Taking a Pay Cut

Yesterday, Mark “Copyranter” Duffy put up a post on Gawker describing how he was fired from his job from Buzzfeed. Duffy’s firing appeared to be mostly due to the fact that his job was to create posts being critical about advertisements, and, unsurprisingly, advertisers for the site were not happy about that.

But the one thing some people focused on was this:

I took a $43,000 annual pay cut to leave my small New York City ad agency, where I had worked as a copywriter for 20 straight years, to come to work for Ben Smith and BuzzFeed. Why would I make this seemingly idiotic move? I liked Ben Smith, and liked what I had read about BuzzFeed’s growth, potential, and future. So I reached out to him and asked him for a job. I still like BuzzFeed’s future.

Sorry but taking a $43,000 annual pay cut seems crazy!? http://t.co/h63JtqtxlU

— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) November 25, 2013

Why would someone take such a big pay cut? Well, the easy answer is that someone would take a pay cut when money isn’t an issue (recall my interview with Billy, who took a $60K pay cut because he was financially stable and wanted to move and try something different). I’m also sympathetic to this — I left my previous job and all of its benefits and took a significant pay cut to start this site. And though things are tighter, I’m much happier.

Have you taken a pay cut to pursue something you wanted to do?

Photo: London Looks

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