In truth, the University of Vienna offered quite generous terms. The school provided free lodging, food, medical care, even small items such as faculty robes, fountain pens, and paper.
The salary did seem a little low, though—only one hundred florins.
"Isn't that the Austrian Empire's minimum wage?"
Étienne Lenoir was inwardly astonished. Was the University of Vienna taking advantage of him for being a foreigner? Or did they think he could not read German?
Although the German before him seemed somewhat different from what he had learned, such minor differences could be ignored.
(Austrian Standard German.)
Just as Étienne Lenoir was considering whether he should fight for better pay, he was shocked speechless once again.
That one hundred florins was not an annual salary, but a monthly one.
This, too, was a reform Franz had made based on the Austrian Empire's actual circumstances. In the past, university work in the Austrian Empire had been quite leisurely, and university professors generally came from very well-off families, so annual salaries had posed no problem.
Annual salaries had many advantages. On one hand, they simplified payroll management; on the other, they kept personnel stable and maintained loyalty, making it easier for employers to plan how to use talent and improve efficiency.
(For some unscrupulous people, promising an annual salary also made it easier to default on it.)
Yet most scholars who came to the Austrian Empire seeking work were in dire financial straits. They either had families to support or had no concept of money and often lived from hand to mouth.
Thus, Franz changed annual salaries into monthly salaries. He had originally wanted to make them weekly, but weekly pay placed an extraordinary burden on the finance and administrative departments.
After all, these top scholars were different from roadside laborers. Their value