Steve,
My best advice, is for you to search your soul to decide what you think you are worth. An honest appraisal of what you think you can command on the market elsewhere. List the pro’s and con’s. There is obvious value in your work environment that cannot be measured by pay alone – or you would have left (the commute for instance). The strong-arm approach only works with another offer in hand in my opinion, because if they say no… you have changed the dynamic. But asking for a honest appraisal and asking how you can make more are non-threating ways to make the boss want to give you the raise, instead of feeling forced to give you the raise. Being the guy that sets pay for other employees now, and also looking in my own pocket, I have to do this analysis too on both sides. Just like equipment, value comes in forms other than just pure pay. I put a $40,000 USD value on working at SAF… money I don’t see a dime of but out of the pure satisfaction I have with working for a great management team, and overall great employees. I’ve turned down much more lucrative offers because the work environment wouldn’t be as good, or I don’t feel like I could put my name on the product I’d be selling. That is really important to me, that I can stand behind the product I sell… that I would use it in my own network if I was building a new one from scratch today (and boy does that bug itch some days). The other things make me feel good about my pay, even if it’s not what I may want (and with 4 kids, a house, and a stubborn women who doesn’t want to leave me either… more money is always a motivating factor!). My philosophy, work hard, focus on your career goals, and work towards them. In the end, I think it will all eventually work out for the best. You never know… you might be the guy at JAB in two years running things in your neck of the woods (if I hadn’t gone to 3-dB Networks when I did… I would have been working for JAB myself… and could see myself still there). Good luck in your situation! Daniel White (303) 746-3590 From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of That One Guy via Af Sent: Thursday, October 2, 2014 10:27 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] valuing a pay increase Oh, I dont dismiss it completely, but it should not be in lieu of at minimum cost of living. I have no clue though from an employee side what value to place on a pay increase "negotiation". I didnt give the details of the job I turned down I just left it at I didnt want to have the extended commute. Ive never been one of those strongarm people who says "What will you give me to stay" but everything I read about it basically says thats what you should do, negotiate and leverage everything. But I also know once you alter a dynamic with demands, you pay in the long run. I want another 30k a year every year but thats not realistic. I know our profits have increased at a pretty good clip so its not a recession issue. I know two of the 4 competitors in the area pay on average more than I make for less critical staff (critical being used loosely) I dont know what the other two pay. most of you owners know how you would take an employee walking in with unrealistic expectations, but ou also know that if youd be willing to offer up a foot and the employee asks for an inch, youre not going to argue On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 11:15 PM, Chuck Hogg via Af <af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com> > wrote: Providing Health Insurance is a nice bonus though...especially if he is covering your whole family. My family insurance is friggin' expensive for a family of 4! Regards, Chuck On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 11:57 PM, That One Guy via Af <af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com> > wrote: lol, hes not a dick, hes actually a pretty decent conservative capitalist christian. I started that conversation 4 months ago right after I turned down a much better paying job because of the commute. I got that job offer because I went to meet with a tech from another contract service provider who was taking over our contract, it turned out he wasnt a tech he was the owner of the company, apparently I clean up nice, when I went for the final closeout meeting it turned out to be an hour and a half interview. But afterward i started the whats the future direction of the company, what can I do in the company to give myself a financial and personal growth future in the company, conversation. I screwed up by divulging about half of my business plan if I was going to step out on my own, probably a bad idea. but I keep getting the well theres this and theres that and the i need to meet with x to discuss y and ill get back to you, the most I get out of him is we havent sold to Jab (which I dont want because theres no role for me if it happenned) and we arent closing the doors, and we might look at giving you a dollar and maybe some scheduled raises. I have two kids, a house, this broad that lives with me after making my babies.... a buck every 2.5 years isnt a great future. he had gotten insurance, which we did not have before, and initially I wrote that off as the equivalent as a raise, but the more I think about it, it was company wide, that isnt a retention thing, thats a business expense like the electric bill and bandwidth cost, and next year the contract expires and our coverage goes down, we get the option to buy back the difference.. no dental, I gave the tooth butcher 500 bucks yesterday that i had to borrow, cutting health isnt going to be made up for with 8 cents On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 10:44 PM, Ken Hohhof via Af <af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com> > wrote: Unless your boss is a dick (apparently a real possibility), a good approach is to ask when your next review will be and what achievements or metrics would qualify you for a bigger raise or a promotion. You are setting him up. He says do X and you get a promotion and a raise, and you do X. Makes it hard to deny you the reward, since he set the rules for the game. He even gets the enjoyment of telling himself he motivated you to achieve the goals he set, like getting a rat to run a maze in order to get the cheese, when in fact you motivated him to give you a raise. From: That One Guy via Af <mailto:af@afmug.com> Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2014 10:30 PM To: af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] valuing a pay increase Yeah, Jab starts their phone techs at more than I make, but Im one of those people that wont quit. Im pretty critical, but my employer is one that will just let things fail and deal with the aftermath. Ive worked for the organization for 10 years and this company for 5. Ive missed one deadline, the first in my life, and that was when my dads family shop burned down and I had to take some time off to dig through the rubble. They wouldnt find a person to replace me directly, the routing/transit management would go to a 3rd party consultant/contractor, they would rely on Powercode directly to manage that and the associated hardware, They would contract our partner company to manage the infrastructure builds, he would move from the inexpensive UBNT type hardware on the backhaul network to licensed "set and forget" links, specced out by vendors installed by contractors. The backend systems like our DNS, internal messaging sytems, backup/archiving, etc would either fail or be redesigned by a consultant and maintained under a contract. The contract support side stuff like the windows server contracts he would pick up the slack on for a bit and hand off any excess to our current 3rd party consultant we use for big project assistance. All the extra stuff like surveillance/dvr systems would go to the techs limited by their capacity. Incidentals that pop up periodically like the FCC crap and ARIN interaction would all be handled by the respective agency we deal with support staff. Day to day maintenance would get neglected for the most part, then dealt with in disaster mode by the associated vendor support avenues. New product would be handles by the salesguys from the vendors. So realistically, I am very replaceable, with a pretty big upfront fee, but probably in the long run the recurring cost would be less and an inbound guy to fill my role would really only need to know which numbers to call. So it could even be hes realized this and 8 cents is meant to be an insult. In this industry in this economy, what kind of pay increases should a guy deem fair? a penny more is a penny more On Thu, Oct 2, 2014 at 10:05 PM, Josh Reynolds via Af <af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com> > wrote: How valueable of an employee are you? Could you leave tomorrow and he wouldn't notice a difference, or would all hell break lose? Would it take long to find somebody worth their salt to replace you. Can you quantify and list your achievements over the past 2.5 years? Josh Reynolds, Chief Information Officer SPITwSPOTS, www.spitwspots.com <http://www.spitwspots.com> On 10/02/2014 06:49 PM, That One Guy via Af wrote: im curious from the small business owner, which I assume most of you owners on the list consider yourselves, how do you value a pay increase? (assume its an employee that is worth their salt) Do you try to just keep it where the employee has the same spending power, ie just cost of living to match inflation, percentage based, profit based, set value? In discussions with the boss about future he mentioned a number, for shits and giggles I compared what my last raise is worth today. I havent had a raise in 2.5 years, and based on the government calculators what I make now was worth 80 cents more 2.5 years ago than it is now. The number he said was a dollar, which under normal curcumstances to po folk like me isnt a small raise. but when I looked at the numbers, that dollar only puts me 20 cents up on where I was 2.5 years ago, that 8 cents a year in increased purchasing power. That kind of boils down to an insult. Or is that the wrong way to look at the value of the potential pay increase? I have never believed in asking an employer for a raise, my thoughts have always been that an employer thats a good employer will pay you what they think your worth to them, apparently im worth 8 cents -- All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer. -- IBM maintenance manual, 1925 -- All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer. -- IBM maintenance manual, 1925 -- All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer. -- IBM maintenance manual, 1925 -- All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer. -- IBM maintenance manual, 1925
