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Entry tags:
- compensation,
- gender equity,
- pay,
- rant,
- salary,
- tech,
- work
#5 rant on work pay stuff
[spun off from the previous post]
It was my 1-year anniversary at work at the beginning of October! Time passed by, really quickly, but it also feels like it's been a year and I've gotten to learn a bit.
Sadly my cohorts and I who were hired from the same school were holding out hope that around now we'd be renegotiating salary, since we were given low offers to start out with and more or less promised salary adjustment after one year. But since I began poking around to get input and advice from co-workers and acquaintances about this, I got hints that negotiating my salary might not go as well as I hoped.
For one, it seems like they actually plan on giving us raises in February, without a formal review process (that is the time everyone in the company normally gets raises based on their performance, and we have this so-called "continuous feedback" policy, so annual reviews are no longer standard and must be specially requested). One ray of hope is that our boss did mention that "we've learned a lot" and that "would be taken into account" when we get our raises, hopefully meaning we wouldn't be capped at the normal company-wide percentage raise limit, which would do little to address our low starting salary. Also, the "raise" is retroactive and backdated to our first year anniversary, I think, so our paychecks would do catch-up for the months between now and Feb. when the raise should have been in effect.
Still sound a little weird to you? If so, I agree. It might be normal policy for this company, but it's not a lot to raise my confidence since we had to broach the topic of our salary raise ourselves (maybe normal)-- AND ALSO the friend of our boss who helped referred us to the company said he thought it was highly unlikely we would get more than a 5k raise (this was before our boss said our growth would be taken into account). He might not be part of the company and so might not know what's really up, but this offended me. Why? Because when he referred us, he also recommended that we not negotiate our salary -- this is literally the opposite of conventional wisdom! and the normal advice he offers everyone else who was not considering an offer at this company. Seems kinda shady to me...
Anyway, the point is, this mentor advised us not to initially negotiate our salary, which supposedly was "a good offer for our level of experience" (but is relatively low for the industry in general in this high-pay area for the position's role).. but it turns out that when it came down to it, he didn't think we would be able to re-negotiate our salary significantly to adjust for our growth? That means that when he gave us that advice, he was basically telling us to resign ourselves to being undercompensated for as long as we stay at this company, unless we hold out long enough for a significant promotion and pray that it will leap up to market rate at that point. ٩(`皿´҂)ง Only he wasn't actually transparent about that at the time.
He also (when we asked him for advice about renegotiating our salary) spewed some BS about how he didn't like us focusing on pay because he feels for your first software engineering job, you should focus on doing what you love, learning the most you can, and then the money will come in naturally afterwards. He made it sound like that by being concerned about our salary and compensation in the first place, we were being too focused on pay, which is not what matters for your first job. And you know what? It's not like I totally disagree. Maybe there's some reason to that. The most important thing you should care about is what you're learning and whether you like your job and the people you work with. If your job has all of those, maybe it's fine to be underpaid while you're still at your first job and still learning.
I just don't think that means your salary is unimportant and something you can just disregard completely. Actually, I think your salary is important and you should consider it as an important factor, even if it is not the most important. I just think I would rather weigh all the above factors along with my salary, and that if I take an offer where I won't be compensated at market rate for the forseeable future, I do it fully knowing what I'm getting into.
It seems like common sense to me that the pay you start out with establishes the baseline for the pay for the rest of your career. Maybe our mentor simply isn't the type to think that kind of stuff is important in life, but I feel like it's part of my job to look out for myself and make sure I'm being paid as much as what companies would pay others. As a woman, I hear all the time that a common reason women are not paid as much as men is because we do not negotiate enough, and I hate the idea of simultaneously undermining myself and letting others take advantage of me.
So if you're not going to pay me at market rate, I'm going to ask you why. I'd rather you be transparent about it -- whether the company can't afford it, whether it's because I haven't grown as much as you would like, etc. -- instead of making promises to adjust my salary and seeming less than committed to it when the time comes. Because as much as I would love to live in a society where jobs only reflect your passions, we actually live in a capitalist society. One where a company's lingua de franca for communicating your worth is how much they compensate you. If you do not pay me at market rate and provide no contextual reasons as to why, I'm simply led to think that you do not value me as much as other companies would.
And besides how much I'm learning, the people I work with, the endless amounts of opportunities I'm given at work... part of my happiness at work is knowing that my work is valued, and that I myself am valued at the company. I want to know my work is valued and that I am being compensated appropriately for it.
Aannnyyway, all that above rant mostly had to do with my mentor. It's not like I actually know whether the company will low-ball me again when February comes and they do the company-wide raises. It's just that... I don't know. The words of my mentor didn't do much to strike confidence in me, and the vague promises of my boss haven't done enough to inspire confidence in me so far. It's not a number; it's not anything in writing. Do they actually want me to hold out for four more months past my year anniversary to know how much they will compensate me, only to potentially find out that by "my growth being taken into consideration" I still am paid less than my peers? It's demotivating, to say in the least.
Although I could try to gain some more clarity by having a 1:1 with my boss on this topic, I know I might have more leverage in the case they aren't actually serious about adjusting my salary to market rate if I have other offers in hand and I know my worth. So because I lack total confidence in my company, I'm being prudent by researching the market and looking into opportunities elsewhere before I broach the conversation. Mostly to be well-educated about what I can negotiate for, but if it so happens another company is more appealing than my current one (even if pay were equal), I can't really help that, can I? I'd tell my boss to blame it on my mentor for not exactly inspiring faith in me, and on the company for not being more proactive to make me confident that they do want to compensate me well.
P.S. I know it was a petty rant that got spiteful towards the end. :P Gotta give in and express yourself once in a while.
It was my 1-year anniversary at work at the beginning of October! Time passed by, really quickly, but it also feels like it's been a year and I've gotten to learn a bit.
Sadly my cohorts and I who were hired from the same school were holding out hope that around now we'd be renegotiating salary, since we were given low offers to start out with and more or less promised salary adjustment after one year. But since I began poking around to get input and advice from co-workers and acquaintances about this, I got hints that negotiating my salary might not go as well as I hoped.
For one, it seems like they actually plan on giving us raises in February, without a formal review process (that is the time everyone in the company normally gets raises based on their performance, and we have this so-called "continuous feedback" policy, so annual reviews are no longer standard and must be specially requested). One ray of hope is that our boss did mention that "we've learned a lot" and that "would be taken into account" when we get our raises, hopefully meaning we wouldn't be capped at the normal company-wide percentage raise limit, which would do little to address our low starting salary. Also, the "raise" is retroactive and backdated to our first year anniversary, I think, so our paychecks would do catch-up for the months between now and Feb. when the raise should have been in effect.
Still sound a little weird to you? If so, I agree. It might be normal policy for this company, but it's not a lot to raise my confidence since we had to broach the topic of our salary raise ourselves (maybe normal)-- AND ALSO the friend of our boss who helped referred us to the company said he thought it was highly unlikely we would get more than a 5k raise (this was before our boss said our growth would be taken into account). He might not be part of the company and so might not know what's really up, but this offended me. Why? Because when he referred us, he also recommended that we not negotiate our salary -- this is literally the opposite of conventional wisdom! and the normal advice he offers everyone else who was not considering an offer at this company. Seems kinda shady to me...
Anyway, the point is, this mentor advised us not to initially negotiate our salary, which supposedly was "a good offer for our level of experience" (but is relatively low for the industry in general in this high-pay area for the position's role).. but it turns out that when it came down to it, he didn't think we would be able to re-negotiate our salary significantly to adjust for our growth? That means that when he gave us that advice, he was basically telling us to resign ourselves to being undercompensated for as long as we stay at this company, unless we hold out long enough for a significant promotion and pray that it will leap up to market rate at that point. ٩(`皿´҂)ง Only he wasn't actually transparent about that at the time.
He also (when we asked him for advice about renegotiating our salary) spewed some BS about how he didn't like us focusing on pay because he feels for your first software engineering job, you should focus on doing what you love, learning the most you can, and then the money will come in naturally afterwards. He made it sound like that by being concerned about our salary and compensation in the first place, we were being too focused on pay, which is not what matters for your first job. And you know what? It's not like I totally disagree. Maybe there's some reason to that. The most important thing you should care about is what you're learning and whether you like your job and the people you work with. If your job has all of those, maybe it's fine to be underpaid while you're still at your first job and still learning.
I just don't think that means your salary is unimportant and something you can just disregard completely. Actually, I think your salary is important and you should consider it as an important factor, even if it is not the most important. I just think I would rather weigh all the above factors along with my salary, and that if I take an offer where I won't be compensated at market rate for the forseeable future, I do it fully knowing what I'm getting into.
It seems like common sense to me that the pay you start out with establishes the baseline for the pay for the rest of your career. Maybe our mentor simply isn't the type to think that kind of stuff is important in life, but I feel like it's part of my job to look out for myself and make sure I'm being paid as much as what companies would pay others. As a woman, I hear all the time that a common reason women are not paid as much as men is because we do not negotiate enough, and I hate the idea of simultaneously undermining myself and letting others take advantage of me.
So if you're not going to pay me at market rate, I'm going to ask you why. I'd rather you be transparent about it -- whether the company can't afford it, whether it's because I haven't grown as much as you would like, etc. -- instead of making promises to adjust my salary and seeming less than committed to it when the time comes. Because as much as I would love to live in a society where jobs only reflect your passions, we actually live in a capitalist society. One where a company's lingua de franca for communicating your worth is how much they compensate you. If you do not pay me at market rate and provide no contextual reasons as to why, I'm simply led to think that you do not value me as much as other companies would.
And besides how much I'm learning, the people I work with, the endless amounts of opportunities I'm given at work... part of my happiness at work is knowing that my work is valued, and that I myself am valued at the company. I want to know my work is valued and that I am being compensated appropriately for it.
Aannnyyway, all that above rant mostly had to do with my mentor. It's not like I actually know whether the company will low-ball me again when February comes and they do the company-wide raises. It's just that... I don't know. The words of my mentor didn't do much to strike confidence in me, and the vague promises of my boss haven't done enough to inspire confidence in me so far. It's not a number; it's not anything in writing. Do they actually want me to hold out for four more months past my year anniversary to know how much they will compensate me, only to potentially find out that by "my growth being taken into consideration" I still am paid less than my peers? It's demotivating, to say in the least.
Although I could try to gain some more clarity by having a 1:1 with my boss on this topic, I know I might have more leverage in the case they aren't actually serious about adjusting my salary to market rate if I have other offers in hand and I know my worth. So because I lack total confidence in my company, I'm being prudent by researching the market and looking into opportunities elsewhere before I broach the conversation. Mostly to be well-educated about what I can negotiate for, but if it so happens another company is more appealing than my current one (even if pay were equal), I can't really help that, can I? I'd tell my boss to blame it on my mentor for not exactly inspiring faith in me, and on the company for not being more proactive to make me confident that they do want to compensate me well.
P.S. I know it was a petty rant that got spiteful towards the end. :P Gotta give in and express yourself once in a while.
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Not sure what to think of your mentor's advice. The bit about not negotiating during hiring is weird, but maybe he knew that they were fixed on the salary they could offer and planned to turn away anyone who asked for more. FWIW, I've kind of come to believe the whole "mentor" thing, at least in tech, is hogwash. I think it's usually a lightly veiled vehicle for nepotism.. but then again, I am kind of jaded. haha.
I think were I in your shoes and had the energy to do so, I would throw some resumes out for potential back up plans, and then ask your boss if the upcoming raise is going to be at least [whatever you feel you're worth]. then if they say no, you can be ready to move on. That's all assuming that the pay is a deal breaker for you.. it's tough to decide on these things.
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It's true my tech mentor might have had good intentions. I usually trust him in that aspect. He's one of the founders of the software engineering school I attended. My sense is they had negotiated beforehand and settled on this number as what the company could offer some of his students. I just wish he were more transparent about it -- something like, "hey, this is what this company can offer you. It's not high by standards in this area for a full-time role, but it's a decent number for your experience. You can gain experience here and hope the salary may be adjusted down the road, but you should mostly take the role if you really like the company and the people there and what you will learn. Normally I advise students to negotiate but in this case I am pretty sure they would not respond well to it [for x reason]."
I think he said some but not all of those things as transparently as I would have liked, and I think based on incidents in the past it's a habit of his / the school in general to pick and choose what to disclose (because they feel they have to be sensitive) and sweep the rest under the rug. Anyway, I realized when typing the paragraph above that I haven't had as terrible a lot as the tone of my post may convey. This first job wasn't so bad an opportunity and given the choice, I would probably do it over again. I think most of my outrage relates to what my mentor commented about us being too focused on salary, because I still do think it's an important aspect and he was being too dismissive.
TMI, TMI. Don't worry about responding to all these small details... As for the mentor thing, I agree it can get kind of weird and nepotism is a thing in the tech industry. At the same time, I do think there are people who genuinely love their career in tech and want to help some individuals learn and grow in the same industry, just as they were helped out by kind-hearted strangers in the past. I've tried mentoring myself, but I overcommit quickly and get burnt out, so I'm refraining from that type of thing typically until I have more of my own life figured out.
I've applied to a few jobs and have two phone screens next week. It's been kind of hard to balance both working (close to a product deadline) and trying to prepare myself for this sort of stuff, which I'm not experienced with. And I've mostly been putting off other things, like dating, and only just going to some social commitments I feel I should not flake out of. I have no idea how normal people manage life normally, because like you hinted at, I usually just want to handle one thing at a time. X)
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That said, I want to be compensated appropriately for it...
I feel a little entitled, because tech workers are paid disproportionately compared to other industries already. But I don't like feeling like I'm being taken advantage of individually, when you look at a chart graph and you see your dot which shows other people with your experience being paid an average of 15k more. /: It makes you feel undervalued.
Maybe I'm falling in a capitalist mentality trap, but it does also have an impact on my lifestyle. I want to live in a nice (doesn't even have to be super nice, just not grimy basement in Chinatown level) place with my family, be able to support them and afford a few nice things while building up my savings. It's ridiculous that you have to be paid north of 85k in SF to achieve that. Hmm..