Work Evaluation
A CAREER IS SO MUCH MORE THAN JUST WORK AND PAY. This year’s survey contained several subjective questions that were meant to capture how respondents felt about their jobs.
It turns out you don’t always have to make sacrifices to get better pay. Respondents who are happier with their situations and have better work/life balance also have better salaries. You don’t have to be miserable to be paid well.
Respondents were asked to rate, on a scale from 1 to 5 (1 = poor, 5 = excellent), how easy it would be to find a new job more or less equivalent to their current position. This was used to gauge how well people could move laterally through companies. 64% of respondents were positive (4 or 5) that they could move with ease. The students also shared this high level of optimism, with 60% answering positively.
Our respondents were less confident about negotiating and bargaining for a better salary or perks. When asked about their bargaining skills, 38% answered 3 (not bad but not great), 34% responded positively (4 or 5), and 28% felt they lacked these skills (1 or 2).
When we look at just the self-assessed better bargainers (those who responded 4 or 5), we see that they do indeed have much better salaries than other respondents. The best self-assessed bargainers, those who responded 5, were earning around $107K, whereas those who responded 3, had salaries nearly $38K lower! This data suggests that perhaps the best way to improve your salary is to spend time (and maybe even money) becoming a better bargainer.
If we dig a bit deeper into some of the non-salary aspects of a job—such as flexibility, work/life balance, location, growth opportunities, and company culture—we see a striking increase in salary as people rate these categories higher.
Note
This year’s survey contained several subjective questions that were meant to capture how respondents felt about their jobs.
The vast majority of people are very positive toward their work flexibility: 73% responded with a 4 or 5, and their median salaries were $77K and $91K, respectively. Only 9% had a negative view of their work flexibility (1 or 2) and their salaries were $56K and $66K, respectively. The disparity between the lowest and highest median salaries based on flexibility is around $35K. This is the largest difference in any of the Work Evaluation categories. It seems that flexible companies also pay their employees well, so you likely don’t have to sacrifice income for flexibility.
When it comes to work/life balance, 22% of the respondents were neutral (3), whereas 63% see themselves as having a positive work/life balance (4 or 5). Companies that allow for good work/life balance also tend to offer better salaries. The median salary of those who think their work/life balance is poor (1) was $60K, whereas those who rated their work/life balance as excellent (5) had a median salary of $91K.
67% of the respondents feel positive about the location of their current roles (4 or 5). This might be a self-fulling system: if a company’s location is too far away from home or the work environment is not good, it’s unlikely that employees will work there for long. By taking a job at a company with a better location, you’d naturally rate it higher. So it makes sense that this data point would be positive simply because people will self-correct away from being negative. There’s a small trend in salaries increasing with location satisfaction.
30% of the respondents were neutral (3) about their opportunities for growth. Their median salary was around $82K, slightly higher than the overall median salary of $80K for all respondents. 42% of the respondents have a positive view toward growth opportunities (4 or 5). They have salaries ranging from $81K to $90K.
There is a $28K difference in median salaries between those who rated their growth opportunities as poor (1)—10% of respondents at $72K—and those who rated them excellent (5)—14% at $90K.
Salaries also increased with better company culture. The median salary difference between respondents who chose the lowest rating (1) and those who chose the highest rating (5) is $15K. In general, respondents were happy with their company culture: only 20% rated it negatively (1 or 2), whereas 52% had positive views of it (4 or 5).
It certainly does seem that you can have your cake and eat it too. Companies who respect their employees both pay them well and create a positive place to work. Maybe companies realize that getting and keeping great talent is expensive, but cheaper than constantly trying to find new talent.
