Does good compensation inherently mean “good place to work,” or no?

Figuring out what makes a ‘great place to work’ and then figuring out how much compensation factors into that is a fairly fraught exercise. Here’s why: most of the research done around the determination of a great place to work involves surveys. Surveys have tons of built-in biases, and one of the biggest ones is that people are sometimes afraid to say the thing they really feel, instead saying the more culturally-appropriate thing. Here’s an example: some dating and sexuality surveys recently have found that “funny is the new sexy.” We’d all like to believe that, and it’s somewhat true in some cases, but supermodels still get more dates than female comedians. You know what I mean? But people on a survey don’t want to say “I want a hot girlfriend!” because that sounds crappy to say.

It’s the same with compensation. Obviously it’s a huge factor in any job search or placement. In a capitalism, your compensation basically determines how you can live. So you’re gonna factor it into decisions, you’d hope. But you’re not necessarily going to tell a survey-taker that you factored it in, because it sounds a little gauche — and if we’re being totally honest, most middle-class people are brought up not discussing money at all. It’s easier to be polled for something and say you value “the mission” or “creativity of co-workers” as opposed to…