Should I Take A Job For The money?

A random drawing using a favorite Pigma Micron #10 black ink pen in a Canson 5.5x8.5 stetch book.

Posted Question on Glassdoor: Should I Take A Job Just For The Money?

There's somebody who is asking a question on Glassdoor in the Career Pivot group. The question: “Would you pick a job for the money even when it's not aligned with your career goals and it's not easy to branch out?”

I immediately thought, “Well, there's, first of all, there's a lot of factors that go into that question. It's not just one question.”

What are the reasons, the elements that you've arrived at this question? And then break those things down. You can break those things down. But if I'm just, several things jump out at me as far as how I would answer this question.

One of which is, what are your career goals? Are you clear on what your career goals are? I mean, I think that's where you have to start. What is your goal? What is your purpose? What is your mission? What is your desire? What is it that you want? What are you wanting? That's very clear. That's the first thing.

Getting clear about what you are wanting in terms of career. And you might as well say life. But yeah, what are you wanting? Are you clear on that? And how clear are you on that? Or is it fuzzy? Or you're not really clear? You may have thought that you knew and then things changed and it became something else.

It was like, oh, no, this is what I want. Or is it you're just, you don't know. You literally don't know. You're just kind of experimenting. But you want to get paid. Getting paid well is really important.

So that's the first question I would ask is, are you clear about what your career goals are and where you want to go? That's the first question. It's a reversal of that question. You want to ask what are your career goals and what would make it and how would it branch out to other things having this career goal? So that would be the second thing.

 Or the first question I would ask is the first question I would ask, are you clear about your goals and how to get them? And the second question I would ask is how much time do you feel like you have? How old are you? How much time do you want to spend not doing the thing that you really want is your goal? How much time do you have? Are you young? Are you in your mid 20s? Asking this question because if you are in your mid 20s, I would presume that someone in their mid 20s, the answer to this question may be very different for somebody who is 58 years old or 62 years old or even 45 years old. In other words, anybody who's not in their mid 20s is probably going to have somewhat of a different answer to the question of how much time do you have and how much time do you feel like you want to spend on this? How is the time factor worth it? So we know that the money is worth it because it has good money, but you're not factoring in the time. So that's the question I would ask is how much time do you want to spend in something that's not in alignment with your goals and is not easy to get to? Because sometimes you might have a little time, maybe it's about I just need to get some money you know to pay bills.

What is the underlying impetus for that then? What is the money going to be spent for? The question becomes branching off from the question of time. The question then would relate to that. A question relating to the issue of time would be how are you going to spend the money? Where is the money going to go to? What are the things that you want to buy with that money? What is the money going to do for you? So what is the money part of it? How are you going to spend the money? What are your plans for the money? How are you going to manage that money, save that money, spend that money, grow that money, deplete that money, have that money? What is the money going to do? That is related to the time factor in terms of how much time do you have? Because if I am, no matter how old I am, if I need to provide for myself financially immediately, do I feel, am I up for working for something that is not going to be in alignment with who I am and where I want to go? So yeah, those questions, time and then money, and what are your career goals? And then what is the factor, like you know, the why? What is it about the money? Yeah, that's so it's the time and it's the money.

What is about the money and how long do you think you're going to do that? I guess that would be the third question. How long do you think you would want to do that? How long are you willing to do that? And at what point is it going to be like, I need to go? So I guess the question, the third question we're on, or is it the fourth, is what is your exit plan for this job? Are you going in with some kind of exit plan? So you go in there and in the first week, you know, this is not who I know. This is a no for me.

Will you be able to leave that situation fairly, you know, without a lot of, you know, you know, turmoil, or even, you know, distasteful or just things that you don't want happening? Like, how long do you have an exit plan for doing this? What's going to be something, say that you do this job for just the money and you realize you can't do it long because it's just, it's not, you can't. Your soul hurts. Your heart hurts. Your body hurts. Everything hurts. How then can you extricate yourself from this job that has really good money that you want to have?

So these are the questions that I would ask this person.

In terms of the question, “What would you pick a job for the money, even when it's not aligned with your career goals and it's not easy to branch out?”, there's 17 comments for this question. So I'm going to see how much they resonate or don't resonate.

Okay. The first answer to that question is from district manager one, it would depend on the situation. Are you in need of money? And this is a good opportunity to save some, then get back to what you want to do.

So that's a question. Are you in need of the money? And is this a good opportunity to save some, then get back to what you want to do. And then the other question district manager one asks, or do you feel like you'll stress the whole time that you hit a dead end for your growth? Yep.

Or do you feel like you'll stress the whole time that you hit a dead end for your growth? Yep. That's basically it. Like, why are you asking the question? What is about it that you, it depends.

Okay. So then manager, the guy, the person who asked the question said, thanks for the advice. This is something that keeps happening to me.

I declined similar opportunities several times and chose what I liked, though it came with lots of hours of working. But I'm wondering if it's too silly of me to keep declining more money like that. Oh, that's interesting.

Thanks for the advice. This is something that keeps happening to me. I declined similar opportunities several times and chose what I liked, though it came with lots of hours.

Well, I guess the question still becomes, what are your career goals? Like, what is it that you want to do? Like, I don't know why I'm almost yelling. I don't mean to say that I'm yelling. But I just it's, it's like, that's not the point.

The point is, what is what are your goals? And that's district manager one didn't ask that question. You know, I think that's the biggest question is, what are your goals? What is it that you want? Of course, it depends on the situation. And, you know, you know, the money, and then whether it's a good opportunity, or what you're going to get stressed the whole time of doing something you don't want.

But but the question, the real question is, what are your career goals? What is it that you want? Nobody's asking that another one sales one, it depends if I'm making 50k, and it rockets me to 125k. Yeah. Again, though, I would say there's responsibilities that come with that money.

Things that come with that money. Well, what's gonna what are you gonna? What are you going to? Again, do I have Glassdoor? I don't have Glassdoor. Okay, we'll get Glassdoor on here.

Yeah. Okay, but that still doesn't what nobody's asking what is the sales one? For me, that's, that's a lot. I'd personally take it if it's still in the sales realm.

Oh, if unemployed, absolutely. Yes, I'm not happy about it. But I start in January doing sales in the industry.

I don't don't want to go to however, the pay would be great. Been there done that a couple times, very dissatisfying. Another answer, anything is available.

Another one, that's what I'm about to do, because I ran into a lot of medical debt. And I don't and I want to start saving. And I want to save up to start a business.

If it's not something you think you'd want to do long term, then have an escape route in mind for sure. And I said, What would you like to be in? Can you use this job to finance school training for your next move? Start a business finance taking a finance taking a low paying job in the field you desire. I like peace of mind.

You can make all the money but no peace of mind. It's it is worthless. Another answer, if it's something I felt I could do, absolutely.

That being said, if it is something you do not enjoy, do not do it. One said yes, to an extent, even temporarily if you if you're in need of any job, it's worth it to do a job just for the money. And then keep privately working on developing the necessary skills to continue your career and the direction you want to go.

sake of sake of example. My day job pays the bills while I work my ass off to get my small business developed and going where I want it to be. Another one says I sure I sure would.

But nobody has asked what are your career goals? What are your career goals? And where do you want to go? I feel like I have to sign in in order to be able to answer that person. Okay, so that's it. Another part that needs to be questioned or answered by the person asking the question about taking a job for the money, even though they might hate it, is who are the people you're going to be working with? Who are the people, the specific people? And what will they be like? Will they be supportive of you? Will they be hostile towards you? Will you be friendly towards them? Will you be hostile towards them? What is the vibe of the office or even just the vibe of the communication between co workers and or within the organization? What is the vibe of all that? Is it? Yeah, I might not be doing what I want to do.

But are the people really cool? Because that would be like, yeah, you know, I did that. That's what I did. Well, no, I wouldn't say that.

I think for a long time, I did it because it was the work that I wanted to do. And then I don't know, it was just easy, just not to just move. It just felt like I just couldn't figure it out.

I was dealing with other things, other factors were at play. That needed support. My job needed to support these other factors.

But anyway, I would probably also, you know, to say, you know, what is going to be the interactions, the day to day interactions, the day to day feel of the workplace? You know, how did the people feel when you were interviewing? Or are you just have you sent out resumes already or applications already to places that you may not want to? You know, you may not like but it's really good money. I mean, do you qualify for these things? Are you are you are you somebody who knows what is going to be required of you when you get this job that has more money? So it's kind of kind of a no brainer. You've just done it before.

And it's something you can just keep doing it again. But But then, you know, the question is, I mean, how do you feel like your subconscious can, can agree to that, you know, and not bring up issues like, you know, having accidents and, you know, things breaking and you know, a lot of things not working for you? Yeah, I would want to ask these kind of more even detailed questions of like, are they? How are the people or how are the people you're working with? Or have you have you gone on interviews with anybody yet? Have you had interviews? Is there an offer on the table that you're waiting for? You know, or is it something or is all of this just in your mind, you know? But if there if there is, if you if you had contact, direct contact already with, with, you know, with this job, and the people attached to this job? How do you feel about the people? I guess? I guess that would be another thing. Like, how do you feel about the environment, not just the work, but the people that you're working with? How is that? How does this fact factor into it as well? So, you know, there's a lot of elements to the question about taking a job just for the money, as opposed to for something that you like, or, or, or whatever.

I think I think the the main thing I would say is that it really all of this predicates, this is for everybody, for myself included. It's like, what are we working towards? What is it that we want to be doing? What is it that is the I think that's the fundamental thing. So for me, yes, I want to I have a business that I want to get back to.

And I need to start working. But for me, I would like to contract some people to help me get this business more up and running. And I think it's gonna be a really awesome business if I can, if I can do that.

And so working a job that I may not want to do, because even for me, it's like, the money has to be worth it, though I cannot take a job that's just gonna be less than what I really need. Because that's gonna come back to me negatively, as well because of taxes and because of extra expenses, that will I will occur that I will then have to take on and I won't have enough money to cover these extra expenses. So it's like you really do have to be aware of how much energy you have.

And how are you going to direct that energy? And what is the return on that energy? But yes, you've got to, I think the you have to know what it is that you are really wanting. And how does that drive you? How does it, you know, how does it light your heart on fire? You know, like, what is it that you are wanting? That's really the question. But there's a lot of factors that go into into that.

So yeah, that's the second part that I would say to that question.