"Employee" is quite misleading - you pay nothing. Why don't you just say "volunteer"? Another "mistake"? I start to see a pattern here...

@virolino Maybe the OP is just putting it in terms that we are more used to. I don't think the distinction matters too much

I think that pretty much everyone in the world understands the concept of volunteering. So why not use it then?

@virolino dodging instinctive close votes perhaps?

@MatthewGaiser: I do not understand... :(

@virolino some might jump to close the question given that volunteering might not be explicitly within the scope of this site.

@virolino while many things are facts of life, that does not make them on topic...

@SolarMike: true, but a job is a job, whether paid or not. Also, a fact of life are the rules of the site :) Tnx anyway.

@GregoryCurrie The distinction is huge. A person working for no money has wildly different motivations and incentives as someone working for money. There's a reason there's no such thing as a volunteer investment banker but there are volunteer fire departments. Would you really answer the question the same knowing it's a volunteer role rather than a paid one?

@virolino: about volunteering on this site, also note workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6719/…

"An employee applied for two roles but didn't get the role she wanted. Instead, she received a role that has more responsibility and power" Was the role that she received one of the two roles that she applied for?

@sf02 It was one she applied for but she didn’t find out until afterwards that it wasn’t a c suite position.

What kind of organization is this? What is she getting out of the position? Is this something like a PTO, or is this something that is in a professional track and just happens to not be paid (like a lawyer working for a pro bono firm), but is hopefully leading to better career prospects?

@DeanMacGregor The point I'm trying to get across is regardless if it's volunteer or employment, the are a range of factors that contribute to job satisfaction. Obviously for a volunteer there is one less factor. In answering your question, I don't think Warren Buffet continues to work cause he needs the money.

@DeanMacGregor Often managers will simply throw money at people on an attempt to appease them, where as some of the approaches in the the answers provided may be a better option even though it's employment. I don't think it's correct to say the motivations are wildly different. There is overlap.

@GregoryCurrie there are multiple factors but they aren't equally weighted. Warren Buffet is hardly a representative person to choose for this discussion. Short of extreme examples, like someone enduring sexual harassment everyday or someone who is already very wealthy, I would bet that throwing enough money at the average person is enough to get them to stay in a job they hate.

@DeanMacGregor I agree. Not evenly weighted. But I don't think "throw heaps of money at them" is really the kind of answers we want, so there is certainly a need to explore other answers which happen to apply to both volunteers and employees. Warren Buffett is an example. I'm sure there are many people who could retire but choose not to, though I wouldn't know their names.

Is she performing better, or equally good, as worst performer having "C-Suite" role?