There exists a peculiar category of employment advice which, when first received, appears almost ridiculous to most young minds and lingers, unresolved and unproven, awaiting the slow verdict of years.

I remember when I was once given such advice back in the early days of my career, back when I believed (as I still do), that compensation and contribution were meant to exist in fair proportion. My employer at that time, someone neither indulgent nor especially severe, remarked upon a habit he had observed among young employees in general: that they would perform only so much labour as was necessary for keeping their job, and only as much as they were being paid. So, their effort expanded or contracted in accordance with their remuneration, and when denied increments or advancement, they withheld their capacity.

But he had a different view. He suggested that when one finds oneself in a position where the organisation allows the young employee to engage with matters beyond their current role – then one should go ahead and take on those additional responsibilities, without immediate regard for whether the salary expands in proportion. That in this situation, one should consider that they are not being underpaid, but rather that they are being paid to learn more than their role allows.

However, he did not speak of permanence. He did not promote accepting unending undervaluation. He spoke instead of a period, measured in moths or even years, during which the disparity between contribution and compensation might be tolerated as a form of apprenticeship freely undertaken. The salary, he suggested, should be regarded as the price paid to remain present within the system long enough to observe its deeper workings.

At the time, this view resonated with me more than any other advice I had heard so far regarding early career stages and growth. And over the years, I routinely took on far more than my role strictly required.

I undertook responsibilities for which I was neither titled nor formally recognised. I concerned myself with decisions whose consequences extended beyond the narrow corridor of my assigned function.

It would be false to claim that these efforts, while rewarded at some points, were truly acknowledged in proportion to their actual extent and substance. But this did not matter because I was focused on completing every task that the projects required and spending extra hours on responsibilities of higher ranks than mine or even other departments.

And so it happened that wherever I worked, I did not depart from the place as the same person who had entered it, until the prescribed role itself seemed small to contain all that I had learned to do.

Over time, this led to developing a broader competence of comprehension. I began to perceive patterns where before I had seen only instructions. I understood not merely what was to be done, but why it was done, and what alternative forms it might take. I acquired, without formal grant, an integrated competence that did not depend upon any title to exist.

In this respect, that early approach proved correct. But correctness is rarely absolute.

For there exists another truth, less generously spoken of, which reveals itself over time as the reason why most people would never follow this advice. That there are too many oganisations which possess an inherent tendency to favour their own preservation. So, when an individual provides labour beyond the strict requirements of their compensation, the organisation adapts… not by correcting the workload imbalance, not by raising the compensation adequately – but by offloading every possible responsibility and making it the new base expectation.

Then, what begins as voluntary expansion becomes, over time, an obligation. The individual who once exceeded their role by initiative finds that initiative gradually reclassified as “just the baseline”. The absence of additional compensation, once tolerated as temporary, risks becoming permanent. The very competence one has cultivated becomes the justification for assigning further burdens with no corresponding role changes or increase in compensation.

There are too many organisations which start extracting a kind of Growth Tax from such individuals. Thus, this approach contains within it both a mechanism of growth and a mechanism of vulnerability to exploitation.

To undertake labour beyond compensation for acquiring skills is a deliberate investment. But like any investment, it must be governed by criteria for its conclusion. There must exist an internal threshold, a point at which any new understanding diminishes, and the uncompensated effort increases. Without such a threshold, the arrangement ceases to be educational and becomes merely exploitative.

One must therefore observe, with clear attention, the nature of one’s own progression. Are new domains still becoming accessible? Is one’s competence expanding into genuinely unfamiliar territory? Or has one’s expanded labour settled into routine maintenance of the organisation’s existing needs?

At the threshold point, departure becomes not an act of weakness, but an act of personal continuity. Because the acceptance of undercompensation is meant to be temporary, not indefinite. To remain indefinitely after personal transformation has already occurred is to… nullify its benefit.

Looking back, I do not regret having followed that early advice. It accelerated my development in ways that no rigidly defined role could have permitted. It granted me visibility into structures that would otherwise have remained concealed. It allowed me to become, in fact, what I had only nominally been before.

But the approach is not without its risks.

It demands from the individual, not only willingness to give more than is received, but also the discernment to recognise when that imbalance has ceased to serve its original purpose. It requires the courage not merely to endure inequity temporarily, but to refuse it permanently once its utility has been exhausted.

And maybe that’s the true meaning of being paid to learn.