Making loads of money in a job you Like.

2019, May 25    

Sounds great. Let’s start.

Job

Means being employed. Someone will have to contract you, hire you, make your their employee.

Job you Like

Not every job is likeable, but some jobs take a bit of further inspection before you can tell if they suit you. Looking at a job posting is not enough.

Loads of money

Employees draw money from three sources:

• the salary is set when you sign your contract,
• bonuses are won by your performance exceeding a set annual expectation
• raises are won by negotiating them, with an (implicit or flat out) threat to leave
• Overtime should be a multiple of your regular salary (e.g. 200% per hour), to be a source, and unpaid overtime is a negative source. For well paid overtime, if you push work hours through overtime you are burning a lot more energy and health at marginal extra gain. For making loads of money, it’s best to avoid overtime.

Benefits

Apart from money, a job offers benefits, like a clean office, good coffee, or cute colleagues that you can marry. But in the context of “loads of money” only benefits like a company car, discounts, reimbursements, or health insurance matter. To put it another way: if you make a shitload of cash and cash-converted benefits, you need not care about the quality of the coffee.

To get your employer to pay large, the value of the service you render must be awesome. So let’s focus there next.

Your Worth

In business, the productivity and efficiency difference between workers is recognized as their core value differentiator, when assessing their ‘worth’ to the company. If we take luck out* of the equation (anyone can win the lottery, few people win it twice), and we rule out the war stories where unqualified, incapable folks were awarded positions that paid fortunes, my personal observation has been that:

(*) We will bring luck back in.

Of any two (qualified) people doing a given job, their output from core skills, effort,
tenacity and dedication per hour differs less than 50%. — Felix’ rule

For the non-mathematical-mind this means: Joe, and Jane both do the job – regardless of whether they were qualified, trained or have the same pedigree – then if they both work 1 day, and the boss feels Jane excels, and Joe is slow-but-just-good-enough-not-to-fire then Jane will have delivered no more than 1.5 times what Joe delivered. Now, if Jane works 3dy/wk (24 hour contract), and Joe works 40 hours/wk, then even though Jane produces about 36 hours of Joe-work, Joe still outproduces her. Of course, the boss will try to get Jane to work more hours, but the economics are clear. The point is that 50% is the extreme, in most cases the yield difference is actually much lower. In this extreme case, per hour, Jane is worth up to 150% of Joe’s salary in the same job.

LEARNING: If you are a super-performer, your worth to a company is at most 150% of their lowest performer in the same role.

But what about supply and demand for the role?

Some may say: if your skill is in high demand, and extreme short supply, you are worth more than 150%! That’s wrong: because then Joe too is in short supply, so his salary will be high.

Next, you may say that I am wrong about the 50%, and that number is actually different. Well, that does not matter either, because even though Jane is a super-performer, she too is human. She is not always 150% of Joe, sometimes it’s less. And Joe, well he is fairly stable, he is relaxed, and he is not pushing any limits. The real point to this is not how much her worth is at any time though, the point for this is when her value is assessed.

Assessing your Worth

Salary is set once, at the start of your employment. Most companies consider annual raises, and an occasional high-potential might jank out two raises in the same year – hooray. The bar to jump over to get a bonus is set annually. The assessing of your worth is done seldomly, the rest of the time you spend showing your worth to be remembered by your boss when the next raise or promotion comes around. Which brings us to promotions.

On promotion

Promotions are like panda’s: they are very rare and even under perfect conditions they never seem to multiply. Promotions are rarer than raises, and they are actually a new job. Promotions are recognition for work done. Meaning you get promoted after you have been doing work of higher value than you are responsible for. This means

when you are being promoted you have been sub-optimal in your “making loads of money”, because you were getting paid less than your worth

Employers postpone promotions as long as possible: why pay someone extra for work they are already doing if you can keep them at it. For the purpose of our goal, don’t aim to be promoted, instead ready yourself for a next job. So much for promotions: they are counter-productive. Back to the goal.

Demonstrating your worth

Obviously, the skill that makes the difference is demonstrating your worth, rather than actually being a 150% performer. And that is why it does not matter if you think 150% is the wrong number: demonstrating that value such that it sticks until your value is assessed is what matters.

Your worth is assessed once upfront, and annually thereafter. Demonstrating the 150% value daily in the job puts you in the best position for … promotion. Which is bad. So you must demonstrate 150% value when your value is being assessed at the contract signing. And while you are at it, if you excel at demonstrating value at contract signing, you will be able to use that skill to negotiate a better raise when you feel you can take one, because you have options. Did you spot that? Read that sentence again. You don’t ask when you think you deserve a raise, that is thinking along the promotion path. No-no-no! When you can take a raise, is when you have the cards in hand to demand it.

The money is made in the job signing.

You already knew that, didn’t you? The point is: the job interview, the resume, the cover letter, the introduction, the test, and the negotiation, those are the things that have the major influence on the goal to make loads of money on a job you like. If you are great at those, then you can apply them to find a job you like more, or a job that pays more.

Now, luck is still out of the equation, we return to Joe-slow and Jane-150. If Jane is doing Joe’s work, and vice versa, it is fair to assume they both went through a comparable funnel to get the job. A similar kind of interview process, a similar template contract, and a similar approach by the boss to assess their worth, before offering them a salary and benefits. If Jane is paid the same as Joe is, one could say that Joe has better job-signing skills than Jane does. After all, he managed to get 100% his net worth in his salary. Jane on the other hand has done a poor job; she got 67% of what she is worth. If we consider this a game, you could say it is a skill to get hired while demonstrating the highest worth in the interview process.

That sounds obvious eh? But compare Jane and Joe again, and you see: It is the skill to get assessed at the highest worth in the interview process that makes the definitive difference throughout the job contract to making loads of money in a job you enjoy, rather than the skill of actually being any better than your lowest performing peer at anything you do for work.

Wow.

OK, so that made me think about this skill of landing a job differently.

Can you learn that skill?

Well, there is no law that limits your applications. No one forbids you to apply to any job, even if you have the best job in the world already. Assuming you improve with practice, you should aim to maximise your exposure, increase your failure rate, and make it a habit rather than an exception to do well at it. Who does that? Job-hoppers!

Job-hoppers, the scum… smart scum!

So how about those job-hoppers? Are they doing it right, never staying at one place for more than 2 years? Surely the next employer must recognize they lack loyalty, they are flaky, and not worth the time to train on the job! Actually, if Job-hoppers demonstrate to their next potential employer that after training them up to Productive they will stay on board long enough – considering their prospective departure to the next company – they are in. Because you can bet they have great skills in being hired. Moreover, it’s those people who can get the next job at the same company, with the compensation to match. Not a promotion, a job change. Of course, not everyone who switches jobs often does so because they excel at getting hired: the ones who have to go looking for a new job get kicked out, downsized or otherwise tossed aside faster than they get hired. So let’s look further, job-hoppers that excel in getting hired…

Professional job hoppers

In fact, the best job hoppers do not need a job. They make the hiring process part of their work as an independent consultant, the expensive kind of temp, the self-employed. They embrace job-hunting and they are experts at it, hence they don’t need the safety net of a long term contract. Mind you, that is not because they are such great workers – they are just regular folks – it is because they excel at being hired.

Focus

To those who hate interviews, resumes, and applying for a job: that is fine. Just know that if you want to make more money for a job you enjoy, your best investment is not in doing your current job better, nor training up for a promotion. If job hunting is not your thing (yet), enjoy life more. Let overtime pass to others: do not take time away from parenting or your health to go above and beyond. Favor the parts of your job you like best within the time you are contracted to work; optimize money and joy within the boundaries you set yourself.

And if you can stand interviews, or you are ‘open to change’, consider to dramatically increase your failure rate at landing a job, by applying for as many jobs as you can dream of having. Forget the concerns of not being invited, of feeling down from a failed interview, of feeling like an imposter. Focus on learning a hard but massively valuable skill you have barely practiced.

Epilogue: What about myself?

I am in my third job. I have been through about 4 hours of interviews & negotiation for each job so far, on average. For the 2nd and 3rd job I applied at multiple places, giving me another 4 hours at each career switch of interview & negotiation that didn’t pan out. So that makes in total, for my forty year old self an experience of 20 hours. Not a lot. I like to think I do well in presenting myself. That is as credible as anyone who has had 20 hours of life practice at giving presentations considering themselves doing well at presenting. Let’s face it, they suck. To put it in perspective I have spent well-over 10.000 hours in managing people, over 5.000 hours in acquiring software skills, and 2.000 hours practicing martial arts. I know I still mess up in managing, I know my software is not the greatest, and I sure know I cannot stop an armed assailant anymore than the next person. So obviously, twenty hours is nothing. And if those twenty hours got me to a place of fairly well pay for fairly good fun work, that is luck. I can stop patting myself on the back for that, I have only just won the lottery. And in a sense I have: I have white skin, symmetrical facial features, loving parents, high IQ, good health, and I was born into an affluent country that offered great education, and that was at peace.

There is no shame in wanting to make a load of money, on a job you love to do, but getting on that path – for me – has been so far just a lot of luck. My health can turn, my hair is already falling out, and war is always possible.

Taking luck out of the equation will require growth and a substantial number of hours learning this new skill.

Are your hands itching to comment on this piece? Tough luck buddy! If you want to be published, start your own blog.

I don’t care what you think. This is about me.. me me me!