In your career, what do you strive toward the most? Do you seek out getting raises and making big bucks? Do you strive to be on the “winning” team? Do you try to outshine your peers?
Suppose you could succeed in only one of these endeavors. You still have to exert normal effort toward it, so it won’t come magically or effortlessly but by some force or deity, you’re guaranteed to succeed. At the other two options, you do moderately well.
I’ve made the poll from the perspective of a professional athlete, but I don’t want YOU to pretend to be an athlete. I want you to judge it from your own career field.
I’m bouncing back between All-Star and Contract. Money’s great, but then again, so it being lauded by your associates. In the end, I’m going to have to go with All-Star. Satisfaction from money drops off pretty sharply the higher you go, but peer respect never does.
If those are my choices, I’d rather get paid well to do a job I don’t like than get something intangible like “group success” or be “the best in the group.”
I can’t retire early from the job I don’t like just because I’m the best…
It’s sort of an academic question because a person is never actually faced with this choice.
Take baseball player Roy Halladay, who was famously traded from a team that obviously will not win anytime soon (Toronto) to a team with immediate chances of winning (Philadelphia.) Halladay could technically have elected not to be traded, but he doesn’t have to make a choice between winning and a big contract. He already HAD a big contract. He would inevitably have gotten another when his current one ran out. His “decision” to go to Philadelphia wasn’t a tradeoff between money and winning.
A pro athlete positioned to decide where he wants to play almost certainly already makes millions of dollars. Getting the first big money contract usually comes before the ability to decide where you want to play, so the money’s already in-pocket when you get to choose what team you’ll devote your efforts to.
But given the purely theoretical choices in the poll, I had to go for the money. It would be nice to win a championship, but my responsibility to my family’s financial security comes first.
Other: I’m being paid a lot of money to play a game better than almost anyone else on the planet. I’m cool with wherever I am, but wherever I am, I want to help that team win every goddamned game. If someone wants to trade me, trade me. I wouldn’t demand it. I’ll just help the other team kick as much ass as possible.
When it’s all said and done, if you’re good with money (and don’t have a spouse that has any horrible vices, either) or have someone that won’t bone you looking after your loot, you can play in the league to sustain your family for life.
If I worked in a rewarding job that did good things for the community/ people in general I’d probably be in the ‘so long as we win’ category. But I don’t, so just give me monies plz.
I’m not interested in money or fame. I like my work to be interesting and beneficial to society. And it is. I like the constant learning and technological changes which come with it. I also prefer to be self employed, and I am.
