“I wanna get paid what I’m worth!” “I deserve more!”
Interestingly, when I hear these phrases, they’re often uttered by a person who’s work effort really does not warrant them getting more. The attitude of expecting something which we haven’t worked for doesn’t make sense to me and reminds me of the humorous but true self-check line:
“Do you have 20 years experience or just 1 year experience 20 times?”
So I’ve been thinking about this concept lately in terms of learning and came up with this question:
Should You Be Paid Less Than What You’re Worth?
Especially in the early to middle years of your career? I don’t mean to get into a conversation about the value of a human being, I am talking about the value of skills and talents a person has. In this post, I mean specifically for work purposes.
My thought is that, if we want to be the best we can be (the assumption), which is completely customized to our purpose in life, then shouldn’t we be working constantly and diligently on improving our skills and abilities to help us serve others better and perform our task of passion (our vocation) better? If that’s true, then I’m theorizing that except certain cases, we will likely be continuously paid less than what we’re worth because we are always improving ourselves to be ready for that next level. For example, you currently hold the position of X in your corporation, but you have trained and studied for position X +1 and you’re ready for X + 1. Ergo, until you get that promotion, you are being paid less than what you’re worth because you put in the self-improvement work.
And in my reasoning, this should always be in the case if we have the right mindset.
What do you think?
