Hey, what's up?
John Sonmez here from simpleprogrammer.com.
I got a question or this is somewhat of a statement but it was titled "Fantastic First
Job but Horrible Benefits."
This question is from anonymous.
Anonymous writes me a lot.
He says here, "Your videos and Soft Skills book have helped me get my first job!"
That's cool.
"Thank you so much.
In short, I have a fantastic first job!"
All right, that's good.
I'm happy about that.
"With great environment and people.
I'm being taught so much and think for my education nothing could be a better opportunity.
I did as best as I could with salary (not great but focus was getting in field first)."
Good, okay.
"The problem?"
There's always a problem, right?
"The benefits: expensive health insurance" so he has expensive health insurance, "3 PTO
days, 2 sick, 5 holidays, don't offer remote work days.
How should I plan my future there?"
Here's the thing.
Let me point you to a chapter in my new book called The Complete Software Developer's Career
Guide.
You can get it here.
Actually, you can get it free and then I'll be launching this.
By the time you're watching this maybe it will be launched already, but I do have a
chapter in there on negotiating on salary contract versus salary employment and what
the difference is.
That math in there, I'm not going to go over in this video in detail, but you want to check
that out to be able to understand what I'm about to say here to really break this down
if you want more info.
But essentially it comes down to this.
I don't care about benefits at all and neither should you, because benefits are just dollars.
When it comes down to it, if you say that the company that you're working for has an
expensive health care plan, okay, fine but you realize that the health care is just dollars.
If you had 100% coverage, if you had a great health care plan like if you work for a Google
or Microsoft where they give employees 100% coverage, that's just dollars that they're
not paying you salary.
IF I have a choice, honestly, I would rather take a job with zero benefits and just—and
I just say, "Give me the money.
Just give me the money.
I don’t want your free sodas.
I don't want your—don't pay for my health care.
I'll take care of that myself.
Don't give me vacation or any of that.
Just give me the money.
I'll take days off without pay.
Give me the money."
This should be your mantra, "Give me the money."
When you go into a job interview say, "Give me the money."
I kid, but honestly that's what it can equate to is it's always going to be down to the
dollars.
A lot of times it does make sense to be a contractor because you're seeing the money
upfront, but when you compare a contract and a salary job you've got to look at benefits.
You just take those benefits and you equivalate them to dollars, to what is the money and
that's what it's actually worth.
Sometimes people put too much stock and too much value into benefits which really just
comes down to dollars.
I mean, honestly, you can translate any benefit.
There's no benefit, really, that a company can give you that you can't buy on your own.
Yet, if a company says, "Hey, one of the benefits for employees is that you can have free sodas.
Whatever you want.
Everyday we have a refrigerator and it's stocked with sodas Snicker bars and you can just take
any soda or Snicker bar that you want."
You're like, "Oh, oh, that's—gosh!
That's such a great benefit.
I'll take that job."
You take a job that pays you 10K less a year because you get free sodas.
That's just dumb.
That's stupid because you’re not equating things correctly.
Why am I getting into this?
Because in your case here, in this case, in the case of Mr. Anonymous, you've got an excellent
job.
You're in a learning environment.
Maybe your pay is not as great as you'd like.
You've got great coworkers.
This is your first job.
Don't worry about the benefits right now, just worry about the pay.
Eventually you'll take another job and maybe it will have better benefits, maybe it won't.
It doesn't matter.
Ultimately though when you start looking at it in terms of pay, that's what you really
need to look at at the bottom line here, and then also the opportunity.
If you have a chance to—I say this all the time, but if you have a choice between responsibility
or pay, you could basically see this opportunity, learning environment or pay, choose responsibility,
opportunity, learning environment.
Those things are going to pay off more in the long run.
If you're going to gain valuable experience, if you're going to be in a better position,
then the money will eventually come.
Don't worry about that right away.
That makes sense to you, right?
That's why I say, "Don't worry about the benefits.
Don't stress about this."
Don't compare yourself to Jane and Joe over there who have 3 weeks of paid vacation.
You're in a good environment.
You've got a good job.
Maybe your pay isn't where it needs to be, but you can fix that later on.
Learn as much as you can.
If you feel like you're stagnating and you feel like you're not growing anymore, that's
totally different.
Then maybe get another job or get your pay bumped up and work on that, but if you're
in a good environment in all those other areas, then hey, just because you don't have the
best benefits that doesn't matter that much.
It all equivalates down to pay.
You've just got to remember that.
Otherwise you get tricked, psychological tricked.
Like I said, it can seem like such a better job because they have a cafeteria where you
can eat wherever you want and they comp it, but that's just like—what is that worth?
That's like worth $15 a day maybe or if you're really going to—or it actually might be
a bad thing because now you're going to feel like you've got all this free food so you're
going to eat a whole bunch of junk over there and you're going to gain a whole bunch of
weight so that you can use $30 a day worth of free food.
Ridiculous!
Break it down.
Look at the monetary.
Look at the opportunity.
Don't be fooled by the glitz and the glamour and all the benefits because that doesn't
really matter.
It always comes down to the buck, so give me the money.
All right, if you liked this video, click that Subscribe button below.
If you've got a comment on this, I definitely like to hear your input if you have a similar
experience or you've made this decision before or if you've got shitty benefits, go ahead
and write your shitty benefits down below.
I'll talk to you next time.
Take care.