Take the Advice you are Paying for

After you have been doing something well for a number of years, you begin to gain experience and wisdom regarding it. Generally, this translates to a higher salary and/or rate, as it should of course.

Companies pay this higher salary/rate because of that experience and wisdom. But it makes no sense to have that wisdom ignored by the people you work for. When that happens, it is nothing but a waste of your time, their money, and is demonstrative of complete ignorance of your experience.

And as usually the case, when other people come from a position of ignorance, they tend to inflict the problems it causes on others, instead if correcting their own problem (i.e. their ignorance) first.

The moral – if you are paying someone $167K (or more) a year, you are paying for their knowledge, experience, wisdom, and advice. Time to start getting your money’s worth – take the advice you are paying for; do not unnecessarily question it, and realize that despite your age and position, this person might know something that you do not.


Oh, and to clear it up, this is my point of view on the differences between knowledge, experience and wisdom:

  • Knowledge is what you get from schools and books, magazines, articles, training, self-study, etc. (e.g. learning C++, VB, COM and Java)
  • Experience is gain you get by applying that knowledge in real-life situations (e.g. using C++, VB and Java to solve particular problems)
  • Wisdom is what is learned from the results of the experience (e.g. learning when to use C++ over Java, Java over VB, and what things should and should not be a COM object, etc.)