Planning to ask for a raise tomorrow. Never done it before. Advice?
I have worked for this company for going on three years now and have never asked for a raise before. I have a 1:1 scheduled with my manager tomorrow and plan on asking for one for the first time. I work for a defense contractor so my job security is reasonably strong. We have won some pretty serious contracts in the past 12 months and our company has scaled up from 20 employees to over 50 during this time. I've interviewed dozens of engineers in the past year and I consistently see them asking for more than I make, and management not flinching when they see the numbers. I have seen the bills and I know that my company bills my current client $250/hr for my labor. Which is significantly more than I make. I intend my pitch to go more-or-less like the following: ---------- I haven't asked for a raise before because for much of my time working with $COMPANY was during some pretty serious financial hardships. But $GIRLFRIEND was laid off about two months ago and with that we have lost a sizeable portion of our income. She's having a hard time finding work in her field and this is starting to impact us financially. I was very appreciative when $COMPANY gave me a $5,000 raise this year. This works out to about 4%. But given that I have been at $COMPANY for going on three years now, it works out to about 1.5% per year. Which is only about .1% higher than the inflation rate here in America. I basically am making the same now as I was when I started. Based on my skills, experience, and research, I know I could command a much higher salary on the market were I to try. I don't think $170,000 is out of reach for me if I were to work for a large company like Amazon, a heavy hitter like Tetrate or Lyft, or move into consulting. That being said, I like $COMPANY a lot. It's rare for employees to stick around at a company for longer than a year anymore. You guys give me a lot of opportunities to solve interesting problems and I appreciate the autonomy and flexibility my role affords me. I have a lot of loyalty to the organization and my coworkers. But with $GIRLFRIEND losing her job and us being out $75K/year, it's making some financial goals a lot more difficult for me to meet than I would like. ---------- I understand that you should provide justification when asking for a raise, therefore I intend to answer with the following items if I am challenged: ---------- - I do a tremendous amount of independent study in my free time. There aren't a lot of people in the company that stay up to date on infrastructure engineering like I do. I contribute to open source projects, I maintain an open source project with a handful of active users, I teach myself new technologies before I even need to use them at work. - I believe that I am a heavy hitter on the team. I consistently deliver results and I don't feel like I just solve delegated tasks, but I offer innovative solutions to problems. This is the mark of an experienced and senior-level software engineer. - Just like you I'm sure, I have a pretty consistent stream of recruiters hitting my inbox. I ignore them for the most part, and block the rest of them for spamming me. But one theme I see among theme is that the compensation packages are consistently higher than what I have at $COMPANY. Sometimes well into the $200,000 range. I'd like to reiterate that I don't want to entertain the idea of moving on, but it's hard to ignore the numbers and the way a compensation package like that could change my life and shape my future. ---------- My questions for Blind, are as follows: 1) How does this pitch sound? Does it come off as cocky? 2) Does my "appeal to financial needs" approach work as well as a "Appeal to value add" approach? 3) Are my justifications strong or weak? 4) Should I provide an exact number I wish to receive? What would you say given the above? ---------- TC: $125,000 Bio: Male, 27, DevOps Engineer YoE: 5 years working full time. 7-9 years if you count relevant part-time jobs and internships. Location: Seattle (Fully remote employee) #money #raise #manager #salary
I’d strongly recommend staying away from framing this around your needs. It’s much better to contextualize these conversations around the value you’ve delivered in growth/efficiency/impact. Your spending decisions, life choices, or commitments outside of work are not your employers responsibility to cover. However, they should be rewarding and incentivizing peak performance. Especially if the ROI is better to retain/promote/performance increase a current employee over a potentially more expensive outside hire.
$250/h external rate makes around 500k providing it's a fulltime work with that rate. My understanding was that the employee usually gets around 50% of what company bills. So you gotta be looking at 200-250 at where you are now.
Devops employees are in extremely high demand, at least in non-FAANG world. You're obviously worth $250 an hour to the government. Have you considered looking for a new role? I'm pretty confident you could find something in Seattle or remote at twice your current comp without even LCing
I like to start by asking the manager how I’m doing. If you are performing really subpar and then ask for a raise it shows poor self awareness. On the contrary, if they tell you everything is going really great, that’s a great invitation to ask for that raise. In general, your best bet is to have a clear sense of what it takes to get to the next pay grade. What are the specific skills that are most valuable to the team and what are the differences between someone at your level and the next level? If you can articulate the business outcomes you have driven that belong to the next level and the skills you have for that role, then you have a much stronger case. The slightly tougher case is, I think I should be getting paid more for the same skills you hired me with. That’s still a possible win, and your experience looking at the higher salaries of new hires could be good data points. The most important thing is to watch carefully the other side for signals that things are going very very wrong. Typically when someone gets fired when they are asking for a raise it’s not because the conversation started out in a way that they were going to get fired. Instead it’s because the conversation was going badly, the employee didn’t course correct despite clear signals, and then things spiraled downwards.
Switch jobs to realize your true worth.. keep nerds out of conversation for raise
Already done it. Went from $47 to $115. Felt good. I like this company a lot though. Jobs pretty cushy and they've been fully remote for 7 years. Pretty good culture. Working for FANG would suck in comparison I imagine.
You should shorten your pitch and focus on what matters. Think from the company perspective: the company doesn't care if your girlfriend has a job or not, or why you didn't ask for a raise before, or how much other employees make. It's all about YOU. The company will pay you more if your performance has increased over time, you're a real asset for them, and they are at risk of loosing you for the market. If I were you, I'd think about what your manager values the most and build my pitch around that. It's always good to emphasize how much you like working there, as you did at the end. Regardless of your approach, good luck and let us know how it goes!
Since some people asked for updates: 1) I was given a raise to 170k as I asked. 2) I was given a $16,000 bonus. HOT DAMN I feel good Thanks for all the advice Blind. You guys rock
Glad to hear it, OP. Congratulations! 🍾
TLDR, but absolutely do not make this about your girlfriend’s employment status. You feel you’re a strong employee and you want your pay to reflect the value you’re bringing to the table. End of story. Also, ask for 2x or more of what you would settle for. Good luck.
^ this