The rational response to workplace exploitation. Why matching effort to compensation is revolutionary.
Acting Your Wage means doing exactly the work you're being paid for—no more, no less. It's not laziness. It's a rational response to decades of employers expecting more value than they're willing to compensate.
"Got a 13-cent raise after 2 years while new hires make 12 cents more than me."
This isn't an isolated story. It's a systematic pattern where loyalty is punished and job-hopping is the only path to fair compensation. Acting Your Wage is the rational response to this broken system.
Input = Output: If you pay for 40 hours of basic work, you get 40 hours of basic work. Expecting more is expecting charity.
Market Rate: If other companies pay more for the same role, why would a rational person give extra effort for less money?
Opportunity Cost: Every extra hour given for free is an hour not spent finding better compensation or developing personal skills.
Include overtime, "just quick questions," weekend emails. Most people work 20% more than they're paid for.
What exactly are you being paid to do? Everything else is scope creep and requires additional compensation.
Work hours = work communication. Personal time = personal time. Emergency = actual emergency.
"I'd be happy to take on that project. What should I deprioritize to make room for it?"
Feeling guilty about acting your wage? That's decades of programming talking. You're not being lazy—you're being rational. Companies act their wage with employees all the time. They call it "business decisions."
Organizations that pay fairly rarely worry about people "acting their wage" because the wage reflects the full value they want. It's only exploitative employers who fear this movement—because they depend on underpaid overperformance.
5 targeted questions to measure your exposure to acting your wage.
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Stop giving more than you receive. Start matching effort to compensation.