Even if you force them to give you a raise now, that doesn't mean you "won". They might just skip you when they finally "give a raise to everyone".
Ask HN: Why corporate culture never increment your salary?
51–60 of 76 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why corporate culture never increment your salary?
#52You've been doing it wrong: I practice shrinkflation principles, and work one less minute every month. That way, I effectively get a 2% raise at the end of every year. If the company isn't satisfied with my performance, they can give me a raise to work more again.
Shortly after being acquired by IBM, I bumped into an acquaintance who'd been through the same process a few years previously. I asked, "What's it like?", he replied, "Acquirees never get a pay raise, but it's very easy to ensure your hourly rate goes up every year".
Most people I subsequently met were acquirees, and his observation seemed to apply almost universally.
Re: Ask HN: Why corporate culture never increment your salary?
#53Your mindset should be like this:
Think of buying a house. You want to buy; a seller wants to sell. You haggle over a price, and if the price is acceptable to both of you, you agree. The price might be higher than you'd like if there aren't many (or any) alternatives; it might be lower if there are lots of alternatives. There is no "correct" price. Only an agreement.
Your salary when you join is just like that. Salaries go up if skills are scarce. They go down if skills are plentiful. There is no "fair" salary.
The hard bit is realising that that's still true once you're inside an organisation.
Your salary might be lower than average, but you won't leave because you like your team or the location or the mission of the company. Just as you'd pay more for a house because it's near your kids' school, or near a lake or a beach or whatever you like.
Your salary might be higher than average, but you won't stay because you're treated badly, or the commute is far or somewhere else is willing to pay more. Just as you'd potentially move to a neighbourhood you don't like to get your kid into the school you think would be best for them.
Tl;dr: you have agency. It just doesn't feel like it when you think of employers as powerful and you as weak. Your best safety net is other employers. And you need to exercise your agency in these ways:
- talk to your boss about salary. Do you have pent-up frustration about your boss not initiating this conversation? You're just as capable of initiating it. Just as a house seller shouldn't get silently angry at an offer they don't like - they should respond with a no, and a counter-offer. Just talk. And go in with everything you want. Can't get a higher salary? What about a couple more days of annual leave? Or some training you really want to do? Or an internal transfer to another country? Think of all the things you would like, and see what you can get. If they end up offering you some things from that list, you can see if you like the look of the new package in total and stay, or decide it's still not worth it for you.
- if talking doesn't get you what you'd like, accept it and start quietly looking for new jobs. Ideally you'd be doing this all the time, but it is a lot of effort. Start here. Understand if where you are is your best option, or not. Remember there's no fair salary or anything like that. It's just like buying a house. You might already be in the best house for you.
- if you decide there are better options out there, then you have to get them to accept you! If you get an offer you like, accept it. Tell your boss, and don't accept a counter. And don't hold it over your boss. It would be weird to go back to a house-buyer as a seller who got a higher offer elsewhere and boast to them about the better offer you got. Just be polite and professional.
- enjoy your new job! Or if you decided to stay, your current job!
Re: Ask HN: Why corporate culture never increment your salary?
#54Re: Ask HN: Why corporate culture never increment your salary?
#55Look at the 'problem' from the company's perspective. They're making bank. They're not losing staff. They might not even know you're unhappy. Why would they change anything? If you want things to change you have to act.
This is common but shortsighted approach. They are not losing staff now. But they should be aware that it doesn't mean they will not lose it in future and should work toward preventing it. Raise is one way to do it.
Re: Ask HN: Why corporate culture never increment your salary?
#56I got used (in the UK) to get at least a cost of living bump each year for inflation so I wasn't actually getting poorer each year in real terms.
My current employer doesn't do this as a matter of course, and I don't like the feeling of becoming poorer each year. If they don't sort it out, I will leave at some point. There's many other good things though, so I'll see what happens...
Re: Ask HN: Why corporate culture never increment your salary?
#57One of the best lessons that I've been taught in my life is to never overestimate people's rationality and cognitive coherence. The same works for organizations.
Companies not matching significative individual value with significative salary is not necessarily part of a meaningful strategy on their side. They might just do it because that's how slow the job market has moved for X years before the boom of IT, but there's no guarantee that it makes the slightest sense.
I've worked in so many orgs that ended up on the verge of crashing just because they couldn't hire/retain talent. This problem coexisted with their attempt of fixing it by working with consulting companies, which charged 10x what an employee/contractor would've charged. Why not hire someone able to match their expectations you ask? "It costs too much money/time/attention" has always been the answer. In the meantime, consulting shops needed constant monitoring because of their usual tendency to overpromise and underdeliver.
IMHO the most successful companies happen to be the ones which defy common salary negotiation/adjustment practices, and that's not a coincidence. They just think about it and see that paying skilled people a decent amount of money makes sense. And then they can focus on their product/services without getting lost in turnover hell.
Side note: high salary means that an employee costs too much to get him to work on minor stuff. Sometimes you outgrow a team, and if the company doesn't have enough high level problems to throw at you, and they don't care too much about it, then you might peacefully negotiate a goodbye agreement.
Re: Ask HN: Why corporate culture never increment your salary?
#58That's why you need to unionize, that's the only way to have a leverage on a big corporate company if it doesn't have proper compensation scheme adjustments.
Re: Ask HN: Why corporate culture never increment your salary?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they're expecting more then a small raise will push them to leave.
No raise will push harder.
You'd think so, but it doesn't. People will wait for the 'big raise' that's 'coming soon' for a really long time. Getting a small raise tells them that there won't be a big raise, so they look for a new role as soon as they get it.
Re: Ask HN: Why corporate culture never increment your salary?
#60Look at the 'problem' from the company's perspective. They're making bank. They're not losing staff. They might not even know you're unhappy. Why would they change anything? If you want things to change you have to act.
How accepted is it to tell your boss that you can make $X more at another company?
It's very common. It's a risky move though. Some managers will suggest you leave and find a role paying that because they can't match it. Some will suggest you wait until they can persuade their boss that you deserve a raise (might never happen). Some will tell you that they think the other company is overpaying, and just refuse to match it. And very occasionally the company will match that salary (but you won't get another raise for years after that, because you're 'already on more than we want to pay').