You have three options: Shut up and keep slogging along. Ask for more money. Get a different job.
One of my favorite sayings is “don’t ask, don’t get”. If you are not asking for more money you cannot be surprised if you don’t get more money. However asking too often and in the wrong way will not help your cause either. http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpid1408.pdf I always attempt to keep up with the consumer price index (CPI) with cost of living adjustments (COLA). You ought to be getting 2% per year on average lately. I think any responsible employer is ethically bound to do that. If the company is doing well enough, I try to give merit increases to the good people we want to retain until they have reached a median salary level for that type of job in that kind of industry segment. Almost all positions will top out and plateau. If that is you, your only choice is to get a different position, either in the same company or another. Are you getting certifications? Whether for your current employer or the next one, those are somewhat meaningful. Not necessarily meaningful to your peers, but meaningful to bosses. And they do mean something. They just don’t mean as much as a masters degree in computer science. I remember when your dad’s shop burned down. I would have expected that your company would have sent people over to help. I would have done that. Insurance is expensive. And valuable. Don’t discount that. From: That One Guy via Af Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2014 9:57 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] valuing a pay increase 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> 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 Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2014 10:30 PM To: 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> 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 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
