iStock, lerbank
That’s less than I make now.
The recruiter had just shared the salary range for a role she was genuinely interested in. Same level. More appealing work. A company she liked. But the top of the range was $20,000 below her current base.
Her reaction was immediate. They don’t understand what I’m worth. Except that was not what the recruiter had told her. The company had communicated what the job was worth to them.
That distinction is easy to understand intellectually and much harder to hold onto when the number is yours. We spend years building expertise, judgment and experience, then naturally look to salary as evidence of what all of that adds up to. But companies are usually answering a narrower question: What do we need to pay to get this work done by someone who can do it?
Better at your job does not always mean better paid
We want compensation to behave like a scoreboard. Stronger performer, higher pay. More experience, higher pay. Greater contribution, higher pay.
It does not work that way.
A job’s price is shaped by the scope of the role, how difficult the expertise is to find, what employers are paying for it and how much the company needs that capability at that particular moment. That means two directors at the same company can be paid differently even if the lower-paid one has more experience or a stronger performance. Their jobs may draw from different talent markets. One capability may be harder to find, more expensive to replace or in greater demand across the industry.
Most of us understand this in the abstract. It is much harder when the comparison involves someone we know. Then we stop comparing jobs and start comparing people. Why does she make more than I do? Does the company think he is more important? Am I not as highly regarded as I thought?
Higher pay starts to look like a ranking.
Sometimes, it may reflect a real difference in scope or contribution. Sometimes, there is an inequity. But sometimes, the company simply has to pay more for one kind of work than another.
Are you underpaid, or is the work priced lower?
There are two problems that can feel almost identical when you are the one looking at the paycheck.
The first is being underpaid for the job you are doing. If comparable roles consistently pay more, your responsibilities have expanded without your compensation following or people doing genuinely similar work are earning more, you may have a compensation problem.
The second is the job you are doing does not pay what you want to earn. That possibility is uncomfortable because it separates excellence from economics. You can be exceptional at work the market prices lower. That does not make the work less important, and it does not make someone in a higher-paying role more capable. It means employers are willing to pay different amounts for different kinds of work.
Those two situations call for different responses that inform career decisions. The first may justify a compensation discussion, a leveling conversation or eventually a change of employer. The second sparks a broader question: Are the economics of this kind of work consistent with what I want from my career?
The answer does not have to be “No.” You may love the work. You may value the mission, the flexibility, the people or other parts of the job more than maximizing compensation. But you can make a better career decision when you know which tradeoff you are actually making.
What else are you getting from the job?
Compensation is not the only economic value of a role.
In biotech, a smaller company may give you access to experiences you might wait years to get elsewhere: an initial public offering, an acquisition, a financing, taking an asset into development or building a function from scratch. Those experiences can change what you bring to the next employer.
Large pharma can build a different kind of value. You may learn how strong systems and processes work, how decisions get made across a complex organization, how to operate with rigor at scale or what a mature function looks like. That experience can be especially useful later in a company that needs to build those things.
Different environments build different capabilities. A useful way to evaluate a role is what you will walk away with when it ends.
So, if your compensation disappoints you, ask what else you are accumulating. Is the role giving you experience, exposure or responsibility that may expand your options later? While that does not erase a pay problem, it does make the calculation more complete.
Ask what the number is actually telling you
“Know your worth” sounds empowering. As compensation advice, it is not especially useful. It assumes there is some number attached to your professional value waiting for the right employer to discover it.
There isn’t.
The same person can command very different compensation depending on the work, the market, the company and the problem they are being hired to solve.
So, when a salary number bothers you, do not immediately turn it into a judgment about yourself. First, separate the number from the meaning you are assigning to it. Are you underpaid for the work? Is the work itself priced lower than you want to be paid? Or are you in a role that is building experience likely to change your options later?
Your company is not paying you what you are worth. It is paying for the work it needs from you. Once you understand the difference, you can decide what, if anything, you want to do about it.