
Some thoughts on asking for a raise - whbk
http://heidiroizen.tumblr.com/post/100265592165/some-thoughts-on-asking-for-a-raise
======
spatulon
I recently negotiated a significant raise with my boss. Some of the main
points I made to him were:

1) That I'm the de facto lead engineer on a product that's making €X million
per year while also strategically important for the company. i.e. I'm valuable
to the company and would appreciate them acknowledging that via the well-
understood language of money.

2) That my raise would be small change to the company in the grand scheme of
things.

3) That I could expect to walk into a different job at the salary I was asking
my boss for, and have been considering doing so.

4) That if I left, he'd expect to pay an equivalently experienced replacement
a similar amount, while also suffering the pain of upheaval on a small
development team.

So I tried to keep it balanced between reasons why it would be good for both
me and the company to give me the raise, while leaving him clear about the
consequences of not doing so.

Note that I didn't have a job offer from elsewhere to use as leverage, but in
my case the threat of leaving seemed to concern him sufficiently (recruiting
good developers is pretty tough in northern England) that it worked almost as
well. However, it still left me in a weak position when he asked me for a
number.

I should also note that I was extremely nervous about championing myself so
overtly, and it didn't come naturally at all (we programmers are excessively
meek at times). I'm happy to report that none of the disastrous consequences
I'd imagined in my head came to fruition, and my boss reacted extremely
positively.

------
asgard1024
The problem I see with the article is that it focuses on rationality of
monetary payment and ignores wider perspective of human thinking, which
includes fairness, for example.

I never had to ask for raise at my job (for several years), but with the
change of my boss, it looks like I will have to. I'm actually pretty happy
with the money; what I more concerned about is the feeling of being treated
unfairly.

My boss, unlike me, has all the information, so he can decide to treat people
around him fairly. If he does not, and makes these decisions based on what
people ask him, then he is certainly not being fair. Then, why on Earth should
I want to work for a person like that? Doesn't that kill motivation too?

In other words, what's wrong with wanting to stay humble about your work
(there are many articles that ask engineers to be exactly that, and it's
certainly a great characteristic for a coworker), but at the same time, demand
fair treatment?

~~~
_yosefk
What's wrong with it is one is likely to be paid less.

Theoretically I'd love to work at an environment where you're paid fairly
without having to negotiate, and where negotiation skills would not affect
one's compensation. However, wherever productivity is hard to objectively
quantify (which is very often the case), the compensation is unfair out of
statistical necessity (errors in attempts to quantify productivity are much
more likely than no errors.) Negotiation skills will thus necessarily impact
compensation because they're basically about convincing that you're worth more
than you're paid and employers cannot be "immune to convincing" because they
have no truly objective criterion to rely on.

Another angle is that there are many things worth working on in environments
where fairness is not only an elusive goal, but not even something the
employer aims at; rather, they aim at minimizing their expenses, or out-
negotiating you for the sport of it, etc. You can stay around for a while,
underpaid, and then quit and not work on that thing anymore; or you can
negotiate a better deal and stay and keep working on that thing. Sometimes you
might prefer the latter. Another scenario is, your skills are uniquely
valuable to someone who minimizes expenses rather than maximizing fairness,
and the best deal you are likely to get for yourself is by negotiating with
that party.

------
Kenji
That was a great read. An insightful piece.

In my eyes, this is the most important line: "And finally, here is one thing
NEVER to do when asking for more money. Never ask for it nor justify it
because of your need." That does not just apply to money. This behaviour is
nothing but begging and playing on emotions. Professional people will look
right through it.

~~~
Argorak
A slight reformulation helps: instead of communicating a need, communicate a
wish. Don't dabble on the why. That makes clear that if they say no, they
don't fulfill an expectation, which (hopefully) works against their goal:
keeping you.

------
SixSigma
In MIT's book [1] on negotiation strategy they suggest that instead of
bartering on a figure one should negotiate a way of determining the figure.
That way you don't have a numerical anchor and you also have a mechanism for
the future.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes)

~~~
sweettea
The authors were actually part of the Harvard Negotiation Project, not MIT,
and the book was published as far as I can tell with no university
affiliation.

~~~
SixSigma
Oops, my mistake, and it's there right on the first line of my link.

I read the paper version :)

------
joshyeager
The team at Manager Tools/Career Tools did a great series on this topic. They
go into the details of how to figure out what your market rate is, how to
build your case, and how to present it.

[http://www.manager-tools.com/2013/12/when-ask-a-pay-rise](http://www.manager-
tools.com/2013/12/when-ask-a-pay-rise) [http://www.manager-
tools.com/2014/04/how-ask-a-raise-researc...](http://www.manager-
tools.com/2014/04/how-ask-a-raise-researching-comparable-pay)
[http://www.manager-tools.com/2014/04/how-ask-a-raise-cost-
li...](http://www.manager-tools.com/2014/04/how-ask-a-raise-cost-living)
[http://www.manager-tools.com/2014/05/how-ask-a-raise-
making-...](http://www.manager-tools.com/2014/05/how-ask-a-raise-making-ask)

------
cheepin
> I also believe most employers are not trying to screw you or underpay you.

This is something I hear contradicted here quite a bit. As someone who hasn't
been in the industry a long time, I'm interested in hearing more about why
this is or isn't true.

~~~
paulsutter
TL/DR: IF YOU WANT A GOOD RAISE, GET A COMPETING OFFER.

It's absolutely true. Employers really don't want to screw employees, they
just have no true measure of your value. They have to use your most recent
pay, YOUR OTHER OFFERS, industry stats, and a biased set of personal anecdotes
to ballpark a placeholder when you get hired, because there really is no other
information.

Once you are hired, your manager never thinks about your salary. Until he has
to, like annual reviews. OR YOU HAVE A COMPETING OFFER. And during annual
reviews, he's given one bucket of raise that he needs to divvy up among his
staff. There isn't a lot to go around, nor any way to handle special cases.

That's just the way it works. If you want a good raise, get a competing offer.

~~~
vinceguidry
I've heard this advocated a lot, but I find it hard to do in the case where
you really don't want to leave your company, but do need to correct your
salary. Because it requires engaging with other companies on less than good
faith that you're really motivated to jump to another job. Sure, if you're a
sociopath, this won't be a problem for you.

As someone in this exact position, my solution was to ask for a raise, and
when they said no, I considered trying to make a quick move. But after
realizing that I really don't want to job hunt right this moment, I put my
head down and went back to work.

I think in order to get to that point in your career where you can easily have
multiple competing offers to choose from, you need to be a really good
developer with a spiffy-looking portfolio. Takes time to get there, and
beating the bushes to get offers just doesn't appeal to me, and probably won't
until I've fine-tuned my development process to where I can whip up websites
like no tomorrow. My job is Good Enough for the moment, yours might be too if
you think about it.

Oh and parent comment presented his opinion as a TL:DR of the OP, when in fact
it's just his opinion. The OP is nuanced and quite worth the read.

~~~
kelnos
_... it requires engaging with other companies on less than good faith that
you 're really motivated to jump to another job._

This is what bothers me most about this sort of advice. As someone who is
often trying to hire people, it's a _lot_ of effort to get a candidate through
the pipeline to the point where an offer is made. Intentionally causing people
at another company to waste that kind of effort would make me feel like I was
doing something unethical. I really don't think you should look for a
competing offer unless you're willing to accept that offer if you don't get
what you want from your current employer.

 _As someone in this exact position, my solution was to ask for a raise, and
when they said no, I considered trying to make a quick move. But after
realizing that I really don 't want to job hunt right this moment, I put my
head down and went back to work._

Yeah, I think that's just the value judgment everyone has to make. Either you
get another offer and are willing to walk if it's not met, or you're willing
to wait it out and see if you can get a better raise later. It's a personal
decision based on your circumstances.

 _Oh and parent comment presented his opinion as a TL:DR of the OP, when in
fact it 's just his opinion. The OP is nuanced and quite worth the read._

I think the parent was actually tl;dr'ing his _own_ post up front.

~~~
vinceguidry
Yeah, I think we're on the same page here. It does create a weird conundrum
that makes a lot of people want to solve with asinine and borderline unethical
logic. You know you should be making more than you are, but your employer just
won't see that. The easy assumption to make is that your employer is being
sociopathic and that you should be more sociopathic in return. "It's just
business!"

But the stakes are really high here. Your employer has a lot more to lose than
you do if you jump ship over a relatively small amount of money. You took the
job, so obviously it was right for you at some point. Did that really change
just because they turned your raise request down? Do you really want to hang
them out to dry over what's essentially a misunderstanding? Don't sacrifice
your professionalism to feed your ego.

My solution is to just keep getting better and better until I can make my own
opportunities. Then to start on one as my current projects wind down, giving
plenty of notice as to my intentions. Everybody wins.

> I think the parent was actually tl;dr'ing his own post up front.

Ah, right.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
I'm going to show an opposing viewpoint here: I believe this is the thought
pattern that screws developers over.

It's not about being sociopathic. You said it yourself: it's just business.
Really, that's what it is. You are exchanging skills for money, if one party
isn't happy with the agreement, they can terminate it. Don't confuse the issue
with wording like "hang them out to dry" or "professionalism." Professionalism
has nothing to do with martyring yourself. If you're unhappy with _anything_
enough to leave, then leave.

~~~
kelnos
I agree with what you're saying, but that isn't what we're talking about here.
We're talking about the idea of it being unethical to shop yourself around
with no intention of accepting a competing company's offer. I see this as
ethically neutral with respect to your _current_ employer, but as kinda
unethical with respect to the other companies whose time, effort, and
resources you are wasting by pushing yourself through a hiring pipeline with
no intention of following through.

If you can get a better deal from your current employer via other means, you
should certainly do so. If not... well, I'm personally uncomfortable
interviewing at other companies with no intention of accepting an offer.
Opinions differ, of course.

------
paul9290
Use recruiters to get the best deal.

If your a web designer, developer or software engineer I'm sure your getting
one recruiter a day to a week offering you X job.

A lot of ppl don't like to deal with recruiters but for me I'm flattered and
think I don't need them now they need me. Thus when they ask how much I seek
for their opportunity I significantly jack up my rate. Doing this has led from
going from one company(every 2 years) to another each time making
significantly more money. Though one company I worked for learned I was going
to take a better offer and matched it.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I've never had a recruiter that worked hard on my behalf, every one wants to
do as little as they can get away with.

------
nness
I think a rookie mistake that gets made is to argue that they should be paid
based on the marked rate.

Knowing what the going rate is is an important base for understanding the
direction in which your career will develop, and what you should expect in
remuneration as it develops. But, I feel it is foolish to go into that
negotiation and say "salary averages say I should earn X, therefore, pay me
X."

What you may end up finding is that if you ask for market rate, you'll hear
"if you can fetch that in the market, go to the market." Market rates are an
average, a very broad average, that does not always take into account your
geography, your industry and any specialisation you have. Some companies will
value more, some less.

A better way to approach that discussion is to understand your remuneration is
based on some contractual period, namely 12 months. What you need to do is
work with your employer to set how those next 12 months should be valued. It's
all about trajectory. If you've had a few years of positive development, it
should be an easy case to make that the trend will continue upwards.

It's also an interesting test, if you can't see how your next year will
provide increase value to the organisation, it may show early signs of changes
that are about to occur internally. That said, if you have an actual offer,
that's a different discussion.

~~~
sheepmullet
"Knowing what the going rate is is an important base for understanding the
direction in which your career will develop, and what you should expect in
remuneration as it develops. But, I feel it is foolish to go into that
negotiation and say "salary averages say I should earn X, therefore, pay me
X.""

You should be delivering significantly more value than market rates! Market
rates for your skill level should be a salary floor. Surely you can deliver
far more value to your company than a random developer who walks in the door.

I know I can, as a fairly average developer, easily outperform top developers
because of all the internal knowledge, market knowledge, and customer
knowledge I have built up over the years.

If you aren't worth market rates in your area then you should consider
changing jobs because your company is clearly getting you to do low value
easily replaceable work.

------
bane
I remember my first full-time salaried job. I had just graduated college and
before that had been working hourly part-time and internships and was thrilled
moving onto a salaried full-time position calculated at basically the same
rate as what I had been earning.

About a year into the job I accidentally came across a piece of private
paperwork a less experienced co-worker left on the shared printer that had her
salary on it. It was almost twice what I was making!

I started a campaign to fix this discrepancy. I started keeping track of every
task I performed, even little one-off tasks, and _also_ the impact that
completion of that task had. I often found that the tiny half-hour one-off
tasks I was taking care of without a second thought were generating huge
returns on efficiency for my company. A simple script that turned a 40 hour a
week copy-and-past data entry job that was eating into corporate overhead into
a 30 second run-once-a-week thing was freeing up an employee to work on higher
billable hour tasks. I was not only saving the company money, but making it
money by pinpointing and automating problems in their business processes.

The next evaluation period I walked in with a 20 page print out of every task
I had worked on in the last year, what it was, and how it had impact on the
company's bottom-line. I asked for as big of a pay raise as company policy
would allow.

It worked, and it continues to work everywhere I go. Having an irrefutable
record of your value to the company makes it impossible for them to turn you
down. And when they do, you now have an excellent archive to use for resume
filler when you go looking for your next job.

Things I never do:

\- threaten to go somewhere else if they don't give me the raise, this is
implicit. If they don't give it to you, leave the company. Simple as that. No
threats. Managers don't like it and it's just as likely to backfire on you. I
guarantee they'll muddle along somehow without you.

\- get upset, what employees are paid is a complex business that you can only
ever really understand when you're in the position to be paying them.
Sometimes you'll end up getting paid less than an employee in a similar
position. It sucks, but sometimes there's reasons for it that you aren't privy
to. Don't compare your pay to others too much, compare it to yourself and
where you want to be.

\- demand pay that exceeds what you should be making in that position in that
industry. It sucks, but if you work phone tech support or are a receptionist,
you're not going to be making $250k/yr. If you want to make that kind of
money, ask what the requirements are for that job then pursue them. Hold the
company to that claim. When you fulfill those requirements, if they don't pay-
up, move on. Congratulations you are now qualified for a better job at a
competitor.

\- take a raise, then quit immediately. I feel this is a point of honor, if I
make a big fuss and my manager goes through a lot of trouble to get a silver
bullet for me, I feel like I've just made at least 12 month commitment to
them. You'd be surprised at how important this has been for me career-wise
many years later. I've had old managers who've hired me back at new companies
(or give me open offers) just because I stuck around after they put their neck
on the line for me, even when the work environment sucked. As a manager it can
be difficult justifying huge percentage pay increases for your people (my 20
page list of completed tasks usually helped them significantly).

\- ask for it based on need. "I need to make more money to make my rent". I
did this once, and my manager responded with, "well you should live in a
cheaper place". And that was the last time I tried that. Your company is not
responsible for your personal spending habits, full stop.

~~~
jcdavis
Mostly good advice, but I strongly disagree with

> threaten to go somewhere else if they don't give me the raise, this is
> implicit.

Even in an in-demand industry like tech, this is definitely not implicit.

Edit: To expand - I'm not saying you absolutely should threaten to leave if
you don't get the raise you want, but you need to be able to discuss your
market value with your manager in a meaningful way. The market value is your
BATNA, and without one your bargaining position is diminished.

Companies, especially bigger ones, can do and do mess this stuff up
occasionally, even when they/your manager really likes you. The "take it or
leave it" response to a raise offer is an overly simplistic world view - you
simply cannot ignore the market.

~~~
omegaham
Personally, I think of it as giving your employer "first dibs."

"Hey, I've decided that I'm now worth $X. Since you've already hired me and
it's less hassle to stay than to change jobs, I'm giving you the opportunity
to meet my price before I look elsewhere."

Assuming that you didn't just pull $X out of your ass, the company can then
make its decision accordingly. But if you really think you're worth $X, I find
it strange that you would get declined by the company and then say, "...oh.
Well, I guess I'm not worth $X, then. Never mind." At the very least, you'd be
looking at other companies that are willing to meet your price. After all, you
got your number from somewhere, right?

------
swombat
> _And finally, here is one thing NEVER to do when asking for more money.
> Never ask for it nor justify it because of your need. If you work for a for-
> profit entity, as most of us do, your need is completely irrelevant. While I
> can personally be hugely empathetic to your financial needs and hardships, I
> cannot justify increasing your compensation because of them — that is unfair
> to the company and to any coworker who puts in the same effort but walks
> away with less._

Interesting note on this... At GrantTree we're (still in the early stages of)
trying something different. Since all pay is open and we use something called
the "advice process" to make decisions, to change their salaries people need
to make an open proposal to the whole company, gather feedback, and then make
a decision (note: they do not need to incorporate all or any of the feedback;
we trust them to make the right decision).

With this in mind, the proposal is meant to cover 5 key angles:

1) What do I deserve?

2) What do I need?

3) What is the market rate for my role?

4) What can the company afford?

5) What is good for GrantTree?

We explicitly ask people to include their needs in this. They are people, they
have needs - ignoring that is stupid, in my opinion. If we have someone on
staff who is contributing greatly to the company but has high mortgage
payments, and I pay them less because I have this other person who is
contributing the same but has much lower monthly costs, and I pay the first
the same as the second, I will lose the first because they can't afford to
keep this job.

Obviously we're still experimenting with this (about 3 months in), but I think
that considering the needs of the person is essential - particularly in a
decision model where they make the decision anyway, so they will obviously be
considering their own needs as part of the equation! But even if someone else
was making the decision, considering the person's needs is absolutely
mandatory if you expect the person to also consider the company's needs.

In other words, if you don't care about their needs, why should they care
about yours? "Oh really, this has been a bad year so you don't want to give me
a pay raise even though my market rate has increased? Fuck you, I'm off."

~~~
kelnos
_If we have someone on staff who is contributing greatly to the company but
has high mortgage payments, and I pay them less because I have this other
person who is contributing the same but has much lower monthly costs, and I
pay the first the same as the second, I will lose the first because they can
't afford to keep this job._

Oof. Not sure how I feel about this rationale. If I were the _other_ guy in
this equation, I'd be pissed if I was making the same contribution as someone
else, but got paid less because the other guy "needed it more". Why am I being
punished because I live within my means?

Maybe the response to, "I need a higher salary because I have a large mortgage
payment", should be, "maybe you shouldn't have bought a larger house than you
could afford".

How about this: say this guy works at your company, and presents this
rationale, and gets (takes?) his raise. Then the other guy, who is (for the
sake of the argument) exactly equal in experience and skill, and provides the
same value to your company, steps up to the plate and says, "I would like a
raise as well, because I should make the same amount as someone who is my
equal and peer". Would the group agree with that? I certainly hope so. If I
were that guy, I'd quit on the spot if not.

And this extends to other things as well: one guy has 4 kids, the other has 2.
Kids can be expensive. Does the first guy's decision to have more kids make
him more deserving of a higher salary than the other guy?

I could extend this to just about anything. In the end, once you're above the
poverty line, your "needs" aren't really based on anything rational or "fair".
It's really just what you _want_. I'm not saying you shouldn't try to get what
you want, but suggesting that one person's wants entitles them to a higher
salary than someone who has more modest wants... well, that's ridiculous to
me.

This is actually a great example of one of the reasons why employers like to
keep compensation secret. If this hypothetical high-mortgage guy is that
important to the company, you _want_ to be able to give him more money if not
doing so will cause him to quit, all without pissing off the other otherwise-
equal guy with the now-lower salary.

So my thesis here, I guess, is that if you're going to be transparent about
compensation, that compensation must be based on measures as objective as you
can make them. Otherwise you have to keep compensation secret so you can make
"unfair" deals with some employees as necessary, without pissing off other
employees who don't get such a good deal.

At any rate, I _do_ think what you're doing is a really cool (and brave!)
experiment. I hope it works out for you and your company, but I'm very much
afraid that making personal needs a component of public compensation decisions
will lead to others harboring resentment.

~~~
FranOntanaya
I guess the part of it being a public proposal helps here. Each coworker has a
mental profile of the one making the proposal, and can judge to some extent if
they are the kind of person to live above their means or to work above their
means. In a sense that's a knowledge value created during the day-to-day work
that you just throw away if you don't apply to this HR management problem.

A lot of your examples are somewhat linked to the issue of having just one
person with a very limited supply of knowledge about their staff decide on
salaries.

~~~
judk
I want a $1M /yr salary because I want to give $900k to Doctors Without
Borders. Surely that is a better idea than the CTO's Tesla Roadster and Palm
Springs winter house, right?

------
steven2012
I think Nadella chose his words poorly, but I thought his gist was that "I
envision a time when people, both men or women, will not need to ask for
raises because it will come naturally." I don't/can't believe he is sexist in
the sense that he thinks women should just sit back and wait for their
paymasters to bestow a gift onto them.

That being said, the last person you can trust to give you a raise is your
employer. I don't think it's out of maliciousness, but it's just reality.

It's a rare boss that actually cares enough to guide you and to push you to
make your career better, because that means they will be losing you. I've had
1 of those bosses, when I first came to Silicon Valley, and it affected how I
look at things.

The rest of my bosses just want me to make their lives easier. They will pay
me well and treat me well if I make their lives easier, ie. add new features,
fix bugs, handle customer escalations, and I'm grateful for this because
they've treated me very well.

But things like raises, career growth, it's rare that managers think too much
about this, because it's precisely the type of thing that makes their life
worse, because if you grow out of your current role, they will lose you.

The other part of this equation is that you need to be able to properly
evaluate yourself. If you're just average, then you deserve market rate,
because you're easily replaced. But 80% of all people think they are above
average, which causes friction. If you're really good, then you deserve
higher-than market, but everyone else should get market.

------
pmorici
"You owe it to yourself to know what your ‘market price’ is"

The article provides fine high level advice but doesn't get into how to get
this 'good data' on your market price. Is glassdoor good data? Because my
general impression is that it is not very accurate and probably skews low.
What are some other sources of this information?

~~~
cagriaksay
Glassdoor indeed skews low and gives you a wide range. There are other
sources: salary.com, payscale.com and also my own startup
[https://salaryfairy.com](https://salaryfairy.com)

Instead of giving the market price for a company/job title, we aim to give a
market price for your own background and skills.

~~~
claar
I started using SalaryFairy after seeing your link here -- nice site!

I understand the "collective intelligence" angle you're going for. However,
the way SalaryFairy is implemented seems to "taint" the collective
intelligence, at least in my case.

After predicting quite a few salaries, my score was -9 because apparently my
predictions were different from the "crowd" predictions. This negative score
is encouraging me to "guess" the crowd predictions, rather than simply make my
best guess as to what the salary would be for the given prediction.

Since I noticed that my guesses are, on average, quite a bit lower than the
"crowd" guesses, my new "strategy" is to guess the salary, then pad it
$10-$50k to improve my score.

This seems like a bad thing when it comes to the "collective intelligence"
goal of the site.

Just a thought -- hope it's helpful.

~~~
cagriaksay
It's indeed very helpful. Predictions should be independent for wisdom of the
crowd to actually work. But we did introduce this dependency by revealing
crowd predictions after yours as a tradeoff. We want to give feedback on how
our users are doing, so that they're incentivized to continue making
predictions.

Sometimes what you see as crowd prediction could be just a couple predictions.
As new predictions come in, we adjust individual scores. We are planning to
hide scores until a healthy number of predictions are made on that profile.
That should help a bit on the dependency issue. We are open to suggestions as
well. Thanks for the feedback.

~~~
jghn
It seems _way_ off for my area (Boston). It's prediction for me is about 15K
low and I know I'm fairly underpaid based on offers I've received from other
companies (I like where I am and am fine w/ the low salaries). I found a
similar pattern when I went to do predictions, the crowd's wisdom simply
didn't seem to match up with the reality that I have seen.

And of course, as the GP stated, once I started getting dinged for guessing
higher than the predicted score, I started lowering my predictions. All the
scoring system managed to accomplish was to drive my predictions closer to the
standard data, which seems like a bad way to motivate people to give honest
answers.

------
s0uthPaw88
What I like about this article is that it points out that human capital is a
marketplace. No matter what you perceive your value or worth to be, your worth
in the marketplace is only what you can get someone else to compensate you
for.

If you feel there is a discrepancy between what you are currently being
compensated and what you are worth then it is your job get fair value for your
skills. Either you prove your worth to your current employer or you find
someone in the marketplace that is willing to pay the price you have set for
your skills.

------
aceperry
Great perspective and advice over Satya Nadella's recent gaffe about advising
women to not ask for a raise. Roizen's article explains and examines some of
the issues behind compensation and raises. She weaves in her own experiences
to make the case that asking for a raise is one of the better things to do,
from both the employees' and employers' perspective.

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aceperry
I got to wonder about the downvotes that I received. I've noticed that there
are some guys (mostly) who will reject anything that a woman says, no matter
what the message. Glad to see that most of the posters on this topic are in
favor of asking for a raise, unlike Nadella's statement.

