I am 32 and a total looser. I am entitled to a raise!

This is not a joke! With these words a young male employee entered my friend’s office. She is a COO and runs a major company of several thousand people in Russia.

I shared with her that more and more candidates during their job interviews say something like this: “I need to show my wife that I am a man, so I need a salary no lower than …” She laughed and told me this story.


Is it possible to become successful simply by getting a salary raise ? Is it possible to earn your wife’s love with money? And finally, does salary give a man more manliness?

Another story. I’m talking with a friend who started dating a girl. After a few dates she outlines to him what salary her man should have so that he can fully satisfy her needs. It is quite clear that he doesn’t earn that kind of money and maybe never will. Only 5% of top managers in Russia ever earn that.

His girlfriend is an average girl, not from a poor and not from a wealthy family. Somehow I do not want to assume that everyone in Moscow has switched to such commodity-money based relationships in their personal lives. Or is it just a period in our history?

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