I'll probably receive a lot of hate mail for this article. I can almost imagine it: "First the companies don't come to our campuses anymore, then they stopped offering us those rockin' $150,000 packages-and now you write this?"

But bear with me a second. I used to be a quiet supporter-sometimes even an enthusiastic one-of that old saw about paying peanuts and getting monkeys. But I've since had a complete rethink.

	Stemming The Rot
	Going By The Book
	Don't Lose Customer Focus

Looking back, when one ran various departments and companies over the years, I think the best teamwork and dedication came from people who, at that point in time, happened to be paid significantly less than what they would otherwise command in the market. Around 20-50 per cent less.

The weird thing in one case was when we increased salaries and brought it to market levels-the place no longer seemed to be anything 'special'. People slowly started behaving like it was just another company, and started going home at 5 pm like other regular office-goers. All right for a regular company I guess, but fatal for any entrepreneurial-minded business or startup.

So what made that difference? It might be any number of reasons. Perhaps there's some sort of us-against-the-barricades siege mentality that keeps the fire in the belly burning when you're not yet well off as a business. Perhaps it's the sheer pleasure of being at a place where you love the work and the other people around-and don't care for how much money you make. Perhaps it's the lack of material comfort that makes you work harder to earn more of it.

Whatever the reason, it seems a reasonably consistent observation in hindsight. So now when I look ahead and work with companies, I ask them to use this as a yardstick: how good you are as a workplace can be judged by how much people are willing to sacrifice to work with you.

In other words, the better you are as a place of work, the less you have to spend on salaries and facilities to get good people. And if you have to pay top dollar, then there's something really wrong with you.

The hr practitioners and compensation consultants among you may be tearing you hair out at such blasphemy. But do give it another thought. Look around you. Where do you see the truly innovative companies? The happiest, most productive employees? Is it in the plush offices with built-in canteens and gymnasia-or in the dingy holes-in-the-wall, hidden away from the photographers of Interiors magazine?

Perhaps this agrees with the gut feel you may have-any start-up that goes and spends on comfortable offices and salaries for itself before it makes money is bound to go bankrupt. No matter how well it's funded. You might be sitting in an ergonomically luxurious chair in a plush, air-conditioned office at this moment. Ask yourself-are you enjoying your work more now than in those days when you scrabbled along, deliriously happy on the two bits you used to get as your salary?

So what is it that companies can learn from this? One, that you might look at ignoring the conventional wisdom that you have to pay more for better people. Yes, you may not get the top 2 percentile who have priced themselves out of sensible reach. But you'll do well with the rest-percentiles 3-20 who'll cost half as much as the prima donnas, and probably end up working twice as hard.

If you're at the receiving end, the job seeker, what do you do? Do you hold out, like your peer group, for the big dollar salaries and the respect it supposedly brings? Frankly, I don't give a damn for the $150,000-investment-bankers-fresh-out-of-school-all-ready-to-take-over-the-world. And neither do too many people I know. Only clueless companies pay big bucks to clueless freshers.

And you can choose to live that clueless but well-paid life. Or you can choose to learn a heck of a lot more, have a lot more fun, taste the real world if you follow your heart instead of your bank balance.

Believe me, the bank balance will happen by itself-bigger than you could ever have expected it to be. Just don't run your life by it, that's all.

Mahesh Murthy, an angel investor, heads Passionfund. He earlier ran Channel V and, before that, helped launch Yahoo! and Amazon at a Valley-based interactive marketing firm. Reach him at Mahesh@passionfund.com.