Poll of the Day > How do I justify a pay rise? Has anybody managed to do it before?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Salary reviews coming up in June and I know what figure I wanna be on.

My justification essentially is the job was originally advertised with a salary over a 6k range; I came in right at the bottom end of that which is fine cause I didnt know shit at the time and had no real experience of running my own projects.

Im 18 months into the role now and Ive saved them loads of money; all of our projects have come in ahead of schedule and under budget. So Im not looking for a promotion, but think Ive done enough to justify being at the top of that salary bracket they originally advertised for this role.

Has anybody here managed to get one? How did you do it?
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Yes. In a Dota game atm. Will post again if I remember.
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One time in the Sims 3 I was in the park flirting with bitches and my wife showed up (who was also my boss) and I demanded a raise and I got it
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It's all about what you bring to the table compared to someone else they could hire new to the job, how much you have improved or new skills you have mastered since you started working there, and how dependable you have been (not calling in sick etc).

Bring all that up and explain you deserve to be compensated for the fact you are a hard working dependable employee, that has skills that are useful to the company and have helped promote the companies growth and prosperity.

Should work fine. I have gotten raises in the past that way, although a few times I had to be a bit more forceful (one time I was hired, 6 months later got promoted to lead tech, worked as lead tech for a year and found out I was being paid less then the new employees I was hiring and training (due to it being my first job as an electronic tech I started at only $11 an hour, and only jumped to $13 when I took over as lead tech).

I was quite unhappy about that.
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Since it's an annual review, they will probably give you a raise, like 3%. More if they like you, which generally means not getting it trouble, like coming in late, saying the wrong things at meetings, missing deadlines, etc. Those are the type of things that are easy to notice. You can mention them to justify your raise.

Things that are not easy to notice would be like staying extra hours to complete emergency tasks (the type that appear last minute because of something every department missed until the problem arose at the job site or whatever), creating tools to make standard tasks more efficient, and taking on more responsibility than you initially were hired for. The last one is a big one. And a weird one, if you ask me. There aren't many opportunities for that, since managers never ask for volunteers. They kinda just pick whoever they like and throw the task at them, which is pretty shitty imo.

Lots of people I know were given that reasoning when asking for a raise.
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but if you ask for a raise it no surprise that theyre givin none away
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Damn Speed you might be right. Even in my last job pay rises were 2-5% unless you were getting promoted at the same time.

And all the things you mentioned sound like theyd justify a 3% pay rise as opposed to 15-20% which is what Im trying to get.

I wouldnt say Ive taken on more responsibility as such. Although I am expected to over the next 6-8 months. Can you justify a significant raise on the basis that youll be expected to get more responsibility?

And is bringing up the originally advertised salary a good idea or nah?
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How confident are you that you can get a similar job somewhere else with the experience you've garnered?

Or do you have savings put away where you could follow through on a claim to quit without a raise?
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Well I'm pretty confident I could get the money I'm asking for if I moved to a different firm. That would be moreso via a jump in job title than anything though.

I didn't want to use the "pay me or I quit card" yet though. That's really a last resort cause I like my company. I've got the savings to live off if I decide to go that way but that'd be counterproductive cause I'm trying to buy a house too so it'd just move me two steps back. So that doesn't seem like an option
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In addition to what other people have said I'd recommend doing some research on what jobs similar to yours earn. The bureau of labor publishes a comprehensive database of wage data and you can probably find some local job listings with similar duties to what you're doing. It's much easier to bargain when you have a sense of what other people get paid for comparable work and if you're making below the median having some hard numbers on hand is very convincing.
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