Forget Compensation, let's talk "Quality of Life"

Would you rather make $200K with a shitty quality of life or $100K with an awesome quality of life?

In the startup world we all seem to understand that $200K is better than $100K, but we do a really lousy job of qualifying that difference based on what actually matters — our quality of life.

When we step back for a second, we may come to find out that "compensation" in strictly monetary terms, is a broken metric. We're all really trying to translate those dollar signs into how it will impact our quality of life.

So why don't we just start with what improves our quality of life and then figure out where money comes in?

What we really want is time.

Years ago at Startups.com, we instituted a work from home policy. At the time we were all still office-bound (spoiler alert: we're mostly remote now) so having an extra day to work in our Snuggies (still a thing) was a huge benefit.

The day off wasn't the benefit — it's what it gave us the freedom to do.

We made breakfast for our kids. We took time to go on a hike. We slept in for the hour we were otherwise going to be getting ready and commuted. We took calls in our pajamas. It felt like a "snow day" every single week.

Incidentally, it cost us nothing as a company, but opened our eyes to what we were really looking for — a quality of life "promotion."

In Case You Missed It

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I’m Burnt Out. What Do I Do? When we hit a point of burn out it's important that we understand what to do about it. If we ignore it, the problem only gets much worse. So let's take a look at what Founders do to deal with burnout head on.