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Performance Review Time, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Demand Too Much Money
DasBoot
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm in a situation I haven't gone through before so I thought I could get some input from y'all.
I've worked for the same company for two years as of August 1 and so it is time for my annual review which comes with a pay increase. Been through that sort of thing several times in my working life- no big deal. The twist on the situation is thus: I started out at the business doing administrative and customer service type work and after my first year I was promoted into the position of being one of their full time .NET developers, despite having what could be described on paper as "absolutely no programming experience whatsoever". At the time they bumped me up to 40k/year and sent me on my way to write some really horrendous code for a while.
Well, now I've been doing that for a year and currently I'm the lead maintenance/development guy on one of our products as well as working with the team on relaunching three of our sites by the end of the year. It's a small shop, so I'm not just doing C# but I've also had to figure out how to do decent UI, database design, so on. Now it's time for the review and I'm not sure how to approach the possibility that my compensation does not match my responsibilities. I'm not even sure how much I ought to be earning (it seems like the number for a starting programmer is something like 50,000ish). My questions are first, am I out of line in my thinking on this? Second, is there a better way to approach it than to just kind of plainly discuss the sort of responsibilities I have now with my boss? If anyone has done this sort of thing and has some insight, it would be greatly appreciated.
I've worked for the same company for two years as of August 1 and so it is time for my annual review which comes with a pay increase. Been through that sort of thing several times in my working life- no big deal. The twist on the situation is thus: I started out at the business doing administrative and customer service type work and after my first year I was promoted into the position of being one of their full time .NET developers, despite having what could be described on paper as "absolutely no programming experience whatsoever". At the time they bumped me up to 40k/year and sent me on my way to write some really horrendous code for a while.
Well, now I've been doing that for a year and currently I'm the lead maintenance/development guy on one of our products as well as working with the team on relaunching three of our sites by the end of the year. It's a small shop, so I'm not just doing C# but I've also had to figure out how to do decent UI, database design, so on. Now it's time for the review and I'm not sure how to approach the possibility that my compensation does not match my responsibilities. I'm not even sure how much I ought to be earning (it seems like the number for a starting programmer is something like 50,000ish). My questions are first, am I out of line in my thinking on this? Second, is there a better way to approach it than to just kind of plainly discuss the sort of responsibilities I have now with my boss? If anyone has done this sort of thing and has some insight, it would be greatly appreciated.
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My Little Game Blog - http://profundospielen.blogspot.com/
My Little Game Blog - http://profundospielen.blogspot.com/
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edit: then put a dollar value on each of those things and see how close you get to what you want to make
figure out if you're still being reasonable and if you are, go for it anyway
ask yourself a different question. Is it out of line with your achievements?
To answer questions on my location I'm in Eastern KS, Kansas City metro, so the low cost of living helps. Not sure on the competitiveness of the area. We got Google Fiber out here and they're trying to make the area friendly to tech companies but I have no idea if that's been successful.
schuss, no luck on having other programmer openings to look off of. We've got a total staff of about 25 and I am literally half of the programming staff and the only full time programmer since the other guy is the IT director and has a bunch of other stuff to occupy his time. What I'd really like to see is what they were going to pay for this position if they went with an outside hire.
My Little Game Blog - http://profundospielen.blogspot.com/
Otherwise, if you want more scratch you're probably going to have to land an offer for more money, and any pay increase from current employer is a match or an offer intended to keep you there.
Finally, suppose your boss says no. What will you do then? are you ready to look for a job elsewhere? Obviously this is an extreme situation but you should be careful not to create an ultimatum situation unless your willing to carry out on that ultimatum.
Well, 2 years is not a whole lot of experience TBH, It took me 8 years go from about 37k to 58k with a BS in Computer Science and that was with 2 promotions accounting for most of that increase. Granted it sounds like youve taken more responsibility then you expected for the position and you shouldnt be afraid to factor that in. Not sure how your company does review but mine has me essentially write a report summarizing the projects ive worked on that past year. If your company does not do that, and your review time is coming up, I would write something like that on your own time and give it to your boss. Mention that you wanted him to have a handy list of things that youve done since you moved into the job and how much your job has grown. If they still wanna snuff you on a decent raise then you can consider other options, but giving him something like this should tell him your hoping for something special in terms of a raise.
Senior Programmer or something like that.
Shoot for more than you want, so when they try to bargain you down you end up getting as close to what you actually wanted as possible, or if they agree and don't try to negotiate, you get paaaaid, son!