4 ms·

By bringing up alternative offers, you’re effectively calling for a re-evaluation of your value. There’s naturally little incentive for your manager to re-evalu

by setr 8y ago

By bringing up alternative offers, you’re effectively calling for a re-evaluation of your value. There’s naturally little incentive for your manager to re-evaluate when the expected outcome is higher cost; there’s clear incentive to re-evaluate when it’ll go lower. So it’s only natural that, leaving your pay solely to the discretion of management, your pay will go down over time. The problem is not realizing you’re in an antagonistic relationship with your employer, when thinking about wage. This wasn’t as much an issue when the general path was as a salaryman, staying in DEC for fifty years, following strictly defined promotional paths. But today’s tech expects job-hopping, and there’s no clear timeline for re-evaluation or promotion. It now just occurs somewhat randomly, when you bring it in, or when they do. Putting in your 5 years and expecting a natural re-evaluation is no longer sufficient.

mcv 8y ago
You're calling for a re-evaluation of your value by asking for a raise. If I realise I'm in an antagonistic relationship with my employer, I leave. I don't want to spend a significant chunk of my life dependent on someone I have an adversarial relationship with. That just doesn't sound healthy. By only re-evaluating my value when I'm about to leave, and not when I ask for a raise, the employer reveals it's an antagonistic relationship, and that's a good sign it's time to leave.
- setr 8y ago
  When it comes to pay, it’s an inherit property: you’re looking to max out your pay, and they’re looking to minimize. You negotiate to a middle ground. By antagonistic, I don’t mean that you’re in some kind of never ending battle to the death; but your goals/incentives clearly do not align. Obviously an actively malicious HR is a different story, but ignoring that, it would be naive to pretend you’re aligned, and leave your fate to a person/group who should not be acting in your best interest. Your employer is not your agent. He doesn’t work for you.
  - mcv 8y ago
    > Your employer is not your agent. He doesn’t work for you. No, but I work for him. If an agent working for me would also be an antagonistic relationship, then what use is the agent? A good employer cares about more than just what their employees cost. At the very least, happy employees are productive employees. Employees that don't feel appreciated are not happy employees. An employer who will only give you a raise after you've found a better offer elsewhere is a bad employer.
    - setr 8y ago
      If you’re happy, and oblivious to knowledge that you could be paid higher elsewhere, why would I as an employer bring it up? More notably, if you’re happy, why would I initiate the re-evaluation process to even find out whether you could get paid better elsewhere? Would you come and tell me that you’ve been overpaid after self re-evaluating? But you expect me to come and tell you that you’ve been underpaid? What’s the incentive here? You’re happy not knowing, I’m happy not knowing, what’s the problem? That you might find out in the future that you could have made more money for the last year, but your employer didn’t do the research and offer it you out of his own goodwill? The onus is clearly on you; you’re the only one with anything to gain. If the employer does it for you, then you can be grateful, but it would be absurd to be irrated by his not checking into how he could possibly hurt himself to help you. >If an agent working for me would also be an antagonistic relationship, then what use is the agent It depends which part of the relationship is adverserial. There is really no relationship where all your goals are aligned — you position your payment system to align specific components, but you should still acknowledge there are misalignments. Your travel agent is paid to get you good flights; but at the same time, he might make additional money by favoring specific airlines (with perhaps some, but minor, cost to you). There’s nothing wrong with this scenario — you’re just not fully aligned, but both parties still see benefit, so its still worth striking the deal. In the same fashion, you as an employee are looking to make money (and don’t expect an infinite amount of it) and your employer is looking for work to be done. You dont try to find/create work to do for your company (unless you’re in sales), and the company doesn’t try to find ways to make you more money. And thats fine. Obviously there are caveats (you can look better / earn promotions by doing more than you were requested, and the company can hand you bonuses you weren’t expecting, increasing moral), but its not part of the core relationship. It’s something the other party can be grateful for, but it would be absurd to expect it, because, well, who told you it was someone else’s job to improve your situation at cost to themselves? Its the same kind of thinking that leads to absurd situations like putting 30 hours extra per week for free in gamedev crunches, and then being offended that it didn’t really get you anything. It’s not EA’s job to tell you that you’re doing something stupid (not that I agree with the request in the first place, but the entire gamedev industry is so problematic because the employees keep doing stupid shit in the unfounded belief of their all-benevolent employer). An enployee that doesn’t look out for his own needs is a foolish employee.

by setr 8y ago

mcv 8y ago

You're calling for a re-evaluation of your value by asking for a raise. If I realise I'm in an antagonistic relationship with my employer, I leave. I don't want to spend a significant chunk of my life dependent on someone I have an adversarial relationship with. That just doesn't sound healthy. By only re-evaluating my value when I'm about to leave, and not when I ask for a raise, the employer reveals it's an antagonistic relationship, and that's a good sign it's time to leave.

setr 8y ago
When it comes to pay, it’s an inherit property: you’re looking to max out your pay, and they’re looking to minimize. You negotiate to a middle ground. By antagonistic, I don’t mean that you’re in some kind of never ending battle to the death; but your goals/incentives clearly do not align. Obviously an actively malicious HR is a different story, but ignoring that, it would be naive to pretend you’re aligned, and leave your fate to a person/group who should not be acting in your best interest. Your employer is not your agent. He doesn’t work for you.
- mcv 8y ago
  > Your employer is not your agent. He doesn’t work for you. No, but I work for him. If an agent working for me would also be an antagonistic relationship, then what use is the agent? A good employer cares about more than just what their employees cost. At the very least, happy employees are productive employees. Employees that don't feel appreciated are not happy employees. An employer who will only give you a raise after you've found a better offer elsewhere is a bad employer.
  - setr 8y ago
    If you’re happy, and oblivious to knowledge that you could be paid higher elsewhere, why would I as an employer bring it up? More notably, if you’re happy, why would I initiate the re-evaluation process to even find out whether you could get paid better elsewhere? Would you come and tell me that you’ve been overpaid after self re-evaluating? But you expect me to come and tell you that you’ve been underpaid? What’s the incentive here? You’re happy not knowing, I’m happy not knowing, what’s the problem? That you might find out in the future that you could have made more money for the last year, but your employer didn’t do the research and offer it you out of his own goodwill? The onus is clearly on you; you’re the only one with anything to gain. If the employer does it for you, then you can be grateful, but it would be absurd to be irrated by his not checking into how he could possibly hurt himself to help you. >If an agent working for me would also be an antagonistic relationship, then what use is the agent It depends which part of the relationship is adverserial. There is really no relationship where all your goals are aligned — you position your payment system to align specific components, but you should still acknowledge there are misalignments. Your travel agent is paid to get you good flights; but at the same time, he might make additional money by favoring specific airlines (with perhaps some, but minor, cost to you). There’s nothing wrong with this scenario — you’re just not fully aligned, but both parties still see benefit, so its still worth striking the deal. In the same fashion, you as an employee are looking to make money (and don’t expect an infinite amount of it) and your employer is looking for work to be done. You dont try to find/create work to do for your company (unless you’re in sales), and the company doesn’t try to find ways to make you more money. And thats fine. Obviously there are caveats (you can look better / earn promotions by doing more than you were requested, and the company can hand you bonuses you weren’t expecting, increasing moral), but its not part of the core relationship. It’s something the other party can be grateful for, but it would be absurd to expect it, because, well, who told you it was someone else’s job to improve your situation at cost to themselves? Its the same kind of thinking that leads to absurd situations like putting 30 hours extra per week for free in gamedev crunches, and then being offended that it didn’t really get you anything. It’s not EA’s job to tell you that you’re doing something stupid (not that I agree with the request in the first place, but the entire gamedev industry is so problematic because the employees keep doing stupid shit in the unfounded belief of their all-benevolent employer). An enployee that doesn’t look out for his own needs is a foolish employee.