Dream job; less pay? We analyzed 25 careers to see who's most tempted

Hong Bui has worked for at least 10 companies during his career as a product manager, including legendary employers such as Apple and Amazon . About half the time, his decision to switch jobs has involved a momentary cut in pay.

But for Bui, it’s all good.?

“There’s such a joy to launching a successful product,” Bui explains. When he changes jobs, it’s all about the chance to conquer a new challenge, developing what he hopes will be a breakthrough that many customers love. That excitement never gets old. As for rebuilding his earnings curve – that can (and does) happen at its own tempo.

For on-the-job idealism, product managers are in a class by themselves, according to the latest edition of LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence Index, conducted between March 12 and June 3. Some 28,598 LinkedIn members were asked if they would take a pay cut of 2% or 5%, in return for non-cash improvements in their jobs, such as more enjoyable work or better work/life balance.

As the chart above shows, responses vary strikingly, according to people's line of work. Our analysis looked at sentiment across 25 different job functions — ranging from research to real estate. The result: a new understanding of which job functions are most tempted (or unswayed) by eight possible versions of cash-vs.-job quality tradeoffs.

For nearly half of all respondents, surrendering even a small slice of today’s pay is a non-starter. Job functions with decidedly low interest in these pay-cut scenarios include entrepreneurship, real estate, business development, administration, consulting and operations.

In many of those fields, a big paycheck signals that everything else is going right. A thriving real-estate career can be measured by the size (and frequency!) of commission earnings. Counting the dollars is crucial for most entrepreneurs, too.?

Meanwhile, in lower-paying fields such as administration, every dollar of earnings may be urgently needed, just to keep pace with expenses.

In other job roles, however, today’s paycheck may not reflect everything associated with deeper job fulfillment. Leadership experts highlight this constantly — whether it’s former Facebook executive Julie Zhuo ’s counsel to “spend time with people you like ,” or Harvard scholar Francesca Gino’s insights about the uplift associated with curiosity .?

Of the 25 job functions analyzed in this survey, product managers were most willing to trade pay for something else. They ranked No. 1 in the percentage of respondents willing to sacrifice pay for more enjoyable work (47%), better work-life balance (44%), a greater sense of fulfillment (39%) and a chance to grow in the role (34%).

California-based Bui, for example, finds his interests have evolved over time. As a parent, he’s fascinated by the way his own children study, which adds extra passion to his current job as chief product officer for Top Hat , which makes learning-system software.??

Another perspective comes from Michael Orias , who’s worked in all three of the PM roles (product management; project management and program management). He says he’s picked some jobs on the basis of how much impact they will have; others because they will support his desire to teach or coach early career aspirants on the side. Pay is only part of the equation, he observes.

Other job roles with a high willingness to consider pay cuts for more enjoyable work included research (39%), purchasing (38%) and quality assurance (38%). Research and purchasing also showed strong interest in trading pay for better work-life balance.

Researchers have long been considered a breed apart , in terms of being more focused on peer recognition, impact, and a bureaucracy-free tempo, rather than thinking strictly in terms of maximizing income.?

Other fields may simply reflect higher frustration these days with current working conditions. Purchasing managers, for example, showed the greatest interest in trading away pay if they could gain flexibility in working remotely.?

People working in education had the most distinctive preferences. They were among the leaders in a desire to swap pay for more job fulfillment (33%) or a chance to grow in the role (30%). And they had the highest response level of any job function — 25% — when asked if they’d take a pay cut in return for “a chance to be my whole self at work.”

Methodology

LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence Index is based on a quantitative online survey distributed to members via email every two weeks. Roughly 5,000 U.S.-based members respond to each wave. Members are randomly sampled and must be opted into research to participate. Students, stay-at-home partners and retirees are excluded from analysis so we can get an accurate representation of those currently active in the workforce. We analyze data in aggregate and will always respect member privacy. Data is weighted by engagement level to ensure fair representation of various activity levels on the platform. The results represent the world as seen through the lens of LinkedIn’s membership; variances between LinkedIn’s membership and the overall market population are not accounted for..?

Allison Lewis ? and Adam Cohen from LinkedIn Market Research contributed to this article.