Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money
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Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money
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Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money
#2I find this article slightly odd. It sounds to me like the author got a raw deal. I've been in this situation before early my career. The old "we want to promote you but can't give you much more money, here's a bunch of vacation days instead". Guess what you do with vacation days when you have no money. Sit at home and be bitter about the fact that you can't afford to go any where. And you look for another job.
> She told me that she wanted to pay me more, but the $2,000 increase, I was already getting paid almost as much as people who had been on staff for many more years than me.
That's an awful reason not to give someone a raise! Politics like this is why so many companies lose good employees. If the author was worth more than the more senior staff, she should have gotten paid more. People talk and there's no real way to keep salaries secret, but who is easier to replace in this situation?
> She more than gave me a fair deal. I stayed with the organization until I was accepted into graduate school. I did not financially benefit from that job in the short term, but in the long term- she put my career in a catapult and shot it forward.
Sounds to me more like she held you back. What could you and the company had achieved had you been properly rewarded? Had to been giving the motivation to take the next step within the company? Keeping you poor sends a clear message that you should focus your efforts elsewhere.
Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money
#3I find this article slightly odd. It sounds to me like the author got a raw deal. I've been in this situation before early my career. The old "we want to promote you but can't give you much more money, here's a bunch of vacation days instead". Guess what you do with vacation days when you have no money. Sit at home and be bitter about the fact that you can't afford to go any where. And you look for another job. > She…
Its not wrong for you to approach everything so skeptically, but I think you have to see it from the authors perspective:
1. He clearly has an altruistic bent (he'd just returned from the Peace Corp. in Kenya)
2. He liked his position for its flexibility and variety as noted throughout the article.
I think the point of the article is that many people approach salary negotiations as an optimization of just salary. But his real desire was to be happy and money was only one component of that. The boss found ways to make him happy without meeting his salary demands.
The story isn't a story of a 'clear win' for him, its an analysis of how to approach negotiations. Salary negotiations aren't always about maximizing your salary, you can make them more flexible by maximizing for your happiness. It presents more flexibility to both participants.
Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money
#4I find this article slightly odd. It sounds to me like the author got a raw deal. I've been in this situation before early my career. The old "we want to promote you but can't give you much more money, here's a bunch of vacation days instead". Guess what you do with vacation days when you have no money. Sit at home and be bitter about the fact that you can't afford to go any where. And you look for another job. > She…
It sounds like you were screwed by someone else and are bringing that bile over that situation to to this.
Clearly the author believes it was a somewhat raw deal in terms of the money, read the summation at the end of the article, however he shows that you can get something you want that is not directly monetary, and that long term value can come out of it.
Also he clearly says that he had the chops to find another job, but what she did was make the non-monetary compensation attractive enough that it fit. If it did not, he would not have taken the deal.
Also to address the "keeping you poor" comment, he states more than once that she showed him all the budgeting, and he agreed with her conclusion that there wasnt any more money. Where should the money come from?
Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money
#5I find this article slightly odd. It sounds to me like the author got a raw deal. I've been in this situation before early my career. The old "we want to promote you but can't give you much more money, here's a bunch of vacation days instead". Guess what you do with vacation days when you have no money. Sit at home and be bitter about the fact that you can't afford to go any where. And you look for another job. > She…
Are you saying that she could have fired some other people and given this guy their money? Because he was working so hard that he could replace them? If not where does she get the money? You can talk about what you deserve to get paid all day long, but if the money isn't there, you have to take whatever money is there, or quit. And you keep talking about the company. It was a non-profit radio station in a tiny market, what was the next step?
Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money
#6I find this article slightly odd. It sounds to me like the author got a raw deal. I've been in this situation before early my career. The old "we want to promote you but can't give you much more money, here's a bunch of vacation days instead". Guess what you do with vacation days when you have no money. Sit at home and be bitter about the fact that you can't afford to go any where. And you look for another job. > She…
To some people money is the ultimate proxy for happiness, for some it is not, and of course there is a spectrum. It sounds like money is a better proxy for happiness for you then it is for the author.
I actually had a discussion with my employer the other day about how next time he considered a raise, I would actually prefer more vacation time, or a shorter work week. I enjoy the stability of a monthly paycheck, and I enjoy the work I do. However, given the choice of more free time and more money, I currently desire more free time.
> Guess what you do with vacation days when you have no money. Sit at home and be bitter about the fact that you can't afford to go any where.
The opposite can also be said, "Guess what you do with extra money and no vacation days. Work all day saving money and be bitter about the fact that you don't have time to take a vacation and spend it."
Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money
#7I find this article slightly odd. It sounds to me like the author got a raw deal. I've been in this situation before early my career. The old "we want to promote you but can't give you much more money, here's a bunch of vacation days instead". Guess what you do with vacation days when you have no money. Sit at home and be bitter about the fact that you can't afford to go any where. And you look for another job. > She…
Its not wrong for you to approach everything so skeptically, but I think you have to see it from the authors perspective: 1. He clearly has an altruistic bent (he'd just returned from the Peace Corp. in Kenya) 2. He liked his position for its flexibility and variety as noted throughout the article. I think the point of the article is that many people approach salary negotiations as an optimization of just salary. But…
I'd add that as with any "advice" articles, it's worth being mindful that one size does not fit all. They should be taken only as advice, no matter how assertively stated.
Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money
#8I find this article slightly odd. It sounds to me like the author got a raw deal. I've been in this situation before early my career. The old "we want to promote you but can't give you much more money, here's a bunch of vacation days instead". Guess what you do with vacation days when you have no money. Sit at home and be bitter about the fact that you can't afford to go any where. And you look for another job. > She…
Guess what you do with vacation days when you have no money. Sit at home and be bitter about the fact that you can't afford to go any where.
Good grief, no. I was in a similar situation- I got a day off each week, and worked from home for another. That day off was a fantastic benefit- I could get all of the dreary stuff I had to do on the weekend (grocery shopping, laundry) done in half the time I would otherwise, because everywhere was less busy.
That, in turn, made my weekends much more productive and fun. You can do a lot without spending too much money, you know.
Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money
#9I find this article slightly odd. It sounds to me like the author got a raw deal. I've been in this situation before early my career. The old "we want to promote you but can't give you much more money, here's a bunch of vacation days instead". Guess what you do with vacation days when you have no money. Sit at home and be bitter about the fact that you can't afford to go any where. And you look for another job. > She…
1. I don't think you can be so simplistic in branding her decision as "politics", I'd say it was more "prudence". Quite possibly he was just one of a number of underpaid workers that truly deserved a raise. Giving him an obscene raise would have had a high likelihood of severely negatively impacting the morale of the other workers.
2. "Keeping you poor". That really depends on how you measure poverty - the author clearly feels like the lessons learned from his time at the company were far more valuable than an extra $3,000 a year would be, and given his writing, I'd be inclined to agree with him.
Bottom line... Always work for experience over money.
Re: Salary Negotiations: What is Possible When There's no More Money
#10I find this article slightly odd. It sounds to me like the author got a raw deal. I've been in this situation before early my career. The old "we want to promote you but can't give you much more money, here's a bunch of vacation days instead". Guess what you do with vacation days when you have no money. Sit at home and be bitter about the fact that you can't afford to go any where. And you look for another job. > She…
Are you saying that she could have fired some other people and given this guy their money? Because he was working so hard that he could replace them? If not where does she get the money? You can talk about what you deserve to get paid all day long, but if the money isn't there, you have to take whatever money is there, or quit. And you keep talking about the company. It was a non-profit radio station in a tiny market…
It didn't sound like was a budget problem - it sounded like the issue was that more senior people would be butthurt that someone who hadn't been there as long as making more money.