I've worked at multiple companies that independently developed jokey sayings along the lines of "The quickest way to get promoted is to work somewhere else for a few years and come back"
with the exception of gaining experience working elsewhere, i just don't understand the reason why a company doesn't promote internally and pay higher, over hiring anew (even if such hires turned out to be an ex-employee).
But it's true for all anecdotal evidence and circumstances i can see. It just boggles the mind why such simple inefficiencies don't get fixed up.
In practice, it is very easy to justify a bigger salary for a new hire and very difficult to get upper management acceptance for consistent/real salary raises for internal people.
It makes no sense at all, but that’s what I experience being a somewhat new manager in a tech company.
This is exactly right, when I left my manager was pretty clear about this with me. I think he valued me as much as any potential external offer, but he has to sit in front of a compensation committee whose very goal is to regress everybody to the mean.
I think it's because they feel it's a choice between doing it once for the new hire or N times for all the existing employees. The latter is very difficult to do.
Sure, but at the same time, I don't think the maths make sense, given hiring costs, training and morale costs. It makes me really sad to conclude that it boils down to the fact that these are usually different cost centres and managers from one side won't bother generating costs to the other cost centres.
But yeah, it is a waste of time trying to find sense in the management folks.
It's the exact reason, and a natural one. Why hurt yourself with increasing wage of existing, content employees rather than using it to expand the workforce with newer, (assuming) more powerful candidates?
If you play any management games with employees you'll do it too, granted that the game doesn't have any employee happiness or resign when underpaid. But yeah, game and real world situation is not the same.
On what do you base that assumption of a new candidate being necessarily better? They could also be worse and, in most instances, will have a period of sub-productive time when they have to learn the ropes.
I just describing what higher managements are possibly thinking, and I guess I'm kinda on track for it since usually management prefer to hire new people than promoting existing employees.
In game though, usually better stats hiring are only appear mid-late game, or are expensive to hire early on that you can only get one mid-late game. Don't compare with real life though.
I've only managed about 50 people, and only in the UK, but in my experience it's extremely rare for someone to explicitly say to their manager that they want more money / a promotion.
I guess a lot of people are under the impression greed is something to be ashamed of, or feel it would be confrontational or ungrateful to ask for more money?
I've always been up front with money and/or promotions discussion. But, I've also always told my manager that I'm not a squeaky wheel. I treat it like a sports player, we talk once/year, agree, and then I'm good until next year (with some caveats like an offer doubling my salary showing up).
When I managed people in a big company, it was closer to your experience. When I was one of the owners in a small startup, people had no problem asking for more. I think it's a different type of person who works in bigco vs. small startup.
I have a backlog of nearly 1000 questions my manager literally doesn't have time to answer. Those 1000 are directly related to work tasks. I don't need the answers as I'm capable of working around the uncertainty -- also, half the questions wouldn't have concrete answers and would only provide different uncertainty
In that environment, choosing to spend my manager's time discussing my pay and not these work questions, would feel to me that I'm narcissistically putting myself ahead of my team and organization.
How in the hell am I supposed to balance my needs against the companies when we're all stressed the duck out and just trying to make it work well enough that we can have a relaxing dinner with our families.
Shouldn't it be obvious I would accept a pay raise? Another classic example of management demanding one behavior and rewarding another.
Every company that approached me with raises without my asking got A LOT more of my time than those who seemed to want me to open negotiations.
The company is looking out for itself, but it seems to me that you're not looking out for yourself. You're expecting the company, which is already over-extended, to look out for you as well.
In your situation (like many out there) it's a lot easier for you to get a new job with a much higher pay rate than to ask your current employer for that raise. They might be paying low on purpose, or they might just not realize the situation they've put themselves in. Either way, you're being undervalued and it's causing you stress which is not helping your productivity.
Sure, everyone would always accept a pay raise. But not everyone feels they deserve one at the moment, and the company can't know who feels that way until they're told.
Because a lot of good people are comfortable and complacent and won't play this game, and continue to get underpaid.
And why wouldn't they? If you're happy with your work and your team and your boss, why gamble it away by going somewhere else? A bit more money is great, but may not be worth it if the new job sucks.
