Yet another raise thread: Well below mean&median wages in the region

[postmortemIA]

I'm an engineer, so I have marketable skills. There just is not a lot of work in my area, so I hold on to what I can. That is the feeling of most of my coworkers as well. People don't want to be forced to move due to a job loss.

As for vacations, I can afford them. I just don't see the value in them above other things in life. If my house and student loans were paid off, I was maxing out two 401ks and two IRAs, and had college funds for my kids I would spend after that on vacations. At this point I can't see spending $5k on something so temporary. :\

Every worker requires vacation to work healthy in the long run. There is nothing wrong with spending money on it. Portion of your income is meant for it. Just like you have vacation days.

 

[Engineer]

Every worker requires vacation to work healthy in the long run. There is nothing wrong with spending money on it. Portion of your income is meant for it. Just like you have vacation days.

That's another casualty of the great recession....vacation days are now turning into PTO - Paid Time Off. Companies are combining sick time and vacation and everything else into one, SMALLER lump sum of days. Just like lower or frozen pays and benefits, employees are now ending up with fewer days off, especially if they have to save them for sick time.

 

[tnt118]

That's another casualty of the great recession....vacation days are now turning into PTO - Paid Time Off. Companies are combining sick time and vacation and everything else into one, SMALLER lump sum of days. Just like lower or frozen pays and benefits, employees are now ending up with fewer days off, especially if they have to save them for sick time.

Getting offtopic, but even with the overall number of days being smaller, this is infinitely more fair to employees because everyone gets the same number of days off. There was a lot of resentment towards those who were willing to abuse calling out sick when they weren't.

 

[brianmanahan]

That's another casualty of the great recession....vacation days are now turning into PTO - Paid Time Off. Companies are combining sick time and vacation and everything else into one, SMALLER lump sum of days. Just like lower or frozen pays and benefits, employees are now ending up with fewer days off, especially if they have to save them for sick time.

yeah, i hate PTO because your vacation time is dependent on how often you get sick. i would rather have sick days be separate, just so i dont feel bad when i use them because i am cutting into legit vacation time.

 

[Engineer]

Getting offtopic, but even with the overall number of days being smaller, this is infinitely more fair to employees because everyone gets the same number of days off. There was a lot of resentment towards those who were willing to abuse calling out sick when they weren't.

So its better to take away from everyone than to handle people who abuse the system?

 

[NikolaeVarius]

So its better to take away from everyone than to handle people who abuse the system?

Yes. Because it's inherently extremely unfair.

 

[Engineer]

Yes. Because it's inherently extremely unfair.

Great. Punish everyone for what a few do. All in the name of 'fairness', I guess. Attitudes like yours are why the working person (including the best workers) is getting less and less while those at the top are taking in 95%+ of national gains.

As a management seminar once pointed out: How do you treat your best, hardest working employees? Just like the bad ones except you give them (hardest working) more work.

 

[Howard]

Find another job if you can. You've been there way too long.

 

[purbeast0]

Not telling a prospective employer what you're making now is difficult. If you don't tell them, you'll look uncooperative. If you lie and they find out, you're untrustworthy.

not difficult at all. tell them it's irrelevant and really none of their business.

the problem is it takes balls to do that, and many people don't have balls.

 

[Jumpem]

Every worker requires vacation to work healthy in the long run. There is nothing wrong with spending money on it. Portion of your income is meant for it. Just like you have vacation days.

I have 50 vacation days accumulated. Just sitting there.

 

[purbeast0]

I'm an engineer, so I have marketable skills. There just is not a lot of work in my area, so I hold on to what I can. That is the feeling of most of my coworkers as well. People don't want to be forced to move due to a job loss.

As for vacations, I can afford them. I just don't see the value in them above other things in life. If my house and student loans were paid off, I was maxing out two 401ks and two IRAs, and had college funds for my kids I would spend after that on vacations. At this point I can't see spending $5k on something so temporary. :\

just fyi, engineers are a dime a dozen.

good ones are like finding a needle in a haystack though.

 

[Jeff7]

From looking at some of the starting offer pay for engineers, I wouldn't make a statement like you did above at all. There are those that indeed recognize that you'll have to pay to get talent and then there are those that are floating amounts so obscenely low that all you can do is laugh at them. I'm sure they sit back and wonder why their ads are running 6 months at a time, with obviously no people filling the positions.
...

"Qualified" worker: "Must be willing and able to do a $150k/year job for $25k/year with no expectation of anything more than basic cost-of-living raises."
"Waahhhh, there aren't any qualified workers!"


And then you've got the employers that will dangle an entire bushel of carrots to entice someone to work there.

The odds depend upon the job market in your area. Can you go to another company and make that kind of money?

Don't know. I'd assume so, given the median/mean salary data. I can't say I've shopped around though. There are various small businesses in the area that would need engineers.

Can your current employer find somebody to replace you at somewhere around your current salary? You have almost ZERO chance of getting that kind of raise in one fell swoop. You'd need to either move to a different company or work something out with the current job where you're given regular increases over 5 years or so to get you up to where you belong.

I don't know how often someone like me comes around, if I may be immodest for a time. Some of the instructors I mentioned weren't the sort who'd normally say a whole lot of positive things about just anyone. They'd been in industry 20+ years before teaching. I'm sure that puts them into "I've seen some shit, man!" territory.

I swear I remember a thread here where someone asked for a substantial raise and got it.
I lawyer, I think? I remember an avatar with a fedora....not that that narrows it down a whole lot.
Maybe the exception, and not the rule.

Unless you have an offer near the median I'm not sure what incentive they have to give you more money.

But fuck it ask for more money. What's the worst that could happen?

What I'm wary of then is the power-play aspect of it. They say "no" and I say "Ok thank you, may I have another?", then when annual raise time comes again, they'll be armed with information about what they can get away with, and would likely be more prone to lowball it.

I wouldn't be complaining about my pay after surviving three layoff events, while many of my former coworkers are much worse off.

But doesn't it say something that they held onto me throughout all that? Remember that I was still fairly new. Most of the people let go had been there longer than I had. I did bring a set of skills that the company had been lacking in though.
And some of this, too.:$

...
As a management seminar once pointed out: How do you treat your best, hardest working employees? Just like the bad ones except you give them (hardest working) more work.

Fascinating. Reading this paragraph caused a brief surge of emotion. Most of it involved urges to cause horrific destruction.

In addition, the bad ones might even get less to do, since they'll just screw it up anyway or get in the way.
(Though sometimes this does end up moving them to the front of the line when it comes time to shed some heads.)

 

[debian0001]

Get a new job. That's probably the only way to get a current wage.

 

[purbeast0]

yeah, i hate PTO because your vacation time is dependent on how often you get sick. i would rather have sick days be separate, just so i dont feel bad when i use them because i am cutting into legit vacation time.

i like PTO better than having 2 pools. i have taken off probably 7 or 8 sick days total in my 10 year career. it would suck to just have those sitting there doing nothing.

PTO wise, i very rarely ever have more than 40 hours in my bank because i use them all the time to go on vacations.

and now i am up to 27 days a yr of PTO which is prety nice.

 

[Engineer]

Fascinating. Reading this paragraph caused a brief surge of emotion. Most of it involved urges to cause horrific destruction.

In addition, the bad ones might even get less to do, since they'll just screw it up anyway or get in the way.
(Though sometimes this does end up moving them to the front of the line when it comes time to shed some heads.)

That was exactly what was meant by giving more work to the hardest, best working employees. The seminar went on to suggest 'Who would you give your hottest, most important job to (regardless of workload)?'. There was a suggestion to break from that mold and give your best working employees 'perks' such as an extra day off now and then with pay and other items like that. Never happens though.

 

[Jeff7]

i like PTO better than having 2 pools. i have taken off probably 7 or 8 sick days total in my 10 year career. it would suck to just have those sitting there doing nothing.

PTO wise, i very rarely ever have more than 40 hours in my bank because i use them all the time to go on vacations.

and now i am up to 27 days a yr of PTO which is prety nice.

And I don't know why it'd matter anyway, unless the employer treats them differently.
I can see that though where it could turn bad, as mentioned in the thread: You go from having 10 days of vacation and 3 days sick time to having a single pool of paid time off, but that pool only contains 11 days.
"How convenient, your birthday is on Christmas!"

Why is it even split up anyway? It's not like I can go to my employer and say "I've been really sick. Pay me for it!"
The only way anything close to that would happen is if I'd end up on short-term or long-term disability.

That was exactly what was meant by giving more work to the hardest, best working employees. The seminar went on to suggest 'Who would you give your hottest, most important job to (regardless of workload)?'. There was a suggestion to break from that mold and give your best working employees 'perks' such as an extra day off now and then with pay and other items like that. Never happens though.

That does happen where I work, from time to time. It's not always handed out though, sometimes it takes a bit of a nudge.
"Hey, I was in on the weekend to help out with <urgent order/project>, even though that part of it is not something that this department normally does. I think that's worth some PTO, don't ya think?"
Then 2-8hrs of PTO appears, depending on what was done.
That's the sort of work environment that has made this subject difficult to broach. I read Dilbert, I've heard stories of other employers, and this one sounds pretty decent. At the same time...you know, money.

 

[Engineer]

That's the sort of work environment that has made this subject difficult to broach. I read Dilbert, I've heard stories of other employers, and this one sounds pretty decent. At the same time...you know, money.

I have the opposite problem. Money is decent but the PTO thing really nags me, especially when the boss (owner) tries to throw out the 'you're not getting paid for 40 hours if you work less than 40' even though I routinely work many more, including multiple full weekends during the year (and remember, I'm salary so no OT). I've still need to talk to him about the shutdown for Christmas/New years as there are 5 'unpaid' days in there and I don't want to use 5 days of vacation (out of my whopping 10 days per year) for it. I just worked 2 of the last 3 weekends and worked 80 hours during the week before Christmas week. I think that deserves a few of those days to be paid off but most of the time, the owner doesn't think so.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Not telling a prospective employer what you're making now is difficult. If you don't tell them, you'll look uncooperative. If you lie and they find out, you're untrustworthy.

Repeat after me -- what you currently make is none of their business. Period. The ONLY reason this is asked is for a company to 1) filter you out 2) lowball you. Nothing good can come out of revealing your current salary. The company knows the market rate for their open position and also damn well knows what range they're hiring out, so if they won't reveal that to you, tell them what you're looking for or the range you're willing to settle for.

It is true that many companies won't respond to you if you don't give them your salary history up front. You know what? Screw those companies. I once had an HR person ask me in an interview what I currently made. I dodged and tried to divert, but she came back to the question again. I said "How much do you make?" The point was made very clearly and I got the job offer.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

I'm an engineer, so I have marketable skills. There just is not a lot of work in my area, so I hold on to what I can. That is the feeling of most of my coworkers as well. People don't want to be forced to move due to a job loss.

I hear you. A couple companies ago, my position here was eliminated as a result of departmental consolidation and I had a choice of transferring to Tonawanda (northwest New York) or accepting a different, non-related position here. I knew staying in a large metro area was smarter and took the non-related position to buy time until I found something else and moved on.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Great. Punish everyone for what a few do. All in the name of 'fairness', I guess. Attitudes like yours are why the working person (including the best workers) is getting less and less while those at the top are taking in 95%+ of national gains.

Management is generally lazy and instead of doing their jobs, just wants these blanket policies implemented which, in the end, only punish the hard and honest workers.

As a management seminar once pointed out: How do you treat your best, hardest working employees? Just like the bad ones except you give them (hardest working) more work.

Over the course of my career, I (as most people) have worked with a lot of really lazy people. They do everything they can to avoid work -- fake being busy, jump on all the easy work first to avoid anything difficult, make easy work take much longer than it should, run around the halls looking frazzled and telling everyone within earshot how 'busy' they are -- while I was a fool and worked hard and just kept taking on more work.

I used to think those guys were the dumb ones, but I've come to the realization that they're actually the smart ones. I now think of myself as a corporation, which means I'm out to maximize my own profit. And like a corporation (which cuts corners, etc. to reduce production costs), my goal now is to do the least amount of work possible to create a finished product. No more 60 hour weeks without additional compensation for me.

That was exactly what was meant by giving more work to the hardest, best working employees. The seminar went on to suggest 'Who would you give your hottest, most important job to (regardless of workload)?'. There was a suggestion to break from that mold and give your best working employees 'perks' such as an extra day off now and then with pay and other items like that. Never happens though.

One weekend, I worked 40 hours (from Friday evening through Sunday evening) and even though the end result was a flawless implementation and cutover, I got 1 whole day off as thanks. That was a powerful lesson for me.

just fyi, engineers are a dime a dozen.

good ones are like finding a needle in a haystack though.

I think that's true of most professions honestly.

 

[Gillbot]

this x 1000.

i wish i wasn't such a pussy when i was always job hunting as someone new in the work force.

if they ask you your current salary, tell them that it's irrelevant and that part of the reason you are looking is because you feel underpaid. just tell them what you're looking to make.

confidence is huge when looking for new jobs. something that changed my mentality big time was when i started having the attitude that i'm doing a company a favor for me working for them. most people (myself included when i was younger in my career) have the mindset that the company is doing you a favor for hiring you, and they try to act that way.

i simply act the other way now and the confidence has gotten me a lot more money than i had prior, and with a much better company.

I disagree, I always tell them I'm fine with where i'm at but if they want me to come to their company, they need to make it worth my while. It doesn't give you the greedy disgruntled stigma.

Not telling a prospective employer what you're making now is difficult. If you don't tell them, you'll look uncooperative. If you lie and they find out, you're untrustworthy.

It is difficult, but not impossible. He can always cite his median sources and let them decide.

 

[Jumpem]

But doesn't it say something that they held onto me throughout all that? Remember that I was still fairly new. Most of the people let go had been there longer than I had. I did bring a set of skills that the company had been lacking in though.
And some of this, too.:$

It could be for any reason. Speaking from experience, my employer tended to lay off older people, and keep around most of the younger, and cheaper, workforce.

 

[sourceninja]

...

 

[Homerboy]

The ONLY way you have ANY chance of getting anything near that type of raise with the company you're currently employed with is to have a viable, legitimate offer from another company. You're going to have to go find a position with another company and use that as a bargaining chip with your current. Maybe they won't match it, but maybe they will come close and everyone is happy and safe then.

 

[purbeast0]

I think that's true of most professions honestly.

yeah it's true for most. but he just made it sound like he is owed something special because he's an engineer and that automatically makes him marketable.