Welcome to In the Trenches. It’s great to have thousands of you here. My goal with this newsletter is to be all signal and no noise. To that end, make sure you let me know each week how you liked the content:

• ​🔥🔥🔥This post was awesome​
• ​🔥🔥This post was good​
• ​🔥This post was subpar​

I’ll keep incorporating the feedback into future posts.

One of the most common mistakes I see people make early in their career is what I like to call “the Salary Trap.”

Let’s say you have two job offers on the table.

• Job A is for $60,000 at a fast growing company
• Job B is for $90,000 at a slow growth company

Which one should you pick?

99% of people would say Job B. On the surface it’s obvious - it’s almost 50% higher pay than Job A. When you’re 25 years old, that’s super attractive.

I would take the other side of the bet. Early in your career, salary is one of the least important factors you should consider. In fact, I’ll go one step further to say the worst thing you can do early in your career is take a job that pays 50% more, but where you will learn 80% less.

Every job in the world is on a spectrum. On the left hand side of the spectrum you have *inputs* and on the right hand side of the spectrum you have *outputs*.

Compensation is very predictable on this spectrum; it is the lowest on the left hand side of the spectrum (e.g. for jobs that are based on inputs) and the highest on the right hand side of the spectrum (e.g. for jobs that are based on outputs).

Intuitively this makes sense; this spectrum is another way to frame seniority. The more senior you are in an organization, the more your compensation skews to the right hand side of the spectrum. Why? Because ultimately, the market doesn’t care about how hard you work; it cares about what you produce. You are rewarded (or punished) based on your business performance. It’s why the rewards are most significant for those that are most senior.

If you believe in this premise - that higher earning potential compensation is tied to outputs - you should ask: “How do I get into a senior level role as fast as possible?” Easy: By learning.

Early in your career, you can focus on “learning” or you can focus on “earning” - they’re not necessarily mutually exclusive, but in many cases they are. Early in your career, pick the job where the learning velocity is steep. You will sacrifice short term compensation ($30k in this case) for long term rewards.

It’s important to note, the sacrifice is not 1:1; it’s more like 1:10. When your learning curve is flat, your earning curve is flat. When your learning curve is steep, your earning curve is steep.

If you have a shallow learning curve early in your career, you will be pegged to the *input* curve. The more time that passes, the more difficult it becomes to escape this curve. If you’re early in your career, try to singularly focus on your learning curve. Before you know it, the earning curve will reward you handsomely.
​

Have a good weekend,

Romeen

How did you feel about this week’s post?

• ​🔥🔥🔥This post was awesome​
• ​🔥🔥This post was good​
• ​🔥This post was subpar​