How to Get a Raise

I’ve been slipping a little in my quest to answer reader questions of late, so I thought I’d course correct.  The question revolved around the notion of how to get a raise.  Actually, that was the question in its entirety.

How do I get a raise?

A deceptively simple question that one.  So much so, in fact, that I’m going to be kind of roundabout in my response.

Paying the Iron Price for Cable

Assuming that you’re one of the millions of people that pay for cable television, you fork over your $100 per month and get the full rainbow of channels.  You probably don’t think a whole lot about the $100 that you’re spending each month because it’s the closest a recurring cost can come to being a sunk cost.  You’re used to cable and you’re used to your wallet being $100 lighter, so continuing to have cable for $100 per month is not a decision that you consciously make.  In fact, to do something different would be the conscious decision.

Bearing this in mind, do you ever think to yourself, “you know, I love how they’ve finally stopped killing off erstwhile protagonists on Game of Thrones, so I think I’ll call the cable company up and offer to pay $103 per month, starting in the next fiscal year?”  Of course you don’t — that’s ridiculous.

But, let’s consider a slightly modified version of that scenario.  Let’s say that the cable company called you and said, “we’re raising the price of your Premium Thingamajig Package to $103 a month, so if you want to continue to see what Sansa, Arya and the gang are up to, you’re going to have to pay up.”  You probably go on to Facebook, post a cathartic rant, and then pay the extra money.  Because, while that’s inconvenient, what would be more inconvenient is to have to spend time figuring out how to compensate and vary your routine.  You could go with Dish or AT&T or whatever, but that’s probably too much effort to expend over a 3% increase.  If it were a 10% or 15% increase, on the other hand, it might be time to comparison shop.

Employment as a Zero Sum Game

As you’ve no doubt surmised, I offered this silly parallel to help you empathize with your employer’s position.  You’re the cable company in their lives — non-critical, largely taken for granted, and prominent enough to be missed as long as the price isn’t too high.  And, like your relationship with your cable company, your relationship with your employer is, talk of family and work-life balance notwithstanding, a zero sum game.  The more money you have, the less they have, and vice-versa.

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Gathering the Confidence to Leave Your Job

It’s Thursday night, and I’m holed up in a hotel in Lansing, Michigan.  I figure there’s never been a better time to answer a reader question.  This one is about how to summon the confidence to leave your job.

The question is actually a rather lengthy one, and here is a redacted/obfuscated version of it (removing anything that could be identifying).

I have had my developer position for several years. I’ve been promoted, but I’m still not a senior developer. I have become extremely “silo-ed” in my skills, because those are the types of projects I’ve been assigned.  I read your statement that salaried employment is a bad economical decision for developers. The developer should be making $50 or maybe a bit more at $60. I get paid {a good bit less} an hour for 40 hours a week of expected work.  I feel the need to grow my abilities.

I watched your video on Pluralsight on how to propose practices. My manager bought into some,  but most of my coworkers are ignoring the new stuff.  My place of employment fires developers once they are called as a references for checking if they ever worked there.

I need a goal, something I can achieve to give me confidence to start pursuing other options. Something that gets me into a situation where people seek me for relevant development.

There are actually several questions and issues here to unpack, so I’ll tackle them in order of complexity.

Pay is Relative

First of all, when I talk about developers making 50 per hour/100K or 60 per hour/120K, I’m mainly catering to myself and ease of math.  100K is a nice, round figure, and 120K makes monthly finace (10K) easy to calculate.  These figures were slightly high in the Chicago-land area as of 2+ years ago, which was when I was last seriously hiring and evaluating pay there.

But, beyond that, pay varies a lot by geographic location, industry, filing status (nonprofit, for profit), etc.  If you salaried a developer working in San Francisco at 150K per year, he would probably need to move into a homeless shelter.  (I kid, but only slightly).  Pay that same wage to someone in central Kentucky and “should we install a second hot tub on the master bedroom deck” becomes a topic of debate around the marble dinner table.

All that being said, your wage was fairly low for a developer anywhere of your experience.  But don’t base your assessment of how low on my blog and what I know (I don’t pay much attention these days).  Base instead off of researching in your region.

We’ll Fire You for Looking…

Okay, this is where I offer the IANAL (I am not a lawyer) caveat.  This is based on my experience doing management consulting and working as a manager, much of which happened in at will states (this can vary by state and certainly by country).

If you’re a company, terminating employees is like playing Minesweeper, except instead of bombs, there are lawsuits.  You’re clicking along gleefully when suddenly, one day, BLAMMO!  Wrongful termination!  So you learn your lesson and you start looking at all of those numbers really carefully and insulating yourself against potential problems.

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