France_is_bacon

>Talent is equally distributed

??????????????

Alrighty then.

No. In fact, it is the exact opposite.

Who would YOU think is more valuable - someone who stayed in the same job for 10 years, made 4 or 5% wage increases every year, or someone that drastically increased their income every few years. So lets take 2 people who both start at making $60,000. One of them stays in the same job and gets a 4% increase per year will make and at the end of 10 years will be making $85,398 per year. Meanwhile, person 2 switches jobs every 2 years and has 5 jobs during those 10 years, but each one new job he or she makes a lot more money at the job hire. So he (or she) like the first person also starts at $60K and does that for 2 years, then gets another job for $80K, and another 2 years gets another job for $95K, and 2 years later gets $115K, and 2 years after that makes $125K. People get hired at one rate, but as soon as they are in the system, people are more or less locked into the 4% raise per year. No company will pay a current employee as much as they will a new hire. So anyways, which candidate is more interesting to the average hiring person? The one who keeps making more money every 2 years, and switching jobs. Why? Because, wow, that person must be really worth it and companies are fighting to hire a person who most likely is a top performer, so they think. Why would someone keep hiring him at higher and higher salary if he or she is not worth it? I'm not saying that this thinking is correct. I'm not saying that there are not companies out there who still look for people who want to stay a long time. But most companies will want to hire the person who changes jobs a lot, because there is a competition that develops. Also, throughout one's 20's, people really don't expect someone that age to settle down. Once one reaches 35-ish years old, they might expect a longer stay at a company.

But, ALWAYS go for more money, all things being equal.

It reminds me of the dot com bubble in 2000. I remember clearly walking around in San Francisco, and every younger person that I saw had a scared and stunned look on their faces, realizing how most of them either were, or were going to be, screwed.

Lots of schadenfreude on my part, I must admit.

The whole conqueror of the world attitude bugged the hell out of me, when it was reallly just luck that the picked a good profession and happened to be at the "right" time to see a 400% increase in the NASDAQ, as if it was all them. I was in tech also, but it just bothered me to no end.

So of course, I see a lot of parallels, although tech workers don't seem to be quite a full of themselves now, even with the monster salaries. Emphasis on "quite."

Totally agree with Grimburger - get an office at an executive suite, or some place like that. Regus is really nice. Always in Class A buildings, totally well-appointed. Kitchen, fridge, internet. You can start working the same day you sign your lease - everything is ready to go.

You can do month-to-month to start to see how you like it.

Depends now how actually talented the raw talent is.

Tom Brady, Wayne Gretsky, Michael Jordon, Larry Bird, Kobe Bryant, Joe Montana, LaBron James. Actual top-of-the-line talent drives everything. Sure, Kobe Bryant would not win against another team if he was the only person on his side - 5 against 1, but that is not the case. While total talent is great in all positions, the super talented can't be over-estimated. Mozart. Beethoven, Einstein. Raw talent is not nothing.