Are people getting lazier?

Call me old school but when I was still an employee (sales and marketing), I had to work for my money, reach targets, etc. One of my first jobs where I really earned a ton of money, my base salary was a mere $18,000 per year in one of the most expensive cities in the nation. However, my commission and bonuses added up to a total compensation of over $120,000. Subsequent jobs I held were similar in regards to compensation. Small base, big upside and as long as I moved my a**, I never earned less than $100k per year. That was over ten years ago. Then, I started my own business, it became successful mostly via digital marketing done in-house. To grow even further, I think we need to expand our marketing efforts beyond what we can do in-house so I posted a job post for a growth hacker/marketing expert and my salary offering is similar, small base ($31,200 per year, which is minimum wage where I live), plus commission and bonuses for reaching pre-determined revenue and user numbers with an OTE of $100,000+. Long story short, nobody wants the job. Everyone is looking for that $100k salary upfront without proving their worth. Did I miss anything in the last ten years? Do employers no longer expect production and results from employees? I get it for admin staff and tech staff. I have a CTO, several project managers, admin staff, writers, etc. on payroll and their salary is fixed. But a sales/marketing job? It just seems wrong to me, not tying such a job to performance. This is the job post, which I'll probably take down shortly. Not worth it to me to gamble $100k on someone with big promises but no skin in the game when we can just continue to coast on what we're currently doing: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/grassroots-marketing-growth-hacker.1400753/

Musicmarketing said:

Call me old school but when I was still an employee (sales and marketing), I had to work for my money, reach targets, etc. One of my first jobs where I really earned a ton of money, my base salary was a mere $18,000 per year in one of the most expensive cities in the nation. However, my commission and bonuses added up to a total compensation of over $120,000. Subsequent jobs I held were similar in regards to compensation. Small base, big upside and as long as I moved my a**, I never earned less than $100k per year. That was over ten years ago. Then, I started my own business, it became successful mostly via digital marketing done in-house. To grow even further, I think we need to expand our marketing efforts beyond what we can do in-house so I posted a job post for a growth hacker/marketing expert and my salary offering is similar, small base ($31,200 per year, which is minimum wage where I live), plus commission and bonuses for reaching pre-determined revenue and user numbers with an OTE of $100,000+. Long story short, nobody wants the job. Everyone is looking for that $100k salary upfront without proving their worth. Did I miss anything in the last ten years? Do employers no longer expect production and results from employees? I get it for admin staff and tech staff. I have a CTO, several project managers, admin staff, writers, etc. on payroll and their salary is fixed. But a sales/marketing job? It just seems wrong to me, not tying such a job to performance. This is the job post, which I'll probably take down shortly. Not worth it to me to gamble $100k on someone with big promises but no skin in the game when we can just continue to coast on what we're currently doing: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/grassroots-marketing-growth-hacker.1400753/

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You mean you pay like you would pay a janitor?... Oh but there are bonuses, so okay. Maybe focus a bit on showing people how much they'd earn with performance bonuses included, if they'll feel they'll earn as much as a janitor earns then sure, it might not be motivating... Like, you know, for good commission someone could just do affiliate marketing and call it a day, they don't need an employer or whatever.

I do understand your dillemas about not wanting to hire some idiot that doesn't perform though, can kinda relate because I used to hire people in the past. It's double problem - employees scam employers and employers scam employees. Everyone is afraid of scam.

That's salary mentality
You should look for real freelancer who prefer the commission over the salary because they know what they are doing

Salamouna said:

That's salary mentality
You should look for real freelancer who prefer the commission over the salary because they know what they are doing

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Freelancer would still prefer nice retainer + multiple fees for additional services

And for comission it's best to just do good affiliate program or promote your own business... Why promote someone else... Companies during covid are absolutely insane, everyone thinks someone will promote/help build their business for pennies

Could be or maybe people are getting better at knowing their worth.

It's a catch-22.

Your fear is that you'll pay someone a bunch of money that doesn't deliver results, their fear (given they know what they're doing) is working for minimum wage with a carrot of potential that even the most qualified of candidates can't meet. And at what point is anyone that's qualified for the position (knows the industry, can do custom development for building sales funnels, perform quantitative data analysis, make sales, yadda yadda) to maximize their earnings, just better off competing with you directly given the risk to reward they expect to receive?

This position looks to tie very heavily into development outside the realm of mere sales from how I perceived the ad.

You talk about grass roots and in the weeds type of creative campaigns outside of traditional marketing, but then also having all these A/B testing, data analyzation, gamification, and building sales funnels...that's a hybrid of a lot of different skill sets than just general marketing where these types of bonuses are applicable.

Commission based bonuses might be good for people cold calling or knocking door to door, but you start doing some of the stuff you mention and anyone of the caliber you seek can likely advocate for a tech salary upwards of $100 an hour. The type of person that has both the tech skills you seek and the personality to be paid in sort of a "high risk, high reward" manner is probably going to be more interested than an equity stake representing their efforts in growing the business than a thank you bonus dangled in front of them for meeting some marks that make you rich at a disproportionate amount.

You want them to have skin in the game, give them some actual skin in the game. A bonus isn't that, that type of personality wants equity or at least some very serious numbers about typical total compensation someone in this position has been receiving. If you can't provide that information, you're asking the employee to take on all the risk on your behalf and not meeting them in the middle.

Look at it this way.

There are a lot of job scams out there. Most of them promise a lumpsum variable and dont pay them eventually. So for people to trust you. There has to be some kind of escrow or a system where are sure it gets paid off.

Maybe get a system to automate this, show them what they make real-time etc

I am old school too, been in sales and BD for 14+ years. However people aren't lazy they are smarter these days.

Trust me if they are able to really make 100k worth of commission from the sales they wouldnt be working for anyone for a salary. Our days it was lot difficult to network, but now it's lot more simpler. The smart ones really know their worth. They are better off freelancing or becoming a business owner.

This is my general observation so far.

All good insights. Thanks for participating. If the product is something anyone could do, I would totally get, it why would anyone work for our business if they could simply compete with us by selling the same thing. Difference is, what we are selling and what we built can't just be replicated. I mean, it could, but not that easily. It took us five years and several rounds of angel founding ($1.5M in total) to build the product to a point where it's acceptable in the market. I might just have to bring someone in on a consulting basis on a retainer to help with finding creative growth/marketing solutions beyond what we're currently doing and then hire freelancers here or on Upwork/Fiverr to execute. I guess I really am old school since I can't really come up with anything "new" when it comes to viral marketing. I just toss money into ads on Google, Facebook, etc. and call it a day lol. Well, our SEO is strong which accounts for a lot of sales luckily but that's pretty much it.

With everyone working from home and the world being so globalized, I wonder if the traditional model of employer/employee relationship is on the verge of completely dying. Most people can probably make more money (and if not more, at least more comfortable money with a better work/life balance) in their underwear vs. going to a job across town and sitting in an office for eight hours.

the laws of supply/demand would suggest that if you can't find someone willing to work for the pay you're offering, then you aren't offering enough pay.

"growth hacker" seems like an impossible job to hire for anyway, it's the same as hiring an "SEO" expert, anyone who is good at these things would most likely be working for themself.

Musicmarketing said:

Call me old school but when I was still an employee (sales and marketing), I had to work for my money, reach targets, etc. One of my first jobs where I really earned a ton of money, my base salary was a mere $18,000 per year in one of the most expensive cities in the nation. However, my commission and bonuses added up to a total compensation of over $120,000. Subsequent jobs I held were similar in regards to compensation. Small base, big upside and as long as I moved my a**, I never earned less than $100k per year. That was over ten years ago. Then, I started my own business, it became successful mostly via digital marketing done in-house. To grow even further, I think we need to expand our marketing efforts beyond what we can do in-house so I posted a job post for a growth hacker/marketing expert and my salary offering is similar, small base ($31,200 per year, which is minimum wage where I live), plus commission and bonuses for reaching pre-determined revenue and user numbers with an OTE of $100,000+. Long story short, nobody wants the job. Everyone is looking for that $100k salary upfront without proving their worth. Did I miss anything in the last ten years? Do employers no longer expect production and results from employees? I get it for admin staff and tech staff. I have a CTO, several project managers, admin staff, writers, etc. on payroll and their salary is fixed. But a sales/marketing job? It just seems wrong to me, not tying such a job to performance. This is the job post, which I'll probably take down shortly. Not worth it to me to gamble $100k on someone with big promises but no skin in the game when we can just continue to coast on what we're currently doing: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/grassroots-marketing-growth-hacker.1400753/

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Well, certainly somebody seems too lazy to format his wall of text with paragraphs.

jazzc said:

Well, certainly somebody seems too lazy to format his wall of text with paragraphs.

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Guilty as charged.

I don't understand, what problem are you having exactly? You say you have good seo and have run ads but you're getting only sporadic sales? If that's the case maybe the product/service/whatever it is isn't as great as you think it is? Not trying to insult you here but if there's demand, your quality is good and you did your seo and ads right you should be swimming in cash already. Or you are, but you want more growth? I don't get it.

Okay, I scrolled up and re-read your post. 'Lots of sales' - okay, so you have sales so what's your problem exactly? You should specify stuff like that in your job/contracting posts otherwise it's hard to tell what kind of involvement is required.

Honestly, I'll tell you something. I had so many business owners with serious business problems come to me and claim everything's fine and their company is great... Yet they came to me for help. So idk, people are bullshiting so much on these kind of things it gets hilarious at some point. 'Company is doing just fine! But... Help us.' You do realize how does this sound? Each time when company was bullshitting me like that I was pushing harder and harder for more information and it always turned out that they have more serious problems that they want to admit even to themselves.

Human beings are not only getting lazier, but their IQ (intelligence, cognitive thinking abilities) are also drastically going down

Raj Kesu said:

Human beings are not only getting lazier, but their IQ (intelligence, cognitive thinking abilities) are also drastically going down

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Is there any data on that? Because people are super biased in glorifying the past.

Let's hear what Hesiod was grumbling about 3000 years ago:

"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words…"

And here's Akkad from 4200 years ago:

"We have fallen upon evil times and the world has waxed very old and wicked. Politics are very corrupt. Children are no longer respectful to their parents."

And there's a ton of quotes from all the ages. So...

jazzc said:

Is there any data on that? Because people are super biased in glorifying the past.

Let's hear what Hesiod was grumbling about 3000 years ago:

"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words…"

And here's Akkad from 4200 years ago:

"We have fallen upon evil times and the world has waxed very old and wicked. Politics are very corrupt. Children are no longer respectful to their parents."

And there's a ton of quotes from all the ages. So...

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You took the bait. He’s a troll and is probably not serious in half of his posts.

Yes said:

You took the bait. He’s a troll and is probably not serious in half of his posts.

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Amen.

Yes said:

You took the bait. He’s a troll and is probably not serious in half of his posts.

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He is, I doubted too but he has strong opinions, that's it.

jazzc said:

Is there any data on that? Because people are super biased in glorifying the past.

Let's hear what Hesiod was grumbling about 3000 years ago:

"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words…"

And here's Akkad from 4200 years ago:

"We have fallen upon evil times and the world has waxed very old and wicked. Politics are very corrupt. Children are no longer respectful to their parents."

And there's a ton of quotes from all the ages. So...

Click to expand...

There is data...

Attention span has lower, we are easily distracted because of technology.

Instant gratification society has been spoken about a lot in the last 10 years.

Musicmarketing said:

Call me old school but when I was still an employee (sales and marketing), I had to work for my money, reach targets, etc. One of my first jobs where I really earned a ton of money, my base salary was a mere $18,000 per year in one of the most expensive cities in the nation. However, my commission and bonuses added up to a total compensation of over $120,000. Subsequent jobs I held were similar in regards to compensation. Small base, big upside and as long as I moved my a**, I never earned less than $100k per year. That was over ten years ago. Then, I started my own business, it became successful mostly via digital marketing done in-house. To grow even further, I think we need to expand our marketing efforts beyond what we can do in-house so I posted a job post for a growth hacker/marketing expert and my salary offering is similar, small base ($31,200 per year, which is minimum wage where I live), plus commission and bonuses for reaching pre-determined revenue and user numbers with an OTE of $100,000+. Long story short, nobody wants the job. Everyone is looking for that $100k salary upfront without proving their worth. Did I miss anything in the last ten years? Do employers no longer expect production and results from employees? I get it for admin staff and tech staff. I have a CTO, several project managers, admin staff, writers, etc. on payroll and their salary is fixed. But a sales/marketing job? It just seems wrong to me, not tying such a job to performance. This is the job post, which I'll probably take down shortly. Not worth it to me to gamble $100k on someone with big promises but no skin in the game when we can just continue to coast on what we're currently doing: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/grassroots-marketing-growth-hacker.1400753/

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For marketing, it's a fixed salary. We ask results from people it's true, but it's VERY stressful as a marketer to reach growth exponentially, I never heard that marketing guys have another agreement than fix salaries. It would be a nightmare if all the marketing team were without a fix salary, they would punch each other for low months and teamwork would be atrocious instead of cooperative. I would never want to work at such a place.

Sales is indeed different and always will be.

Willyfish said:

There is data...

Attention span has lower, we are easily distracted because of technology.

Instant gratification society has been spoken about a lot in the last 10 years.

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However, we have geniuses of each generation too, sadly, it's just overshadowed by degenerates or social media or famous people or idiots.
Since, media loves to broadcast things that will gives high ratings then old boring real news stuff.
Also, you need to understand that, while fishes population has dwindled down the past decade, humans went up instead.


Source

Yes ... it is ... noweverything becomes automate

Willyfish said:

Attention span has lower, we are easily distracted because of technology.

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This is just an "urban myth". The same person who can't focus 10 seconds on reading Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ...can focus for 20 hours to binge watch Breaking Bad.

Attention has to do with interest. That's all.