1. Become divorced from the outcome. Sit down and think what it is you'd like to be doing if you weren't doing what you are, because these things can always go either way. Make two plans.
2. Gather evidence FOR paying you more. You need more. Someone is getting more doing the things you do. You're doing more than what is expected of you. Things hinge on you.
Make some evidence if it doesn't yet exist.
3. Gather evidence AGAINST paying you more, and prepare to refute it. Make some, if it doesn't exist yet and prepare to give up some things or distance yourself from some things. Get into your manager's head for that. Talk to them: say, if I (you) needed help with what you're doing, what would they be prepared to offer? Prepare using that.
4. Spend at least two weeks doing the above. Then schedule a morning meeting with your manager, right after lunch is best. This will be hard, better have shuffle the world around you in your favor. Good luck.
And when it doesn't work, find another job that pays more and leave. Don't wait for a counter offer; a counter offer is just them admitting that they indeed didn't pay you what you're worth, and they're only willing to do so now because you're forcing them. That's a lousy basis for a work relationship.
Find a better job and leave. You wouldn't be the only developer for whom that's the primary method of advancement.
This isn't necessarily true. You're worth what someone is willing to pay you. Until you actually receive a superior offer, neither you nor your employer knows that you're worth more than you're being paid.
Obviously there are employers out there who are underpaying their employees, but just because you find out you aren't being paid as much as possible for your skill set doesn't mean your employer is trying to stiff you.
That said, you should have a pretty good idea of what you're worth, and if you don't then that's on you. There is basically zero risk in going out and interviewing even if you aren't looking for a change, and it's a great way to establish the market for yourself. That market can change rapidly (at least while you're in the lower/middle of it).
> You're worth what someone is willing to pay you.
Or you're worth what the value of your work is. There are different ways to define this.
Are things that are free automatically worthless?
The idea that you become more valuable to your old employer only once there's another employer willing to hire you, is bizarre. Your work for your old employer doesn't change. How can your value suddenly change? Your old employer was clearly underpaying you because they could afford to. Only when you get other options, are they forced to pay you what you're worth.
By bringing up alternative offers, you’re effectively calling for a re-evaluation of your value. There’s naturally little incentive for your manager to re-evaluate when the expected outcome is higher cost; there’s clear incentive to re-evaluate when it’ll go lower. So it’s only natural that, leaving your pay solely to the discretion of management, your pay will go down over time.
The problem is not realizing you’re in an antagonistic relationship with your employer, when thinking about wage. This wasn’t as much an issue when the general path was as a salaryman, staying in DEC for fifty years, following strictly defined promotional paths. But today’s tech expects job-hopping, and there’s no clear timeline for re-evaluation or promotion. It now just occurs somewhat randomly, when you bring it in, or when they do. Putting in your 5 years and expecting a natural re-evaluation is no longer sufficient.
You're calling for a re-evaluation of your value by asking for a raise.
If I realise I'm in an antagonistic relationship with my employer, I leave. I don't want to spend a significant chunk of my life dependent on someone I have an adversarial relationship with. That just doesn't sound healthy.
By only re-evaluating my value when I'm about to leave, and not when I ask for a raise, the employer reveals it's an antagonistic relationship, and that's a good sign it's time to leave.
When it comes to pay, it’s an inherit property: you’re looking to max out your pay, and they’re looking to minimize. You negotiate to a middle ground. By antagonistic, I don’t mean that you’re in some kind of never ending battle to the death; but your goals/incentives clearly do not align. Obviously an actively malicious HR is a different story, but ignoring that, it would be naive to pretend you’re aligned, and leave your fate to a person/group who should not be acting in your best interest.
Your employer is not your agent. He doesn’t work for you.
> Your employer is not your agent. He doesn’t work for you.
No, but I work for him. If an agent working for me would also be an antagonistic relationship, then what use is the agent?
A good employer cares about more than just what their employees cost. At the very least, happy employees are productive employees. Employees that don't feel appreciated are not happy employees.
An employer who will only give you a raise after you've found a better offer elsewhere is a bad employer.
If you’re happy, and oblivious to knowledge that you could be paid higher elsewhere, why would I as an employer bring it up?
More notably, if you’re happy, why would I initiate the re-evaluation process to even find out whether you could get paid better elsewhere?
Would you come and tell me that you’ve been overpaid after self re-evaluating? But you expect me to come and tell you that you’ve been underpaid?
What’s the incentive here? You’re happy not knowing, I’m happy not knowing, what’s the problem? That you might find out in the future that you could have made more money for the last year, but your employer didn’t do the research and offer it you out of his own goodwill? The onus is clearly on you; you’re the only one with anything to gain. If the employer does it for you, then you can be grateful, but it would be absurd to be irrated by his not checking into how he could possibly hurt himself to help you.
>If an agent working for me would also be an antagonistic relationship, then what use is the agent
It depends which part of the relationship is adverserial. There is really no relationship where all your goals are aligned — you position your payment system to align specific components, but you should still acknowledge there are misalignments. Your travel agent is paid to get you good flights; but at the same time, he might make additional money by favoring specific airlines (with perhaps some, but minor, cost to you). There’s nothing wrong with this scenario — you’re just not fully aligned, but both parties still see benefit, so its still worth striking the deal.
In the same fashion, you as an employee are looking to make money (and don’t expect an infinite amount of it) and your employer is looking for work to be done. You dont try to find/create work to do for your company (unless you’re in sales), and the company doesn’t try to find ways to make you more money.
And thats fine. Obviously there are caveats (you can look better / earn promotions by doing more than you were requested, and the company can hand you bonuses you weren’t expecting, increasing moral), but its not part of the core relationship. It’s something the other party can be grateful for, but it would be absurd to expect it, because, well, who told you it was someone else’s job to improve your situation at cost to themselves?
Its the same kind of thinking that leads to absurd situations like putting 30 hours extra per week for free in gamedev crunches, and then being offended that it didn’t really get you anything. It’s not EA’s job to tell you that you’re doing something stupid (not that I agree with the request in the first place, but the entire gamedev industry is so problematic because the employees keep doing stupid shit in the unfounded belief of their all-benevolent employer).
An enployee that doesn’t look out for his own needs is a foolish employee.
> If you’re happy, and oblivious to knowledge that you could be paid higher elsewhere, why would I as an employer bring it up?
Aren't we discussing the situation where an employee asks for a raise and it's refused? So the employee is already aware that something is missing and is bringing it up. If the employer ignores it, that's a recipe for unhappiness.
But even more than that, some employees are bad at asking for a raise for a variety of reasons, and might be unhappy about their pay yet feel uncomfortable bringing it up. There's a risk that it's easier for them to look for another job instead of asking for a raise directly. The employer giving them a raise without being asked for it, can prevent that, and make the employee happier and more likely to stay.
If you wait until the employee is unhappy enough to start looking elsewhere, the employer is already too late.
>Aren't we discussing the situation where an employee asks for a raise and it's refused?
I was only talking about the scenario before the query occurs, and that the onus is on the employee to research and bring it up; my opinion on if its refused (and the alternative option is worth the trouble of change; whatever that worth may be), then it would be absurd to stay (you have a better option.. the only reason not to switch is guilt, probably misplaced)
I don’t know how much this mistake has cost us. I get the feeling that most of our conversation can be invalidated, and we’re likely very much in agreement.
> When it comes to pay, it’s an inherit property: you’re looking to max out your pay, and they’re looking to minimize.
While I can understand what drives this statement, I believe it's fundamentally flawed (from both perspectives).
A business is attempting to minimize and maximize many things simultaneously. One of those should be maximizing employee "happiness" for the purposes of retention, productivity, etc. Similarly, they are attempting to mimimize costs. The employee is also working to minimize and maximize many things at once. And, similarly, one area they work to also maximize is their own personal "happiness".
So, at a fundamental level, the employee and a good employer should both have they employee's happiness as a stated goal of something they'd like to maximize.
Happiness (personal and professional) can mean many things. And, an employer has many levers they can pull to help improve an employee's happiness. Sadly, one of the fundamental problems that exists in a typical employer/employee relationship is that there are very few things that an employee feels they can discuss with an employer in an attempt to maximize their own happiness; salary is typically at the top of that list.
When an employee finds their happiness tanking, it could be for many reasons. And, salary could be a cause of the unhappiness. For example, maybe the employee has taken on considerably more work in the past year and doesn't feel fairly compensated for it. But, it's quite often been my experience that the issue is actually something else entirely, and the employee is just grasping at one of the only levers they see available to pull on in the hopes it will make them happier (spoiler: it rarely does).
An example (true story) would be the Day Care provider used by the employee is no longer an option, forcing them to look for new Day Care options (highly stressful), and they are either farther away and/or cost considerably more.
An employee wouldn't typically feel comfortable bringing this (personal) problem with their employer, and instead simply ask for a raise without stating that it's to cover the increased costs (after all, this is the employee's problem). But, because they did bring up the root problem, the employer was able to discover it was an issue for many of the employees. They then found it was more cost effective to team up with a local Day Care provider within a few blocks and help provide subsidized Day Care for all the employees within walking distance. It had the benefit of dramatically improving the employees' quality of life, retention, peoductivity, etc. Likewise, it was cheaper than giving everyone raises and not actually solving the root problem.
To the OP, my recommendation would be to think through the fundamental reason why you want a higher salary. There's nothing wrong with wanting more money, and if that's what it is, go for it. But, it means you will likely need to switch jobs. If the raise, however, is a means of trying to fix something else and make you happier, think through what that is and be open to working with your employer to come up with solution together (which might be a raise!).
I kind of wish that was true. What I do now is almost completely different from what I was hired to do at my current job. Other people leaving, me getting to inherit their projects and responsibilities on top of my own, and yet my boss (who is also brand new because my previous boss resigned recently) wants to get settled and get to know me before recommending a promotion.
Yeah, I'm not waiting that long. For him it might have only been a few weeks, but for me it's been over three years.
Did all of that change because you got an offer from another company? Because that's the issue we're discussing here: whether it's the other offer that makes you more valuable, or the added responsibilities.
I've noticed a few companies seem to be the ones many of my former colleagues flock to, and they rarely stay there for very long. My suspicion is that these companies know they need our specific talent, and use pay (or a similarly narrow carrot) to poach them when they have little else to offer. Then it turns out to be not worth it for one reason or another, and they quickly leave. Sometimes these people seem to go through a series of very short jobs at the same set of companies before settling somewhere else. When I speak with these former colleagues, usually pay or rate of advancement is the key driver, and often they're someone I'm not surprised wasn't advancing or getting raises quickly.
I agree about counter-offers being a lousy basis for a work relationship. It's like getting married because someone says "propose-or-we-break-up". But also don't just chase a minor raise at the cost of all else. Know what you're genuinely worth. Be almost as suspicious of someone who's offering you more money than you're worth as you are of someone who's offering you less money than you're worth. It could be a sign that they're struggling to retain people or attract people, and are throwing money at the problem (money's not always the problem). It could be that they have unsustainable growth, and aren't watching expenses and are just trying to increase headcount. It could be your current employer is an exploitative jerk, but just be aware.
This whole discussion, however, is divorced from how healthy companies function.
In healthy places, what it takes to promote someone to the next level and his or her progress on that is a regular subject of discussion in his or her scheduled 1-1s with his or her manager.
So this whole tree which assumes that what the next level is, what that looks like for a specific employee, and that employees progress on attaining that level are entirely unknown seems just strange.
I don't, fortunately. But it's a recurring topic, and the conclusion at the end is always the same: counter offers are "too little too late", and possibly even a trap: maybe they just want to retain you for long enough to train your replacement, after which you will be fired and the new job you found will have been taken by someone else.
This is true for large companies. For cash-strapped organizations (like startups) they could really want you to stay but would rather not stretch themselves thin unless they were forced to.
I got smaller raises by negotiation, I got bigger raises by changing jobs; but the most satisfaction I got was by realizing that I perceive the whole thing as rotten and changing occupations altogether. Your own mileage may vary.
As I've written elsewhere I do "an honest day's work" type of gig, specifically I go up and down a rope for purposes of tree-trimming and construction. I enjoy it very much. Never got to use my athletic build before that, so that now I feel like a master of two out of three domains: physical and intellectual, in my life. Spiritual is in development :)
2. Gather evidence FOR paying you more. You need more. Someone is getting more doing the things you do. You're doing more than what is expected of you. Things hinge on you. Make some evidence if it doesn't yet exist.
3. Gather evidence AGAINST paying you more, and prepare to refute it. Make some, if it doesn't exist yet and prepare to give up some things or distance yourself from some things. Get into your manager's head for that. Talk to them: say, if I (you) needed help with what you're doing, what would they be prepared to offer? Prepare using that.
4. Spend at least two weeks doing the above. Then schedule a morning meeting with your manager, right after lunch is best. This will be hard, better have shuffle the world around you in your favor. Good luck.
0. Read some of this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19542087 if you get stuck.