Ask HN: Would you rather have 20% more money or 20% more time
7 shortrounddev2 21 8/6/2025, 4:42:02 PM
If you manager offered you a choice between a 20% raise or never having to work a particular day of the week again (your choice which day), what would you choose?
This is an unrealistic question, it deserves an unrealistic answer.
There are many considerations both employers and employees make beyond money and time.
The question is unrealistic because it forces whoever answers to choose between restricted choices. It sounds more like a poll than the representation of an actual choice a real person would have.
Both the pursuit of extra money or extra time, in my books, leads to degeneration of work relations. The exploration of these kinds of incentives also leads to degeneration of work relations. Therefore, to me, the question sounds like an affirmation of the (perhaps unconscious) desire to keep companies in control of employees choices.
That, obviously leads to the question of "if not time and money, what should an employee want then?", with many possible answers to pick from (all probably irrelevant when considered individually).
I obviously want to work as little as possible, and have as many resources as possible fruit of that minimal work, in order to pursuit a simple but happy and fullfilling life. What that entails, is highly incompatible with the array of possible off the shelf answers available for such an inquiry.
In that perspective, it seems that the whole world is in debt and out of time. We work for things we don't need and have resources incompatible with it. All my previous employers owe me, a lot. The same goes for all kinds of workers. Their superiors, either direct or implicit, owe them, and so on. 20%, or any number, any vague simplistic idea, is futile.
Do you understand?
The point which you are asking me to elaborate on is a discussion dead end. You are compelled to see it as an adversarial employee-employer dispute instead of a more complex dynamic. I can't waste my time on that.
However, the time taken up by the need to work is a very large price to pay. I'd be fine taking a pay cut to have more time for living.