Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 67 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

#11

Post by beagle3 »

potta_coffee wrote: post #9
toomuchtodo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be prepared to follow through. Always Be Interviewing. Give notice, move, level up, rinse, repeat.

How often can you do this without it being a problem? I'm trying to make it past a year at current job, it definitely requires discipline to see it through. I don't want to be a job hopper but there are always shiny new opportunities.

When the economy is good, less than 1 year at a job seems excessive hopping.

When the economy is worse and employers can choose, even 3 years look like "job hopping individual, will jump ship as soon as economy turns around and he can get $1 more somewhere else".

Just decide if you optimize for comfort or money, and make sure you have a few months buffer for the bad times.

Re: Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

#12

Post by hellisothers »

crookshanked wrote: post #8
nostrademons wrote: post #4

Three main reasons which feed back on each other: 1.) Giving big raises to existing employees often causes morale problems with their coworkers. People talk, and they get resentful if someone who (in their view) is working no harder than them is suddenly getting paid $20-30K more. So giving a big raise to one person usually means you have to give it to all of them. There are mitigating circumstances if you can point…

This is very interesting, especially #3. Easy to forget that the employer's view of the employee is unlikely to change even with the addition of value adding education.

Aspects of #1 are interesting because it offers a path to making it easier to get a raise/promotion if you can creat the optics that enable the promotion. Any thoughts on how to accomplish that?

Re: Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

#13

Post by ThrustVectoring »

Equity compensation is both the cause and solution to this, I think. Newer employees are favored on a cash salary basis, but older ones have lower option strikes and/or larger equity grants.

Roughly speaking, any new equity grant from a company your parents haven't heard of is worth $0 when you join. If your employer is successful, these grants become worth actual money, and that is your effective raise. If not, then you can and should job hop instead for a cash salary increase.

On the flip side, since the new equity grants are worth approximately $0 at signing, employers have to match the actually valuable equity that candidates are receiving with cash salary instead.

Re: Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

#14

Post by panda88888 »

I think there are two main reasons.

1. Internal process: the budget/process for promotion and pay raises are probably relatively fixed for mid to large companies, so there isn't much room for managers to navigate even if he/she champions the salary bump.

2. More cynically, there is also friction for an employee to leave their current position (interview, potentially relocate, risk of new job being bad fit, etc). And this friction manifests as the pay gap between market rate and salary. As a corollary to this, for an employee with a competing offer, this friction is removed and the company is forced to re-evaluate the pay. But there may not be anything the manager can do. See #1.

Re: Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

#15

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #7
peteradio wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck I quit.

You must be prepared to follow through. Always Be Interviewing. Give notice, move, level up, rinse, repeat.

How do you keep the interviews on the DL? The few times I've moved positions it's been a nightmare trying to keep my current boss from figuring it out.

Re: Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

#16

Post by vermooten »

I found I was being 12% less than my peers. My boss said yes I'll get you a pay rise to match. 6 months later, nothing had happened. It then took me 3 weeks to get another job paying 20% more. When I told my employer I had this offer, all of a sudden the 12% appeared. I said no, too little too late - a few weeks later they said "Name your price" to stay.

Simple explanation: they saved money. Of course now they have to recruit, and then the new person needs a lot f time to learn what his company does (it's complicated). Cost is WAY more than that 12%, but it doesn't show up on the balance sheet.

So to answer OP's question: because companies don't really value their people.

Re: Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

#17

Post by rbg246 »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #15
toomuchtodo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be prepared to follow through. Always Be Interviewing. Give notice, move, level up, rinse, repeat.

How do you keep the interviews on the DL? The few times I've moved positions it's been a nightmare trying to keep my current boss from figuring it out.

Schedule them at lunch, do them before work, have a doctor's appointment to go to, there are a multitude of excuses you can give.

It's business, they aren't your friends, you don't need to tell them the whole truth.

Re: Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

#18

Post by nostrademons »

hellisothers wrote: post #12
crookshanked wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very interesting, especially #3. Easy to forget that the employer's view of the employee is unlikely to change even with the addition of value adding education.

Aspects of #1 are interesting because it offers a path to making it easier to get a raise/promotion if you can creat the optics that enable the promotion. Any thoughts on how to accomplish that?

Advanced degree, leading a highly visible project, generating significant sales or new business relationships, getting external recognition for your work and reflecting it back on your employer. All of which are strategies that are successfully employed by many professionals to get large increases in compensation.

Even more interesting is how to profit from these incentives as someone who doesn't work for the company. Many highly-visible startup acquisitions happen because a mid-level executive is trying to create highly-visible external accomplishments that justify them being raised up a compensation level.

Re: Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

#19

Post by IMTDb »

byoung2 wrote: post #3

I've seen it time and time again. An employee wants a 10% raise but management says no and the employee quits. Then after a long search a new hire comes in at 10% more. Why not just give the existing employee that 10%? I think the reason is that big raises are not sustainable over time. If you keep giving your employees 10% raises every year, eventually you can't afford it. So you keep raises to 2-3% as long as possi…

The other option is that after some time you notice that you actually do not need a new hire. Or that the new hire matches the needed position more than the guy that left. Or that instead of a senior dev, you hire a junior one instead.

Everyone talks about the case where it would have been better to just give the raise to the existing employee, but there are TONS of situations where the company ends up winning instead, and those are never talked about.

Re: Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

#20

Post by apacheCamel »

vermooten wrote: post #16

I found I was being 12% less than my peers. My boss said yes I'll get you a pay rise to match. 6 months later, nothing had happened. It then took me 3 weeks to get another job paying 20% more. When I told my employer I had this offer, all of a sudden the 12% appeared. I said no, too little too late - a few weeks later they said "Name your price" to stay. Simple explanation: they saved money. Of course now they have t…

Sorry to be nosy, but did you end up staying? I feel like being screwed over like that would leave a bad taste in my mouth. Every single topic involving pay from then on would just be awkward in my opinion. I may be a bad example because I have a hard time letting stuff like that go, it was very similar to a reason I left my first job in college.
Post reply on HN