Negotiation, especially in introverted geek circles of people too afraid to ask for a raise / figure out what their contributions to the company are. I like ne

Negotiation, especially in introverted geek circles of people too afraid to ask for a raise / figure out what their contributions to the company are. I like negotiating because I know how to dig through the financial reports and figure out how I'm contributing to the bottom line, and with out a bunch of other people claiming the same thing it makes it easier to negotiate raises. It's especially good to ask for a raise right after the CEO gives one of those our employees are our most valuable asset talks, and after they say something like "the way i look at it is if a employee who has been paid 250K in 3 years walks out the door, it's like 250K of knowledge walking out the door". Then you use their figures and put in place a financial model where you walking out the door with 5 years of experience costs them 500K. The best part about these models is the more you increase your pay the more the financial models suggest your pay should be increased. The point is to negotiate at the right time, usually when the CEO is trying to keep people from leaving and there is spare cash floating around. My BANTA has always been show the rest of the team the financial models and how they could be making more, and then find something else to do. Business is a contact sport. If you can't get yourself a raise , go get the rest of your team a raise and voila now you're being underpaid and your raise is justified. Also, I'd go fight for anyone's raise a) so they'd back me up for mine and b) so it would increase the avg salary in the company making your own raise seem fair.