarfatti

Thank you, it's easier than it looks though!