
How to Get a Raise - lionhearted
http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/how-to-get-a-raise
======
jnovek
At SI, we follow the Joel Spolsky tiered structure that Sebastian mentions --
you're hired at a salary based on your experience and talent and you can be
promoted into a higher salary, but we only give cost-of-living raises; no
performance raises.

The reason why we decided this: as an introverted geek, I found the social
I-want-a-raise dance to be awkward and embarrassing. I really just wanted to
focus on working on interesting stuff and be paid fairly. I always wondered
how my pay could possibly be fair if there was room to negotiate up? It seemed
wrong that others could be compensated better simply for being more outgoing
that I was.

So I'm curious -- what method do HNers like better? Would you prefer your
employer to have a negotiated or Joel Spolsky-style tiered pay scale?

~~~
adestefan
I never understood this argument. You still need to sell yourself for movement
into the higher salary range. It ends up being the same system as performance
raises.

~~~
usedtolurk
If everybody's level is visible then your pay tier is more likely to reflect
your value.

------
martincmartin
Overall this is a great article, one of the best I've seen on HN for a while.
One part struck me though:

_It’s nice to work for a good company with a good environment and a fun team,
but at the end of the day it’s not worth leaving tens of thousands of dollars
on the table just to stay there._

I dunno, spending 8+ hours a day in a bad environment with a soul sucking team
is pretty bad. How will tens of thousands of dollars make up for that? By
letting you buy a really big screen TV and sound system?

~~~
jasonkester
I guess since I wrote the quote you're referencing, it's my duty to defend
it...

In the case I had in mind when I wrote that, I used a small portion of those
extra tens of thousands of dollars to take 5 months off and work on my surfing
in Australia. The rest I kept in reserve to ensure that I could take a few
unpaid months off every year since.

As you say, money can't buy happiness. But it can be exchanged directly for
free time, which I tend to value quite highly.

~~~
rdtsc
There is a problem though -- most places don't let you take sabbaticals. You
get a couple of weeks off for vacation and the rest of the time you are
expected to be there.

So the original question still stands. Please answer that:

> I dunno, spending 8+ hours a day in a bad environment with a soul sucking
> team is pretty bad. How will tens of thousands of dollars make up for that?

I guess you have to always write a footnote when you discuss this and mention
how you'd really need to have a place that also gives you enough time to enjoy
all that extra money you'd be making.

The older I get the more I realize that time is becoming more and more
expensive. At some point it qualitatively crosses beyond being arbitrarily
translated into money.

Is another $30k/year worth working crazy hours in a noxious high pressure
environment? When I was 20 I would have said "hell yeah", now, not so much.

Driving 2 hours every day to get to a job that pays another $10k, nope,
thanks, I'll pass. I'd rather have the extra time for family or do whatever
else I want to do.

~~~
jasonkester
Personally, I find any job requiring me to sit in a cube for 40 hours a week
to be pretty taxing, regardless of how fun the tech or the people are. It's
the sort of activity that I try to minimize my time doing.

With that in mind, I'd much prefer to make my year's salary in, say, eight
months, and spend the rest of the year doing things I actually enjoy.
Sabbaticals don't actually require approval if you're genuinely not interested
in job security. The only real thing in question is whether the place would
like to have you back when you return.

One interesting side effect of working lots of 6-18 month stints at various
companies is that you get exposed to lots of technologies and get lots of
things out in the wild that you can point to and say "I did that". That
actually makes you more valuable, and therefore more likely to land the sort
of higher money, short term contract that you're looking for.

~~~
rdtsc
I definitely envy your position. Unfortunately in US insurance is tied to
employment. The moment I go on sabbatical my whole family loses health
insurance. It is something that ties my hands behind my back.

I do get a month and half of vacation and a 5 minute commute to work, so I try
to make the best of it.

~~~
jasonkester
Sounds like a pretty sweet gig, actually. Long vacations and no commute.

You're right. Health care is the tough one. Catastrophic Coverage will run an
individual about $100/month, which is fine when you're young and healthy. But
I don't want to think about what Blue Cross Blue Shield would want for full
coverage on a family of 4.

Given how much extra money you bring home consulting vs. salary (roughly 2x),
you're fine while you're working. But keeping it all going when you're not
might be a bit of an issue.

------
timcederman
I know you say your advice has worked for other people, but it is odd to tell
people how to do something when you haven't done it yourself.

What you're missing from all of this is the uncertainty of fair market rate,
which also discourages folks from asking for more.

~~~
lionhearted
> I know you say your advice has worked for other people, but it is odd to
> tell people how to do something when you haven't done it yourself.

If I'm ever salaried, I'll try it out and report back :)

> What you're missing from all of this is the uncertainty of fair market rate,
> which also discourages folks from asking for more.

I don't think there is or can be a "fair market rate" in an unestablished,
fast-changing field. By changing your responsibilities and deliverables a tiny
bit, you might triple the value you're producing and be compensated much more
for it.

------
keyist
Great advice. The most important part of #3, "stress how much more you’d like
to do going forwards" isn't highlighted enough, however. That is, you have to
establish clearly what you're looking for. The template is:

    
    
      In X months I want to be making Y.  What needs to happen for me to get there?
    

Part of any employee's job is to manage expectations. This way, you're both
communicating your expectations to your manager and clarifying theirs. It also
adheres to the "no surprises" rule by giving prior notice.

Then, you need to occasionally ping your manager to see how you're tracking
towards your goal. This gives you an indication of progress, and uses human
bias towards consistency (as described in Cialdini's "Influence") to your
advantage. If your manager has been telling you that you're on course for the
150k you asked for over the course of 6 months, it'll be difficult to suddenly
reverse when decision time comes.

------
ilikepi
A really great article to have in my head a week away from my first annual
review at my current company. Selling myself has never been a strong suit
(that whole social awkwardness thing, seemingly common in geeks). Stressing
future plans in the context of making the company money, as opposed to just
improving my own competencies, seems somewhat obvious upon reading it, but I
doubt I would have thought of it.

~~~
martincmartin
This is a great idea and I wish you success. It might be better to try a small
change: don't do this during your annual review, but meet with your boss a
month later and do it then.

The annual review isn't a discussion, it's where your boss has decided what to
write in your review and tells you about it. At that point, you need to change
someone's mind, rather than form their opinion. The performance review is too
late.

Instead, consider it an information gathering exercise. Certainly discuss the
details with your boss, and if any of his impressions or weightings seem off
discuss why you think differently. But don't ask for any conclusions, and a
raise is a conclusion.

Then, a month later, ask to see him. Now you're driving the conversation, and
are much more likely to prevail. Don't worry if this isn't when annual raises
are decided, those are for the "company driven" adjustment to your income. The
"employee driven" ones come at any other time.

Good luck, and let us know how it works out!

~~~
mcantor
_The annual review isn't a discussion, it's where your boss has decided what
to write in your review and tells you about it. At that point, you need to
change someone's mind, rather than form their opinion. The performance review
is too late._

Wow, this is _incredible_ advice. I think many of us (myself certainly
included) make the mistake of conflating "time to hear about performance" with
"time to hype my own performance". Thank you; my annual review is coming up at
well, and this instantly transformed and matured my understanding of all the
moving pieces.

~~~
martincmartin
Glad it helped. One tweak: you should definitely discuss anything that seems
out of place. If you did something great that seems to not be mentioned, or
your boss considers it minor, look genuinely puzzled (because you are) and say
"huh, I thought I did a really great job on X, and it was really important.
Did I not do a good job? Was it not important?" Something like that. Again,
you're information gathering, and trying to shift your boss's opinion by
discussing the difference between your impression and your boss's. At this
point, you're not trying to affect the overall summary.

~~~
ilikepi
Thank you both for the additional insightful comments.

In my case, we were told the topic of salary adjustments will be discussed (so
I suppose it will be more of a combination performance/salary review). So I
should probably be prepared for a bit of negotiating.

 _Then, a month later, ask to see him. Now you're driving the conversation,
and are much more likely to prevail. Don't worry if this isn't when annual
raises are decided, those are for the "company driven" adjustment to your
income. The "employee driven" ones come at any other time._

The distinction between "company driven" and "employee driven" adjustments is
certainly important. However, given the company's reality, and my
understanding of that reality, I'm not sure it's reasonable to have an
"employee driven" discussion only a month after the "company driven" one. I'll
have to give this more thought in the coming week as I attempt to formulate a
strategy...

------
btilly
This is not just a good idea for how to present yourself to your boss a raise.
This is also a good idea for how to present yourself to another job in a
resume. For example it is what I tried to do with
<http://elem.com/~btilly/BenTilly.pdf>.

~~~
psykotic
Here is my honest first impression. I'm not trying to be complete or imply
that these are my only issues. It's just a sampling of thoughts I had.

The typeface with its wispy horizontal strokes is murder to my eyes. It's an
extremely poor choice for on-screen legibility with such a text-heavy resume.

Wall-of-text syndrome, compounded by poor typeface legibility and total
document length.

Who is your audience? As an engineer, my overall sense is that I wouldn't hire
you for a very technical role. If that is a correct assessment of your skills
or if your intended audience isn't engineers then that's okay.

One thing I noticed was your bullet point on fixing a cron job. You stumbled
upon a bug with, as it turns out, important ramifications. The way it's
written makes it seem like you're trying to bullshit non-technical people into
thinking this was a technically impressive feat rather than a stroke of luck.
I get you're trying to make a case for your value to the business, but I
frankly find it odd.

You might want to proof-read it better. As a random example, "document how
everything service worked" clearly has something missing.

~~~
btilly
Thank you for your feedback. I'll clearly have to do yet another proof-reading
pass.

My intended audience is the manager, and people higher up in the company. If I
get to an interview with an engineer, I'll have plenty of chances to prove my
technical chops. But to get there I need to impress people higher up. And the
way that I aim to do it is to convince them that I both have technical skills,
and understand what provides value to the business.

Note that since switching to that resume format, I've been offered
substantially better jobs. (And I've landed another good one.)

~~~
psykotic
> Note that since switching to that resume format, I've been offered
> substantially better jobs. (And I've landed another good one.)

Congratulations!

The format's appeal to business-minded folks with no technical background is
clear. Everywhere I have worked and would want to work, hiring decisions have
been made by technical people, so this is never something I have had to worry
about. I can see how the dynamics would differ elsewhere in the industry.

The general lesson is to think about your audience. Another reply to your post
suggested you should have a scannable list of technology buzzwords to pass HR
screening. That might be good advice most of the time but bad advice if you're
submitting your resume by an inside track that goes directly to the hiring
manager. If you were submitting your resume to a company whose culture is
engineering oriented from top to bottom, you'd want to put a different
emphasis on things, and so on.

Best of all, of course, is to have your reputation precede you so that the
resume is nothing more than a reminder and a set of talking points for the
interview. I've been getting used to that with my last few jobs.
Unfortunately, right now I'm in the midst of applying for an O-1 visa, so I've
had to minutely enumerate my technical accomplishments, explicate their
business relevance, and just hoot my own horn endlessly for the benefit of
visa examiners who are industry outsiders and understandably cannot read
between the lines. The level of documentation and the burden of evidence is
immense: 180 pages and counting.

~~~
btilly
My expectation is that the final decision will be made by technical people.
However to get there I have to get through non-technical people first, and
then the salary and position negotiation again is likely to involve non-
technical people.

As for companies that are engineering oriented from top to bottom, I _did_ get
hired by Google. You don't get much more engineering oriented than that!

~~~
psykotic
> As for companies that are engineering oriented from top to bottom, I did get
> hired by Google. You don't get much more engineering oriented than that!

Do you think your more business-oriented format helped or hurt? What business
people would your resume have to pass through at Google before getting into
the hands of technical decision-makers?

I've worked at another large company with an engineering culture (NVIDIA).
There I was referred by a personal acquaintance who was already on the team.
But if I had applied for the same position through their website, the only
other handling of my resume would have been by HR staff. All they do is play
buzzword bingo; an unfamiliar resume format would probably subtract points
with them, if anything.

------
bajsejohannes
Seems like very good advice to get a raise. Please don't take it too far,
though: Always going for the high-visibility stuff can be quite annoying to
your co-workers.

At my former job, I asked for a salary based on a statistic on programmer
salaries. I was certain not to be underpaid, as well as never getting an
astronomical salary. It was totally worth it to me. It meant spending time on
the things I though were right, and not worrying about how it would look to
management. YMMV

------
nphase
lionhearted, which books would you suggest to get better at negotiation?

~~~
lionhearted
My favorite is "Crucial Conversations" -

[http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Tools-Talking-
St...](http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Tools-Talking-
Stakes/dp/0071401946)

Then I've read like 10 more and they all kind of blend together... I'd
recommend getting at least 4-5 that are rated highly on Amazon, just to give
you some different perspectives.

For instance, there's a long running debate on whether it's better to make the
first offer or not when negotiating. The "offer first" crowd says you get to
set the general scope of negotiation. The "let them offer first" crowd says
that their first offer becomes the absolute worst you could get, and you might
do better... and they might well offer more than you were going to ask for.

You want to read at least a few different books, because one might take a
dogmatic hardline stance "never offer first!" - which is clearly wrong some of
the time. Good to hear different perspectives.

If I remember correctly, Roger Dawson's "Power Negotiation" was also good.

[http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Power-Negotiating-Roger-
Dawson...](http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Power-Negotiating-Roger-
Dawson/dp/1564144984)

After that, they all kind of blur together in my memory... but really, it's a
topic with massive ROI for anyone that touches money ever. You're not going to
go wrong dropping 15 bucks and 5 hours fast-reading a book on negotiation. One
good insight once pays for that many times over.

