“In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.”
Take the Experience First
From Harold Geneen with Alvin Moscow, Managing (Doubleday, 1984), chapter 3, “Experience and Cash” (pp. 51-82), where the line is the chapter’s epigraph. Geneen ran ITT from 1959 to 1977, growing it from roughly $700M in revenue to one of the largest conglomerates in the world, with over 300 companies in 80 countries, spanning Sheraton Hotels, Hartford Fire Insurance, Continental Baking, and Avis. The book is his post-retirement account of how he ran it.
Geneen is addressing the reader early in a career, weighing which job to take. The chapter title puts the two coins in that order on purpose: experience is the one whose payoff is delayed, so the decision to take it has to be made up front, when the salary tradeoff feels real.