A Google engineer took a 50% pay cut to join startup Qwil

Daren Makuck, a software
engineer at fintech startup Qwil.
Facebook/Daren Makuck

• Software engineer Daren Makuck left a high-paying job at
  Google and took a 50% pay cut to work at a startup called
  Qwil.
• An interaction he had with Qwil CEO Johnny Reinsch
  convinced him it was the right career move.
• Makuck even refused to increase his salary when the time
  came, to Reinsch’s surprise.

For Daren Makuck, leaving a high-paying job at Google to work at
a fledgling startup was an easy choice.

The hard part was deciding whether to stay.

But an interaction he had with his new CEO not only convinced him
to stay at the lower-paying job, but taught him an important
lesson about employee satisfaction, too.

Makuck, a software engineer, left Google a year after his
previous company, a marketing startup called Toro, was acquired
by the tech giant. Wanting to work at a smaller company again, he
contemplated leaving after he was approached to work at a new
startup called Qwil.

Even though he’d be taking a 50% pay cut to join Qwil, the
temptation to leave Google was strong, Makuck remembers. But he
was still concerned he wouldn’t be a good fit for Qwil, a fintech
company that facilitates payment between freelance workers and
the companies they work for. Makuck told Qwil CEO
Johnny Reinsch that he had his eye on a return to the video
game industry, where he had worked previously.

“I had told him I would feel bad if I joined and ended up
wanting to leave after a year,” Makuck told Business
Insider.

How Reinsch responded immediately changed his
perspective.

“He replied, ‘If we can’t keep you happy enough to stay for
more than a year, that’s on us,'” Makuck
said. 
“This was the first time I had ever felt
like a company — not just the people in it — would share the
responsibility of my employment, and it’s something I didn’t even
realize I needed.”

This past April, as Makuck approached his two-year anniversary at
Qwil, the startup announced it had
raised $5 million in Series A funding. That meant Reinsch
could afford to bump up his employees’ salaries.

Yet when Reinsch offered Makuck a raise, the engineer turned him
down.

“Given from what I had seen of the company and the way they
ran it I was convinced that we would be successful, and I wanted
to do everything I could to help us achieve that,” Makuck
said.

But Reinsch wouldn’t take no for an answer, insisting he
take the extra pay. For Makuck, it affirmed his decision to stay
at Qwil two years earlier.

“Johnny’s response to my offer showed me that he would stay
true to his word — that continued employment was a thing we were
both responsible for,” Makuck said.

“It may seem like a small thing to do, but it’s things like that
that make me want to go the extra mile as an employee.”

Meanwhile, for Reinsch, the experience reinforced that the
satisfaction his employees got at work was just as important as
their paycheck.

“The truth is, how much money you get every month is one
thing. How much satisfaction you get every month is another,” he
wrote in a
LinkedIn post.

“And sharing those values with the people you recruit is
the best feeling in the world.”

Get the latest Google stock price here.