Get Paid for Your Work, but Don’t Work to Get Paid

If you want to get a high salary, you must know what all factors drive salaries. It is just not dependent, merely on your knowledge. It is a function of many many variables. And even those variables are variable.

Today, high salary might be a function of x, y, and z. And tomorrow, high salary might be a function of s, t, and u. So, variable variables are there. You just can’t know.

Yes, you can catch hold of one variable, and put all energy into it. But that may not necessarily help. The car might be in neutral, and you are pushing the accelerator, would that help? You would only burn more and more fuel, and the engine would get heated up. You are trying to push just one variable, and you are not seeing that the other variables are all? Choked. They will not let you progress.

So, you have two options now. Either you go out and determine all the variables that drive salary. And when you determine all the variables, you must remember that the variables themselves are? Variable. So, that which is driving salary today, might not be what would drive salary? Tomorrow. And that which is driving salary in one place, might not be what drives salary in another place, another room, another building, another company.

So, you may decide, to set out and figure out all the contributors to the salary number. And you may decide to push all of them. And remember that all the variables are not positively correlated to salary. And you also know that the correlation is also variable.

At one place, one thing might be considered an asset in the employee. At another place or another day, the same quality might be considered a liability. You do not know.

It’s like the Universe. It’s like life and death. You know, something drives it, but you can never get a total handle on it, a total grip on it.

We all know people die, and we also know the possible reasons of death. Yet, it is impossible to predict, who will die? And where? And when? And how?

So, that’s a good metaphor we have stumbled upon; Death and Salary.

Just as we know something about death, but not everything. Just as we keep wondering and worrying about death. Similarly, we know a bit about salary…