May 19, 2011 at 8:18 am
GSquared (5/19/2011)
Ninja's_RGR'us (5/19/2011)
GSquared (5/19/2011)
Ninja's_RGR'us (5/19/2011)
GSquared (5/19/2011)
I've gone from $7.50/hour in 2001 to, well HR says I can't say the number but it's more than 4X that. None of it has been through percentage raises during an annual review process. It's by getting progressively better jobs at progressively better employers. My next strategic step, if I feel the need for it, would be towards Senior BI Architect, and the pay increase for that would be about 30% over what I'm making now. It'll take a while, since there are a few skills I simply don't have yet. There's also a fairly high probability I'll never bother, since I love my current job, and a bit more money would be nice but wouldn't be worth moving to a new employer for.So, no, I haven't paid any attention to a 3% difference. Not yet, and probably won't ever.
Awesome 300$ / hour. 😉
You need a better desktop calculator.
7.5x4 < 300
Darn, I thought you meant to hide the last digit of the multiplication. 😀
Oooohhhh, I wish!
Granted!
May 19, 2011 at 8:59 am
Some very interesting quotes in the discussion:
My advice? If you want to work hard and do the best job you can, do so for your own satisfaction. Don't
do so for the vague prospect of financial reward at the end of the year because you are very likely to be disappointed.
The way you should live your life, whether you work for someone else or not. Expecting your boss to reward you, or your kids to get some award or your customers to bonus you will many times end in disappointment. You should do the best job you can, be proud of it, and enjoy it.
If you've all read "Drive" as recommened by Steve Jones (thanks, Steve!), you'll know that this discussion is moot
You are welcome. Great book, and worth giving to your mgr for Christmas 😉
... I've yet to find anyone who mad a decision based solely on money that turned out well.
Ditto, and that includes myself. I made this decision a few times and it was a bad decision.
I think permanent/salaried jobs are neither fair nor efficient.
It has pros and cons. It provides security for the individual (sick, vacation, etc.) and it caps costs for employers. However it also opens the door to abuse by both sides, through overwork or slacking off/entitlement.
Not a bad discussion to have with a potential employer.
The current permanent job system is very close to slavery.
I'd highly disagree here. It's rather insulting to make this comparison and it's more extreme than needed. You can easily leave your job in most any situation.
May 19, 2011 at 9:08 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (5/19/2011)
The current permanent job system is very close to slavery.
I'd highly disagree here. It's rather insulting to make this comparison and it's more extreme than needed. You can easily leave your job in most any situation.
I've seen a lot of practices put in place by management / owners that were close to slavery. You could easily trace the roots right in slavery.
It's easy to say you can leave but it's not quite as easy to do. But to put things in perspective, I wouldn't even think of trading my "bad clients" with a slave master in a cotton field in the 1800s or whenever that was.
May 19, 2011 at 9:10 am
Where I work, raises are between 1 and 3%, so the delta between the high and low end employees doing the same work is roughly 2%. You might get a 4 to 5% increase but that is extremely rare.
Of course there would be more increases in the 4 to 5% range if only our ludicrous review policy would stop throwing out our line manager's assessment and our personal assessment. The bottom line is most companies only want to give out raises in the 1 to 3% range, regardless of how much you contribute.
Want a nice raise? Then you'll have to change companies. In the course of 5 years, I switched companies 3 times and saw my salary increase by 150%.
However, never let a low increase blunt your desire to do well. In the software development/IT business, it is what you know that gets you a good job.
May 19, 2011 at 9:26 am
I'd highly disagree here. It's rather insulting to make this comparison and it's more extreme than needed. You can easily leave your job in most any situation.
We, employees, can't even discuss some topics that have direct effects on our lives. Where is insulting? What is extreme? When we start our careers, we choose among what the society offers. Like the Truman Show, we dont have much awareness about what options we could have, or should have. Maybe more awareness causes some changes on demand and then more satisfying careers for all.
I get "it's extreme" comments when I want working moms to be more aware of how society/corporate world affect their decisions.
Freedom to choose your master is not quite freedom.
May 19, 2011 at 9:42 am
Burhan Insel-262978 (5/19/2011)
I'd highly disagree here. It's rather insulting to make this comparison and it's more extreme than needed. You can easily leave your job in most any situation.
We, employees, can't even discuss some topics that have direct effects on our lives. Where is insulting? What is extreme? When we start our careers, we choose among what the society offers. Like the Truman Show, we dont have much awareness about what options we could have, or should have. Maybe more awareness causes some changes on demand and then more satisfying careers for all.
I get "it's extreme" comments when I want working moms to be more aware of how society/corporate world affect their decisions.
Freedom to choose your master is not quite freedom.
You can choose yourself as a master... but be carefull what you wish for! 😉
May 19, 2011 at 9:45 am
I believe you should working towards being a top performer as a matter of course, not just because there is some $ incentive to do so. The benefits of being a top performer are so much greater than a simple salary calculation. I have an entire network of people who have my name at the top of their lists for positions at their offices should any open, simply because they know that I'll strive to excel at anything thrown my way. Has my work ethic been abused? Surely. But I also find the $75k estimate to be extremely low at this point. I don't have a jillion years of experience under my belt, nor do I consider myself an expert at all things SQL, but I still have opportunities knocking down my door. Hiring managers would rather have someone with mediocre skills but a drive to learn and excel then someone who is the 'best' but needs constant supervision to ensure they're doing their job. The DBA world is incredibly small. Word gets around.
Having a passion for the work you're doing helps a great deal. If you're motivated to only do the bare minimum, maybe it's time to look elsewhere. If your company continuously doesn't take care of you, in whatever terms you feel that means, then it's time to look elsewhere. That doesn't just mean a new job, it might be time to consider a new career as well. Spending your life unhappy but well paid isn't living.
And I certainly don't believe that working for a company makes me a 'slave.' If I don't like what I'm doing, I up and leave. Pretty sure that's not the same thing as slavery. If you believe so, then you don't understand what slavery is. You can choose to work for several companies (ie, consultant), or focus on one company (ie, employee). You can even blend both without too much effort. In any circumstance, you can walk away at any point (some contractual exceptions, but they can apply to either group). Do consultants make more? In terms of sheer cash, probably. That's because consultants have to have a markup to pay for health care, retirement, etc, which employees tend to get as part of their total compensation package. You can't just compare one piece of the picture and then declare yourself victorious.
May 19, 2011 at 9:46 am
Burhan Insel-262978 (5/19/2011)
I'd highly disagree here. It's rather insulting to make this comparison and it's more extreme than needed. You can easily leave your job in most any situation.
We, employees, can't even discuss some topics that have direct effects on our lives. Where is insulting? What is extreme? When we start our careers, we choose among what the society offers. Like the Truman Show, we dont have much awareness about what options we could have, or should have. Maybe more awareness causes some changes on demand and then more satisfying careers for all.
I get "it's extreme" comments when I want working moms to be more aware of how society/corporate world affect their decisions.
Freedom to choose your master is not quite freedom.
If you feel the disadvantages of working where you do outweight the advantages, you have the choice of moving. It might not be easy, but no-one said life would be easy and part of being a responsible adult is to take responsibility. What's more, in most 1st World countries, there is some form of social safety net meaning that whatever else may happen you're unlikely starve, so it's not so much a matter of "difficult to leave" as "difficult to leave without having to make some sacrifices".
In contrast, we all know full well what the word "slavery" really entails. Applying it to a situation where you do have a very real choice trivialises the plight of those who really do or did live in slavery. I've never known slavery personally, so I find it easy not to be offended as such, but I can well understand how it could be insulting to others.
Semper in excretia, suus solum profundum variat
May 19, 2011 at 9:52 am
Burhan Insel-262978 (5/19/2011)
I'd highly disagree here. It's rather insulting to make this comparison and it's more extreme than needed. You can easily leave your job in most any situation.
....
Freedom to choose your master is not quite freedom.
Ah, but you can also choose to be your own master by becoming that contractor - as many have done. Each person can make their own decision about how they want to interact with the work world, although many forget this fact.
I'm in agreement with most others on this thread - the "raise" is not my incentive to do good work; it's my own sense of what is right that causes me to give 110% to 120%. Anything less would be letting ME down. It's a sad state of affairs in some ways that the corporate world does not generally recognize the quality of their employees. That being said, it can be difficult to measure, and hard to see changes (improvements) in people you work with every day - humans are quickly adaptable to new situations, and it colors our view of others; we adapt to the changes they've made and tend to forget they were ever any other way. Then there's this budget limit thing, too...
Parents should watch for that adaptable thing when raising kids, too! 😛
Steph Brown
May 19, 2011 at 10:02 am
Burhan Insel-262978 (5/19/2011)
I'd highly disagree here. It's rather insulting to make this comparison and it's more extreme than needed. You can easily leave your job in most any situation.
We, employees, can't even discuss some topics that have direct effects on our lives. Where is insulting? What is extreme? When we start our careers, we choose among what the society offers. Like the Truman Show, we dont have much awareness about what options we could have, or should have. Maybe more awareness causes some changes on demand and then more satisfying careers for all.
I get "it's extreme" comments when I want working moms to be more aware of how society/corporate world affect their decisions.
Freedom to choose your master is not quite freedom.
If you leave your job and move to a different city, does someone armed with guns hunt you down and either kill you or take you back to your prior job?
No? Then it's not slavery.
Can your boss arbitrarily sell you to a different employer, and you will be hunted down and killed if you refuse to go along with it?
No? Then it's not slavery.
Can your boss legally engage in corporal punishment, up to the point of killing you, your family, and your associates, if he simply thinks your attitude isn't respectful enough?
No? Then it's not slavery.
Saying, "it's not easy for me to leave" and comparing that to slavery, just shows ignorance or sociopathy.
If it's difficult for you to get what you want out of life, please understand that this universe is, for all practical purposes, designed to kill you. You will have to either rip what you want from the uncaring grasp of the deadly "Mother Nature", or you'll have to ask someone else to do so for you. If you predicate your happiness on someone else providing for you, don't be surprised when they ask for you to make some sacrifices for their benefit in exchange for that.
I highly recommend reading "Twelve Against the Gods", by William Bolitho, if you want a few historical examples of people who took their lives into their own hands. It's out of print, but you can get copies from a variety of sources even so. The "Readers Club Edition" has a great forward that helps put the biographies in perspective. Commanding your own destiny, and telling both Society and Nature to get the heck out of your way, isn't easy, and isn't safe, and demands a lot from a person.
Modern employment is only slavery to your own unwillingess to command your own destiny, not slavery to your employer.
(Sorry for the rant. I get tired of people comparing "I can't get the raise/promotion I want" to slavery, or a variety of other purely ignorant forms of self-pitying hyperbole.)
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
May 19, 2011 at 10:23 am
I make a little more than the salary in your example, but I hit the cap for IT in our organization five years ago. I haven't seen any raises in five years and can not expect to see one.
For me, it was never about the money. It was about exciting opportunities to pit myself against knotty problems and to learn new things. It was about my need for some novelty in what I was doing.
Now I am just solving the same problems over again for a new casts of characters. And I am certainly not encouraged to move forward by the possibility of increasing my raise from 0% to 0% based on how I perform at a job review. I am not going out of my way to excel at solving previously answered problems.
For people in our business, I think an excellent incentive would be to have a regularly scheduled, designated amount of time and budget to explore new technologies, experiment, and make new things purely under our own direction. I think it would need to be written into our job descriptions and treated as time unavailable for anybody else to schedule. I think most of us would use it to amaze everybody.
May 19, 2011 at 11:33 am
++ to majorbloodnock
I think the author doesn't give enough respect to the compounding.
The compounding kicks in quickly. Percentages affect everything down the line, including other bonuses or profit-sharing that year.
In addition, if you need to move on for whatever reason, that's "the number to beat" when you meet with your recruiter.
-Grubb
May 19, 2011 at 11:53 am
I did not say "IS" but "CLOSE" to point out similarities, not differences. I do think, in general, employers get too much benefit of their employees. Employees stay because they dont have better options while they could/should. Options change depending on location/country and time. We have more rights than a peasants in middle ages but I still see similarities. A smaller group of people is limiting majorities' options for their own benefit.
"Peasant farmers were neither fully free nor slaves.
This meant that while they were not slaves to their lord, they were dependent upon him for their living. (Truth be told, the feudal lord, too, was dependent on medieval peasants).
They had rights, but they were also obligated to work for their lords. Either by working the land or working in another way in the lord’s service.
Medieval peasants were free to marry, defend themselves, enjoy holy days and harvest feasts. They worked hard and played hard and generally didn’t enjoy a long life expectancy. Medieval peasants were free to leave, but generally preferred being bound to their land and lord over dealing with the uncertainty of the world beyond their home and lord’s manor."
P.S. BTW, I have not worked as an employee for a long time.
May 19, 2011 at 11:59 am
The compounding of the incentives sounds really great but most companies will have an upper limit to a salary so you might have a difficult time achieving the 'full 50% more' than your colleague even if the company raises the upper limit on a regular basis.
May 19, 2011 at 12:20 pm
Interesting discussion.
There are really only three reasons to work. To get paid, to volunteer to those less fortunate or educated, or to try to better yourself or your surrounds. Anything else as a reason for working is simply to help find enjoyment or satisfaction while you're there. We work to gain, or to assuage our guilt that we've gained and another hasn't.
I work for money. I don't work because it's fun, it makes me happy, or that I derive a sense of satisfaction from my completed project. It's to get *paid*. Nothing more. Now, if the other options come into play, even better.
I recently looked into the idea of working as an oil well capper because of the pay increase but found the field was pretty well locked up by older experts. Does that mean I don't enjoy computers? No. Do I want to make the same pay in 1 month of work a year? Oh hell's yes. Do I get paid badly? No, I don't. I've contracted and worked my arse off the last ten years to get my reptutation and abilities up to the upper level of my area.
It's also not slavery that my job isn't what makes me get up in the morning with a smile and a skip in my step. It's just life. It pays me the best of the options I see before me with availability. I'm not in love with SQL... or anything, really. One of my passions wouldn't pay me crap even near the top of my field unless I did parachuting performances at the superbowl. $200/300 bucks a weekend as a trainer wouldn't pay my usual bar and dinner bill, nevermind for my lifestyle or if I brought a date.
Does that mean I'm looking to warm my cheeks in the corner and skate by? No. There's more to be made, there's more abilities to be gotten. There's places up the ladder I can still move to, and I want it. I can't expect a company to hand me my '3%' for loyalty. I'm a contractor. I want it? I have to go get it.
Never stop learning, even if it hurts. Ego bruises are practically mandatory as you learn unless you've never risked enough to make a mistake.
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