131–140 of 196 posts
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The type of company and management I'd recommend people strive to work with prefers to retain good staff rather than hire fresh.
Hiring itself and losses from going without are very expensive, I find it weird that any company wouldn't rather retain. I wouldn't ever be surprised that hiring cost $10k all up.
No offense, but this is applicable in fairy land or in an idealized and fair society/economy. Sure there are exceptions and I bet there are software developers who get what they deserve, but the majority is in no position to negotiate a 3-5% raise. I'm sure that for someone working in Silicon Valley it's true but not for many countries I can think off (including Greece where I work).
It's not necessarily true for Silicon Valley either. Despite the whole "shortage of engineers" fairy tale that just won't die, it's very much an employer's market, and employers are in the driver's seat when it comes to compensation.
What makes you think it's an employer's market? Do you think Google/Facebook/etc. are paying $250k out of the goodness of their hearts?
Just because your personal experience doesn't confirm that it's very much an employee's market doesn't make that false. Keep in mind that the market is very skill-sensitive. Not all positions have intense competition for employees, but there is a huge amount of demand for senior engineers who are well-versed in a web stack.
If only things were so easy. Our department gets allocated $XX,XXX each year for raises. My boss has to split that among eight people. If I were to get a 5% bump like OP recommends, other people would get nothing. Sounds like typical D-grade manager motivation. "Everyone work yourself to death and I might throw you a bone after one year!" I'd rather give up that 5% to have a sane work-life balance. It's common knowle…
I also get a pool to allocate for "regular" annual raises between the people on my team.
There's a different, bigger pool that can get pulled from if there's a case of a mismatch with market rate (e.g. we'd hire someone new into that position for considerably more than the person currently in it is making).
There's also a pool (possibly the same pool as market adjustments) that can come into play for retention/negotiation if an employee asks for a raise. But at my employer, at least, the point of proactively doing the second is to hopefully prevent this one from being needed - once you're in a "thinking about leaving" situation you're more likely to actually leave.
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+1 Never take a counter offer. You'll get more pay but you're stuck in the same company run by the same narrow minds.
In my experience narrow minds can be expanded.
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Being in that situation is so satisfying. Boss: HR won't give me the money for your raise. Employee: I quit. I've been offered more money elsewhere. Boss: No wait actually I can get that extra money Employee: Too late, kthxbai
+1 Never take a counter offer. You'll get more pay but you're stuck in the same company run by the same narrow minds.
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Being in that situation is so satisfying. Boss: HR won't give me the money for your raise. Employee: I quit. I've been offered more money elsewhere. Boss: No wait actually I can get that extra money Employee: Too late, kthxbai
+1 Never take a counter offer. You'll get more pay but you're stuck in the same company run by the same narrow minds.
4. Organize with (some of) your co-workers, maybe join a union. Act together instead of fighting for higher wages on your own. Seriously, the moment you are on a "secret" one-to-one with your boss you have already lost. There's reason why unions have always bargained collectively, and there's also reason why bosses have always tried to avoid this.
If everyone in the union gets X% (with or without a seniority bonus), why would anyone give two shits about putting an effort in beyond the minimum.
You want a taste of what a software dev union is like in the US? Join a government organization where income has almost no correlation with performance and you'll be ready to put a gun to your head after 6 months due to the glacial pace people work at (assuming you want to get things done efficiently).
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I've never seen it happen successfully. I've done it at least half a dozen times in my career. I was told "the maximum we can give is a $7k raise since there is a fixed pool for raises in the department." I said if I quit and you have to replace me, not only will you have to hire 2 devs to replace me (as I pulled dev and sysops duty) and pay them market salaries, you will have to pay a recruiter 20-30%. They still wo…
> They still wouldn't budge, so I got a counteroffer for $30k more than I was making, Getting a counteroffer is not the same as what the OP is suggesting. Using another job offer as a leverage for a raise is not recommended by most experts. Just google "Should i accept a counteroffer?". Mainly because you create bad blood at your current employer and you have to be ready to follow through on your threat. Also, that e…
If you can bring in more than you make they will pay - management doesn't care about another 10k. They know what the replacement cost is.
When my contract was up for renewal, what worked for me was to mention to my manager that people doing my job in other companies were being paid $20 more per hour than I was. I was hoping for a $5 increase or maybe even a $10 one but he gave me the whole $20 and made me promise not to tell anyone. Six months later, we got a new CEO and my contract was terminated because I cost too much.
If only things were so easy. Our department gets allocated $XX,XXX each year for raises. My boss has to split that among eight people. If I were to get a 5% bump like OP recommends, other people would get nothing. Sounds like typical D-grade manager motivation. "Everyone work yourself to death and I might throw you a bone after one year!" I'd rather give up that 5% to have a sane work-life balance. It's common knowle…
That surely sounds like a negotiation tactic was played on you. "I cant give you a raise without taking it from someone else" or "It's out of my hands" are cut and dry sales tactics. I am a bit pejorative to that tactic because if answered correctly, it actually harms the salesman: proclaiming you cant give X salaries means that they dont respect market rates and thus an employee is incentivized to leave to someone t…
If our across the board raise rate is 3% and I give you 5%, I had to give someone else 1%. In practice, I would like take 0.25-1% from more people to spread the pain out some.
If there was someone performing at a level that made me feel it was okay not to give them a raise, I might grab it all from them. But doing this pretty much means they will leave in 3-6mos or I will wind up letting them go sooner. They were likely already on a PIP or we've had serious performance discussions throughout the year.
It's not a tactic, it's simply the way it is. not giving a raise to someone is a signal that puts the wheels in motion for them to be gone. Your relationship with them will be tested, likely broken. If I want to keep everyone on my team, barring extraordinary circumstances, I need to generally even them out. Evened out seems to settle between 2.75 and 3.25%.
What most people don't say is that a good company will have set aside a pool of money for retention. It could be a salary correction because someone got in cheap and we recognize that we need to adjust them up more than a simple raise- most of the time it's the emergency money I can go to the CEO and beg for in order to match that offer you got if I really want to keep you and think you'll be happy to stay.