I am expecting raises to come soon and I am trying to think through how to ask for a higher raise. Any input would be appreciated.
My company does this thing where they buy some kind of market research salary analysis and use it to gauge what they should be paying us. They tell us as much, and it feels like a trap: "We can't give you more because it's not industry standard" etc. Since I'm at the top of the ceiling according to this list, my raises have been pretty much crap the last couple of years.
The other thing is our growth has slowed. We had a few years of over 20% growth, but we rely on the ad market, and it hit us hard with the Apple/Google changes. But, we still have positive growth, just not the 20% the CEO desires.
> My company does this thing where they buy some kind of market research salary analysis and use it to gauge what they should be paying us. They tell us as much, and it feels like a trap: "We can't give you more because it's not industry standard" etc. Since I'm at the top of the ceiling according to this list, my raises have been pretty much crap the last couple of years.
I worked for a company that did that too. "Our hands are tied, the book says you can make within this salary range, and [surprise, surprise] you're already making the top of that range!" Book or no book, this is a tactic I've seen from all 4 out of the last 4 companies I've worked. Every manager will say this. Oh, yea I swear, I'd love to give you a 5% raise, but you're at the top of your range already!
The usual recommendation is to go get another offer at the salary you want and use that to make your case.
Now, I use to think that the "spiteful boss" was a myth, ie the boss that is going to be all pissy because they feel blackmailed and give you a hard time. I actually did encounter it for the first time in 2 decades a few years ago. I was VP of eng at the time and one of my reports used this technique to show that we were clearly lowballing him (which I knew, but budget was controlled by the CFO). The CTO got mad with a big M, saying that he didn't want to be blackmailed or held hostage of whatever. Threw a big tantrum and we basically lost an engineer.
As I said, it was the one occurrence in my 20 years in the industry so it's not very common. Most managers understand that it's business, you're showing them the data and they don't want to lose someone who's doing a good job.
> Most managers understand that it's business, you're showing them the data and they don't want to lose someone who's doing a good job.
Yeah, exactly.
If a 150k engineer brings me an offer for 175 and asks me to match, my options are to either:
* match
* let them go, lose 25k of company productivity while my team interviews & hire & pinch hit for someone who left, then lose 40k in time training a new candidate & waiting for them to come up to speed
The corollary to this: you don’t want to do it often. A previous coworker did this twice & on the second ask his bosses bosses boss (CIO) brought him into his office, looked him in the eyes, and said “last time. no more.” So negotiate well and bring your best offer.
If the guy can regularly get offers that much higher than what they are paying him, that's what he's worth, and they can meet it or he'll walk. Maybe just actually pay the guy his market rate and he won't bother wasting time job searching.
* Offer them 250K to let them know you really want them to stay while also ensuring they feel properly valued by the company, which also exceeds the external offer by high enough that the other company probably won't counter counter. If you can't offer 250K, but, say, 200K is in your budget, then also throw in some more vacation days. Also throw in a mandatory minimum severance guarantee for good measure, so they don't have to worry about layoffs.
My company does this thing where they buy some kind of market research salary analysis and use it to gauge what they should be paying us. They tell us as much, and it feels like a trap: "We can't give you more because it's not industry standard" etc. Since I'm at the top of the ceiling according to this list, my raises have been pretty much crap the last couple of years.
The other thing is our growth has slowed. We had a few years of over 20% growth, but we rely on the ad market, and it hit us hard with the Apple/Google changes. But, we still have positive growth, just not the 20% the CEO desires.