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0 pointsajg197714y ago0 comments

Honestly, the best way to obtain your newly-discovered market worth is to leave and find another job. In almost every job your only chance of negotiating a competitive salary is before you start.

Sure, you can talk to HR and your manager and perhaps see some form of bump in salary, but if you're significantly underpaid then a) it's likely other people are too and they won't want to rock the boat, b) there's a decent chance you wouldn't leave anyway, and c) even if you do chances are they can fill your position for what they're paying you now.

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rapind14y ago

Agreed. Not only that, but the less people pay for your services, the less they respect those services (it doesn't feel as earned as the next guy billing twice as much).

So you pretty much have to jump. Which is likely anyways since if you were being paid less than half than everyone else around you and doing the same or better work, you'd probably be more than a little annoyed.

praptak14y ago

This is a sad fact. There are huge (irrational?) barriers for giving employees big raises or bonuses. Take Borland for example - they'd rather sue Microsoft for brain-drain (i.e. paying the employees more) than match the offers: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-279561.html

llimllib14y ago

> There are huge (irrational?) barriers for giving employees big raises or bonuses.

Since they exist at almost every company, I think it seems probable that it's rational. Here's a simple possible argument for their rationality:

Creating big barriers to large raises/bonuses discourages employees from sharing salary info, since there's little they can do about it. Furthermore, the more your employees are worrying about their salary, the less they're working.

jessedhillon14y ago

> ...I think it seems probable that it's rational.

It's an example of bounded rationality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality

The decisions seem rational given the perspective and limitations of the decision-makers.

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