Write "Willingly to work under industry's average" in your CV?

Hi there, cutting down to the chase, is writing “Willingly to work under industry’s compensation level average, as long as i’m accepted to work in Goldman Sachs” acceptable? What do u guys think? Thank you.

Don’t write that. First of all, GS already pays below average for some entry level positions. Second, it makes you seem like an undesirable candidate. Third, it won’t matter - finance companies could easily drop compensation and still fill jobs; they would just get worse talent. They are not going to pay less to lower themselves to your standard. Fourth, if you are trying to be funny, it is not.

Writing that would show bad judgment on your part.

Actually i’m receiving one like this, and i’ve never seen like this one before. I think i could consider this one, but what you’ve said were correct. Thanks anyway.

Ill piggyback real quickly on what Ohai said. I took a job right out of college at 40k. (pretty standard for mid florida), however, I tried to counter at 45K. The response was, No. They would not budge a penny.

What happened? Well about 6 months into the role and being given increasing amount of work and stress, I began to think to myself in a very bitter way: “This is BS, they wouldnt even give me a counter to my 45k offer and now things are getting more stressful. Screw this company”

The problem was, I made the mistake by taking the offer in the first place and my advice is, don’t do the same. You will end up being miserable at some point.

Don’t do that, sounds desperate, employer want someone they think everybody else want. They don’t want bottom of the barrel types who just happy to be there, or maybe they do?

I second this. I’ve heard it called “the Goldman discount” to your salary for having the name on your CV. What a joke.

WTF?/… dude. that is one of the lamest things to write on a CV… EVER!!

There’s one thing you can never appear and still be marketable…desperate. This stuff takes time, just be patient.

I’ll actually add one thing to what I just said. In hindsight, despite how far I climbed and am still climbing, and how by all outward appearances I “made it,” only in retrospect do I realize that I was never freer in life than when I didn’t have a dime to my name. One of life’s greatest slaps in the face is that you can never know this until after the fact.

Wow, that’s deep.

Can you expand on that?

Agreed. If Goldman Sachs wants me, they better pay up, just like every other company.

Sure. All my life I have been in the pursuit of money. Now that I have some, I find that the reality of the life surrounding that condition is like a pair of “Chinese handcuffs,” further keeping me in need of evermore gainful employment to support the lifestyle.

When you are young and hungry, and don’t have a pot to piss in, you think life sucks. But your obligations are low. With no family or million dollar house to worry about, you scratch together a couple hundies to go out on Friday or Saturday night, and make it to the next week. Sure, you may have some student loans, but let’s get real, those loans are tiny compared to the big boy loans you’ll get involved with later in life. And unlike when you’re in your 20’s, where losing a job is a crisis but not a total disaster, the stakes are higher further down the road and there’s a very real stress involved there. Failure here is potentially less recoverable.

So why do we continue going down this path, like a bunch of lemmings? For the hope that one day, we will sonic boom out of the upper middle class shackles and become truly rich, dripping with liquid “f*ck you money,” where we can once again begin to experience the same kind of autonomy we once had…as a broke 25 year old (only with better stuff).

Well, what’s the alternative?

D.o.W getting all existential an sh i t. You guys really should read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F u ck. You are wired to be unhappy with what you have, long for what you do not have, and look back on what you used to have with rose colored glasses. It’s the evolutionary f u ck you that keeps us rodents spinning the wheel.

I agree. I think what Destroyer described is just a natural progression that almost all of us go through. As we get older of course we have more mature obligations to tend to (mortgage, family, complex careers to navigate, etc.)… but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing nor would I really look at this as being “handcuffs” – especially compared to the alternative.

Well, there is no alternative that’s better. Hence the handcuff analogy.

I’ll try not to think so hard next time to satisfy the linear thinkers on this forum, GOAB. As for the book, I like it already. Reading a book like that, it allows you a sharp and clinical clarity that you experience only when reading the book (“Yes, yes, of course that’s right…I’ve been doing it all wrong and I can see that now…”), only to put the book down and later revert to doing the same s#!t you were doing before you read the book. But at least you had that moment of clarity.

I mean, that’s your view. And I respect that. But I think for me, I miss my freedom.

As long as you realize that there is a choice, you just choose to continue on with life the way it is. Perhaps that is best, a man is meant to make his own decisions and thereby define his own existence. However, the way you whinge about your current state of affairs It sounds like you are chained to the wheel or “floating with the tide”, see Hunter S. Thompson letter to Hume Logan (has been mentioned here before I believe). If that is the case and you are indeed unhappy you may wish to consider a course of action that would lead to a different outcome (which may inevitably prove just as dissatisfying). But maybe you just long for simpler times and that is fine just the same. Have a beer and enjoy the company.