I don’t get my individual raise until the end of this month. I have seen our company’s budget for salary increases and in aggregate it is nowhere near inflation, more like 2% like you say.
The only people that will get fair raises are people that find a new job and negotiate aggressively. This has been the case for a while but it’s more acute now with short term inflation being really visible. My small “hope” for compensation is that I will get a bonus bump that they will try to use to sell the weak salary increase. I am just reaching 1 year in my current job so I don’t want to look for a new job yet, I will wait at least one year and probably two before seriously contemplating a move.
Like even the people who aren’t particularly ambitious and would be unlikely to search for another job in most circumstances are pissed off about this. “You’re giving me a 5% reduction in pay?” Record earnings last year, of course.
Record earnings are for shareholders, not workers, duh.
Management is going to call the bluff of workers that complain about pay increases, being forced back to the office, etc. I’m not sure they’re wrong. Corporations have been bulling and abusing workers for so long that many workers are not going to a) sense that the leverage has changed for the first time in their lives and b) have the skills and/or ruthlessness to take advantage. Too many workers are going to act like Biden and try to negotiate in good faith with the company on some pretense of shared interest and friendliness and it’s going to go about as well for them.
This was my default mindset for years, unfortunately. I used to think that being a Team Player meant something to anyone other than me, and I was wrong. Maybe it meant respect in the minds of my peers, but it certainly meant nothing to my leadership.
After 10 months and 50+ resumes/cover letters sent, I finally got a job offer that I’m excited about. The salary is 30% higher than what I’m making now! While I’m thrilled with the raise, I’m also frustrated with myself that I didn’t self-advocate more aggressively in my current company. Lesson learned.
There is someone that I work closely with cross-functionally. She has moved to a new function within the business 3 times in the last 4 years, and each time with a title bump and a chonky raise. The last time, she actually quit for 8 weeks and got a new job only to be brought back as a Sr. Director on a team she had no experience on! I’ll grant that her skills, intelligence, and most importantly knowledge of the business/manufacturing ops has allowed for this, but this latest move (back to the company) was particularly eye-opening for me.
We were in the same new hire orientation 5 years ago. She’s risen via 4 title changes across 3 different orgs over the last 5 years. Much of this ascension has been due to vigorous self-advocacy, threatening to quit, and then actually quitting! The business realized her value, groveled for her to come back, and she probably got everything she wanted + 10% more because she had the leverage.
This strategy takes bravery, but it’s possible. And it’s successful, if you’ve played your cards right.
Another big advantage of changing jobs or roles regularly is to turn hedonic adaptation in your favor. The first 2-3 years in a role are usually the most interesting and fun, simply because of the novelty. While there’s something to be said for healthy long term relationships with coworkers, you can probably get that out of your network even if you change jobs. I have very positive conservations with my former coworkers all the time.
This could easily be a brag. If going into COVID someone told you that your income would be completely unchanged for 2.5 years and that 2021 would be a year of record cases and deaths, who says no to that?
The bill from Rubio and Banks would step into that gap by giving workers a nonunion way to influence corporate practices. It would authorize employers to establish employer-employee working groups outside the purview of the National Labor Relations Board that could discuss a wide range of business subjects, including compensation and working conditions. Such groups would not have the power to collectively bargain on behalf of workers, but they would give workers an opportunity to express their opinions directly and formally to management. That’s a great deal more influence than many have now as individuals with no collective voice.
Groups formed in larger businesses gain an additional advantage for their workers: a seat on the corporation’s board of directors. Although that worker-director would be nonvoting, the company would have to share with them all information provided to voting directors. Knowledge is power, and access to it would likely improve workers’ leverage within the corporate structure.
So Rubio on the Republican alternative to unions is something with no power. I’m curious if you can be fired for voicing your opinion to whatever these are called. I imagine so, and if so, they’ll just be toadies who say the company line to get a leg up
Its not particularly accurate or clever, its just bizarre that my direct manager would post something publicly that mocks my and like 3 other people’s career choices.
Well, looks like it’s time to go hunting. After getting passed over for the manager position and covering for 3 coworkers in the last quarter of the year, we had performance reviews in late January. The summary thereof made multiple mentions of how I was “critical,” a wealth of knowledge, a resource for the rest of the team, loved by customers, and how I’d basically doubled my output. There was not a single black mark or a suggestion of what to improve on. It even mentioned specifically that it is on management to keep me happy after getting passed up. My boss’s boss assured me I was getting some merit-based compensation increases in terms of both salary and RSU stuff. This turned out to be 3% and basically the same stock package as every year. My request to get promoted to the next rank along my current track has been me with a “Well deary me, we haven’t actually made a clear distinction between the higher rank and your current rank other than the number of years of experience, so we’ll have to hammer out what the additional requirements are and get back to you.” I would be far from the first person to hold the higher rank, so I have no idea why this is just happening now.
My golden handcuff has now lapsed and been cashed out, and it’s lost a lot of sheen as our stock has gone down. No time like the present to see what else is out there.
