4 ms·
The company doesn't want to give anyone a raise. They are not happy to give anyone a raise. Companies do not willingly increase their costs, full stop. You cou
by fivre 4y ago
The company doesn't want to give anyone a raise. They are not happy to give anyone a raise. Companies do not willingly increase their costs, full stop.
You could maybe make an argument that companies may increase wages for high performers for retention reasons, because needing to replace valuable employees is a large, if somewhat intangible cost, but that's pretty iffy. Companies are made up of and managed by humans, who are notoriously short-sighted and willing to discount potential risks when there are financial incentives to do so.
50% of the time Joe Useless makes more than you do already, because they joined later and market rate for the position shifted upward. You'll still need to fight tooth and nail, alone, individually, to reach parity, even if you're a top performer. Your manager isn't usually going to say "hmm, we're paying Joe Useless 1.2X, while we're paying Sally Superlative 1.0X--we really should pay Sally 2.0X! Your manager will be overruled by the CFO if they do suggest this anyway. Large wage increases based on expertise happen because you're able to better sell yourself to _another_ company when changing jobs.
Ultimately, I'd prefer a system where Joe Useless and I fight for equal wage increases collectively, because the balance of power is such that we're more likely to get them than each of us going it alone. Joe Useless is gonna be there anyway unless the company decides they're so useless as to fire them. So long as Joe Useless is there in the same role as I am, I don't care if they get equal pay, especially not if they're helping in the fight for increases in our equal pay.
- Handytinge 4y ago> They are not happy to give anyone a raise. Companies do not willingly increase their costs, full stop. Sounds like you haven't worked for many good companies.
- SheinhardtWigCo 4y ago> Large wage increases based on expertise happen because you're able to better sell yourself to _another_ company when changing jobs. In that case, instead of banding together with Joe Useless to strong-arm the company into setting money on fire (from management's perspective), you're better off changing companies as frequently as the market will tolerate.
- msbarnett 4y agoFalse dichotomy. You can do both, and an industry-wide effort to exercise our collective power would likely increase the salaries obtained via either route.
- Aeolun 4y agoThe problem is that you are more likely to get a wage increase. Not a wage increase that moves the needle for you individually. I love seeing the “union fought for years, after many strikes employees ‘win’ and get a 5% wage increase over the next 4 years” news articles, but they never strike me as something that I’d want to apply to me. Certainly my company is increasing wages for high performers. They may not be happy to do so, but they’ll do it to retain talent they desperately need. I imagine this would be different if the sector I was in was different, but right now, for software development, it doesn’t make any sense to me. There’s too much variation in skill levels to collectively bargain for anything.