It’s always best to just aim for highest compensation. Even if a team is your dream fit today, it can easily change.

High compensation can also bring more freedom and happiness, since it’s more costly for your employer to replace you. It’s cheaper to keep an existing employee happy than to spend a lot of time and money to bring a new person on board. If your compensation is lower, it’s not as big of a factor.

I wouldn’t take a job if it clearly doesn’t fit me at all, but within the band of “acceptable jobs” aiming for highest compensation is the way to go in my opinion.

> I have been trying to find one of these "lower pay better conditions" places, but it is _such_ a gamble. It is so hard to tell how the work is going to be before you join.

Is that one of those situations where having a wide network comes into play? About the only way to know with someone is to have someone you trust vouch for the workplace culture.

> Also in my experience lower pay places tend to eventually suck because they tend to get into financial difficulties much more easily.

I'm not sure if the tradeoff is explicitly and consciously "lower pay for better conditions." It's probably more like "conditions a good enough that there's less pressure to increase pay."

I actually work at a place that had pretty good conditions (based on everything I've heard) until a few years ago (when a long trend of offshoring and other site-shifting reorgs brought the site below a critical mass of upper-level representation to maintain its culture). My gut feel is a big factor was the business was pretty lucrative and predictable for a long, long time. Once there was customer-driven pricing pressure and competitive pressure, things started to deteriorate.

be more honest in your interviews. i have always found my jobs this way. You want to work somewhere that sees you as a person first and an employee second - so when you get to the interview you should talk to them like they are a person first and an interviewer second. If the person you will be working under fails to match that energy then get outta there

And even if you do manage to find such a place, there is exactly zero guarantee that they won't hire someone above that _does_ ruin the better conditions you've enjoyed since you started. A successful company is persuaded by the board to grow the leadership team, and the number of sociopaths at that level means anyone that joins has a decent chance of being one.

I've had several jobs that were great for the first 12-18 months before the manager that hired me left. Then they sucked for another couple years but the pay didn't change.

Exactly. Plus, many people don't seem to understand the word "avoid" (it's come up in my own bubble recently). It doesn't mean "never." For example, a vegan would not say "I avoid eating meat." Furthermore, because someone successfully avoids now doesn't mean they went through a period of being unable to in order to earn the privilege to do so regularly.

Much advice is meaningless, baseless post-mortem correlations from people trying to justify their own success.

Luck can mean opportunity, but doesn't reflect on capability, availability,or outcome.

> Avoiding something means staying away from it to the best of your ability

Yes, that's what I said. "To the best of your ability." often means "You have to occasionally spend small amounts of time working with really shitty people.". OP said:

  following this advice would have made most of my professional life impossible...