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The one-salary experiment, ten years in

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131–140 of 309 posts

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same thing happens when you've been with a mobile/telecom/etc company for a long time. They milk you for every penny they can get and give all the promo pricing to new customers. The pay sales higher commissions for new sign-ups and treat existing loyal clients like garbage. It really bugs me to have to waste the time to change providers for everything every ~2 years, but I'd feel like an idiot if I left thousand…

Many companies have done the sums on this and have dedicated churn teams. If you call and tell them you're planning to leave because you can get a better deal elsewhere they'll often match or better it in order to retain you. It's a bit iffy since if everyone did this all the time the incentive to advertise low rates gets removed. As an individual bonus, though, it means you don't need to do all the paperwork it take…

Most of the time it's as easy as calling and asking the first person you get connect to if you can "speak to retentions". I've always been put straight through.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#132
post #84

I've always found it strange that companies don't give raises to current employees. A team I am on just lost a good engineer to another company offering him a $30k+ raise. He would have stayed if our company had even given him half of that. Instead, they let him go, and how will have to hire someone else, probably at that higher salary. So weird, and seems to happen a lot.

Negotiating raises via counteroffers is a very dangerous practice. The employee will tell everyone how they got their raise (and it will get out), and suddenly you have a much larger problem on your hands rather than a single engineer leaving.

Set up a fair, proactive, and objective way to obtain more money, and never deviate.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#133

As an economist, you'd expect them to have trouble attracting highly skilled people seeking only wages. On the other hand, also as an economist and from my own personal experience, there's a whole host of non-monetary benefits a flexible business can provide (which other businesses and corporates seem to balk at), and there's also the little talked about preference of some people wanting a negative correlation betwee…

All I want is the ability to get compensated for benefits I decline, particularly the company health plan. I've never been able to negotiate this successfully.

I was not able to negotiate cash for this, but I was able to negotiate more PTO in lieu of health benefits. Maybe try softer comp methods.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#134
post #84

I've always found it strange that companies don't give raises to current employees. A team I am on just lost a good engineer to another company offering him a $30k+ raise. He would have stayed if our company had even given him half of that. Instead, they let him go, and how will have to hire someone else, probably at that higher salary. So weird, and seems to happen a lot.

Negotiating raises via counteroffers is a very dangerous practice. The employee will tell everyone how they got their raise (and it will get out), and suddenly you have a much larger problem on your hands rather than a single engineer leaving. Set up a fair, proactive, and objective way to obtain more money, and never deviate.

Or, when you leave a company remember to send a company wide email to your old coworkers telling them how much more you make now : )

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#135
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Negotiating raises via counteroffers is a very dangerous practice. The employee will tell everyone how they got their raise (and it will get out), and suddenly you have a much larger problem on your hands rather than a single engineer leaving. Set up a fair, proactive, and objective way to obtain more money, and never deviate.

Or, when you leave a company remember to send a company wide email to your old coworkers telling them how much more you make now : )

Searching any listserv or salary database will get you that information.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies give raises. Have you or anyone you know never gotten a raise?

It's very common for companies to give a cost of living raise in line with inflation, which is effectively just maintaining your salary at the current "purchasing power". Actual real terms raises that mean you can buy more are quite rare, especially outside of tech. Usually the only way to get a real raise is by changing job, either through promotion or by moving to a different company.

You may need to find a better company or try to do a better job of negotiating?

While it's certainly true that jumping around between companies is an easy way to increase your pay, companies routinely do give significant raises to employees.

(It may not happen often but even 100% increments do occur)

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#137
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you went to your manager, or whoever you feel is the right person, asked if you could speak one on one, and said... "I really love working at this company. The work is interesting, I love the people, the culture, . But I also know I could be making X if I went elsewhere. I love the work I'm doing, and I want to keep doing it here, but I also don't want to be leaving money on the table. What can we do?" This p…

I wish I worked at your firm. I once worked at a place and saved them millions in one year. At the yearly review, they said "well, that was some good work". That was the entire review. When I said "how about giving me an extra 1k a year (a bit less than others who had been there for a while were getting) I was told we had no extra cash. Well... wow, I just saved you like 1.5 million dollars. I am not asking for that,…

Don't ask for $1k in a situation like that.

Ask for $10k, maybe even 15 or 20.

It's harder to get them to say yes, period, since that requires actual action on somebodies part.

So you might as well make the bigger ask, and then if negotiation ensues you can "settle" and still get more than you would have gotten by asking for a smaller amount initially.

This can make it feel like a win for both sides.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#138
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you accept a lower salary if you opt to work four days a week?

I would hope not. This article suggests that this is not the case (sorry about the adblocker modal): https://www.dutchnews.nl/features/2016/06/professor-aims-to-...

If that's the case, why do only 28% of working men opt-in for that benefit?

Also, it's pretty wild that you are effectively entitled by law to a 25% increase in salary if you have a child under 9.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#139
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies give raises. Have you or anyone you know never gotten a raise?

2-5% raises are all I've seen pretty much (which is just cost of living).

I see this sentiment often, but I don't quite understand. Inflation has been at I'm in NYC and our trouble with the subway have highlighted that MTA workers get a standard 6% raise each year as cost of living. But, it's way more than that, and it's actually a salary doubling every 11 years or so, which is not at all in line with overall wage growth - it's huge.

Sure, in tech you can jump jobs every 3 years for 20% jumps (until you're 40), but that also isn't reflective of normality and definitely front-loads early career experiences.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I worked at your firm. I once worked at a place and saved them millions in one year. At the yearly review, they said "well, that was some good work". That was the entire review. When I said "how about giving me an extra 1k a year (a bit less than others who had been there for a while were getting) I was told we had no extra cash. Well... wow, I just saved you like 1.5 million dollars. I am not asking for that,…

So I've been at places that literally wouldn't give me a title increase with no monetary benefit. I'd saved them boatloads of money and doing far more than my job description. Upper management had a bonus structure based on cutting costs. Not actually performing the job, just how much they could cut. I left that place and immediately made nearly 20k more per year, then next job another 25k, then another 20k and I'm n…

>I think I've blabbered on for long enough

I thought it was a great post. #7 in particular is excellent advice, which too few people practice.

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