Among all the companies that I have worked for in the past, all of them provided great extrinsic incentives, but in the end, I left the job because I felt like I value intrinsic incentives more than just the base pay itself.

Extrinsic incentives are things like competitive pay, bonus, and factors that are outside of employees’ control. These incentives are easy to spot and different people have different views on how important the extrinsic incentives are. I personally think that base pay and bonus are important to me when browsing through the job listing, however, they should not be the determining factor for me when choosing to accept a job.

Intrinsic incentives, on the other hand, are much more important to me and I would tend to prefer intrinsic incentives over extrinsic incentives as I grow up and want more career growth.

The 2-week Notice

Knowing when to leave the job can be hard and complicated, I know that I spent days thinking about how to deliver the pitch to the manager because I dislike confrontation. Leaving a job means leaving your colleague behind and breaking the habits of driving to the same work address in the morning, not receiving a steady paycheck for while, these are the negative aspect of leaving a job, but the positives of leaving a job are so much more important to me considering the lack of intrinsic incentive that the job is currently providing. When it comes to job satisfaction, it could make or break a job for me. When I had my first internship as a project engineer, I wanted to be in a position where I can constantly improve my ability and learn new skills so I can be more ready after graduation, that is not to say that having a steady yet relaxing workflow is not beneficial, but as an intern, I should be doing a different thing, experiencing challenge and take on a different task to be more ready.