Have you ever asked for a pay rise?

[Jacob]

Jacob and CC, good points of course.

I didn't mean that one should always present an ultimatum. But, if your request is rejected - even if ever so politely - then why would you stay instead of starting a job hunt and bailing ASAP? Doesn't staying prove that you were wrong in your self valuation and they were right?

So, when I was perfectly happy to leave and in fact looking already I had no problem politely raising the matter of feeling like I had earned a promotion.

If your request is rejected - especially if it's rejected rudely - then you probably should start looking. Better find out now.

Of course, the dynamic changes a bit if you think it'll be very difficult to find another job. In reality, of course, the potential of you leaving is lurking in the distance - but there's no harm in bringing it up when it's still distant.

[Jacob]

Speaking of salary increases... Amazon just more than doubled their max possible base pay from $160,000 to $350,000.

https://www.geekwire.com/2022/amazon-more-than-doubles-max-base-pay-to-350k-for-corporate-and-tech-workers-citing-labor-market/

[Grey Fox]

Considering their turn around, even in Engineering jobs, it's not surprising.

[Jacob]

Considering their turn around, even in Engineering jobs, it's not surprising.

Yeah. I mean, offer me a 50% raise would I go work at Amazon? Probably not. A 100% raise? Probably not even. And given I'd have to sit through a really painful interview process I'm not motivated to even try.

[Valmy]

Sure. But usually just to point out that I did a great job/won an award/got a certification. So far I always have gotten a raise after that.

But I don't want to be a tempting target to get rid of when we have our next budget crunch so I will probably play it cooler in the future.

[Berkut]

Jacob and CC, good points of course.

I didn't mean that one should always present an ultimatum. But, if your request is rejected - even if ever so politely - then why would you stay instead of starting a job hunt and bailing ASAP? Doesn't staying prove that you were wrong in your self valuation and they were right?

So, when I was perfectly happy to leave and in fact looking already I had no problem politely raising the matter of feeling like I had earned a promotion.

Oh yeah, definitely.  If a person does not think they are being paid enough they should definitely start looking - it is always easier to get a job when you already have a job.  Same goes for working conditions other than pay.  Those are the things that actually causes more turnover.  Most people are willing to take a bit less in pay if everything else is good.  The sweet spot is of course great working conditions and pay.   

We are going through a re-evaluation of our pay and benefits in a tough market for developers.

The owner of the company has always felt that pay and PTO are the same thing. We don't have a defined PTO policy beyond the base 3 weeks everyone gets, and that include any time off for being sick.

He has always felt that:

1. Total PTO should be handled just like salary - it is part of the raise/negotiation process. We are quite generous with salary overall, and his feeling is that we should not have a defined PTO increase schedule,  but rather people should just ask for more PTO if they want that, or ask for more salary if they want that, and when we do regular salary reviews (at least once a year) people can and should ask for more PTO if that is important to them. His feeling is that some people care about PTO, and others care about salary, and we should let the employee decide what is important to them, rather then dictating one or the other. We are primarily a services company that bills hours worked, so there is a very direct relationship between PTO and our bottom line.

2. We should not have "sick" time. PTO should cover all non-holiday time off. I suggested over a year ago that we add some number of sick days each year that people can take, and his response was that if we wanted to add 3 sick days a year, we should just increase everyone's PTO three days, and they can take that time for whatever they want - isn't that clearly better for the employee, and less work for us to track and deal with?

Both of these are perfectly reasonable points from a logical standpoint, and he is coming from a place in good faith with his employees. This perspective makes perfect sense.

We recently did a company interview/survey where we talked to everyone about what we can do to make the job more attractive and their lives better, etc., etc.

Two things came out of that that is interesting/amusing give the above:

1. Over 75% of our employees cited being "well" or "fairly" compensated as one of the things they really liked about working with us.
2. Over 85% of our employees cited "not enough PTO" and "no sick days" as things they liked least about working with us.

Perception, perception, perception.