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Am I being shafted?
Ponge
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I've worked for my current employer for 7 months now, and we just got our salary reviews in a few days ago. Despite my relatively short time here I've got to say I'm more than a bit dissapointed with my raise and I'd just like to hear from you guys if I have cause to be annoyed or if I'm being greedy.
So as I said, been here 6 months. I was employed to take over from a guy who is being transferred to our New York office, at the same time another guy was employed (a week after me) doing the same job. He had about the same experience but had a bit more qualification (I completed my Part 1 Architects degree, he had completed his Part 2 degree, although this job isn't as an architect, it's as an Architectural Visualisor). He told me one night when he was drunk what he was paid, and it was £1000 more than I was being paid. Fair enough I guess, he's older and had a bit higher qualification.
When I initially applied for my position I was told that the job was in Edinburgh. During the interview they told me it would be in Glasgow (1.5 hour commute each way). They said that it would only be for a few months until they could replace me there and it was a good opportunity so I accepted. My travel costs amount to £3000 per year on trains and so although I was effectively taking a paycut from my previous job I thought it would only be for a few months. Seven months later and I'm still working at the other office, travelling 3 hours a day. I've brought it up several times and it's on the cards to transfer me, but not for another month or so. When I do get transferred it will effectively be a £3000 raise.
During my appraisal last month I got 5/5 for every criteria, and they told me how happy they were with my work. It's been said several times by very high up members of staff how well I'm doing. During my appraisal we spoke about how I'd been taking on several responsibilities (almost all resourcing of projects, attending meetings/interviews, handling general administration/IT tasks etc) and they agreed that they felt I was the person in charge of these things. Now I felt that this went pretty well and expected a nice little bump in my pay to acknowledge my added responsibility/extended period of having to work 3 hours from home/cost of travel/doing a pretty damn good job.
However after getting my salary review they've only given me a £1000 raise, a 4% raise (inflation here is 3%) which I'm more than a tad annoyed about. It still puts me at a level lower than my collegue although I supposedly have more responsibility. Now do you think this is me being greedy? Is this a pretty standard rate for an employee doing pretty well? I've never had a raise before so this is new territory to me.
There are a few other circumstances to take into consideration:
1) My desire to be transferred. My immediate boss suggested a payraise for me to one of the head honcho's who decided what the raise shall be. I think he's annoyed that I want transferred so he may have reduced the amount.
2) With my boss's consent I applied to be transferred to a job opening in our Hong Kong office. A position came up and I'd love to do it. Maybe similar situation to point 1.
3) New employee has just started so I should be transferred in a month or so. They maybe think that my percieved £3000 'raise' from no transport costs should be taken into consideration.
4) I'm still due a bonus thats not payable until september. I've no idea how much this will be.
I should get a chance to speak to my boss about it tomorow, it was just that today I had to fill out an employee CV to be included in a presentation and it gave my job title as Head of my Department and I was like o_O
Thanks for reading guys. If I'm seriously being out of order/unrealistic/greedy here please let me know.
So as I said, been here 6 months. I was employed to take over from a guy who is being transferred to our New York office, at the same time another guy was employed (a week after me) doing the same job. He had about the same experience but had a bit more qualification (I completed my Part 1 Architects degree, he had completed his Part 2 degree, although this job isn't as an architect, it's as an Architectural Visualisor). He told me one night when he was drunk what he was paid, and it was £1000 more than I was being paid. Fair enough I guess, he's older and had a bit higher qualification.
When I initially applied for my position I was told that the job was in Edinburgh. During the interview they told me it would be in Glasgow (1.5 hour commute each way). They said that it would only be for a few months until they could replace me there and it was a good opportunity so I accepted. My travel costs amount to £3000 per year on trains and so although I was effectively taking a paycut from my previous job I thought it would only be for a few months. Seven months later and I'm still working at the other office, travelling 3 hours a day. I've brought it up several times and it's on the cards to transfer me, but not for another month or so. When I do get transferred it will effectively be a £3000 raise.
During my appraisal last month I got 5/5 for every criteria, and they told me how happy they were with my work. It's been said several times by very high up members of staff how well I'm doing. During my appraisal we spoke about how I'd been taking on several responsibilities (almost all resourcing of projects, attending meetings/interviews, handling general administration/IT tasks etc) and they agreed that they felt I was the person in charge of these things. Now I felt that this went pretty well and expected a nice little bump in my pay to acknowledge my added responsibility/extended period of having to work 3 hours from home/cost of travel/doing a pretty damn good job.
However after getting my salary review they've only given me a £1000 raise, a 4% raise (inflation here is 3%) which I'm more than a tad annoyed about. It still puts me at a level lower than my collegue although I supposedly have more responsibility. Now do you think this is me being greedy? Is this a pretty standard rate for an employee doing pretty well? I've never had a raise before so this is new territory to me.
There are a few other circumstances to take into consideration:
1) My desire to be transferred. My immediate boss suggested a payraise for me to one of the head honcho's who decided what the raise shall be. I think he's annoyed that I want transferred so he may have reduced the amount.
2) With my boss's consent I applied to be transferred to a job opening in our Hong Kong office. A position came up and I'd love to do it. Maybe similar situation to point 1.
3) New employee has just started so I should be transferred in a month or so. They maybe think that my percieved £3000 'raise' from no transport costs should be taken into consideration.
4) I'm still due a bonus thats not payable until september. I've no idea how much this will be.
I should get a chance to speak to my boss about it tomorow, it was just that today I had to fill out an employee CV to be included in a presentation and it gave my job title as Head of my Department and I was like o_O
Thanks for reading guys. If I'm seriously being out of order/unrealistic/greedy here please let me know.
Ponge on
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Yes, the travel costs suck, I appreciate that, but you knew that when you took the job on.
My appraisals are always good, but then, I'm paid to work hard and get the job done. I don't get any bonuses just for doing my job to the best of my ability.
Oh, my goodness, I sound like the 4 yorkshiremen!
I work in the public sector though, you sound like you work in the private sector. I know it makes a difference.
For paintings in progress, check out canvas and paints
"The power of the weirdness compels me."
Just sucks to be doing more work with more responsibility and be paid less :-(
That and my student loans start coming off this month which works out at almost exactly the same amount of money as my raise. So no real noticable benefit to my paypacket!
You just got a raise of 4% at 6 months. Keep it up and you're looking at a raise of a little over 8% for the year.
Two other things - One is that you will only be able to pull the "pay me lots more money because I'm worth it and if you don't I will go to XYZ and they'll pay me what I think I should get" once and you will almost certainly feel it in future raise cycles. The other would be to talk to your future manager (directly and have your current boss contact him) to see about bumping up any salary offers they make you due to your sparkling reviews. They know you are good because of the 'objective' company review and they should pay for said quality.
Lastly, my personal situation: I work for a very very large (100,000+ employee) private sector company in the US. We simply do not get large raises during performance reviews. I've been told I am one of the best developers out of the 50 we have on site and that's why I get the "amazing" 5-6% raises (others get below inflation, so about 2.5%). Now, this technically sucks, but when I look at the last year, it isn't that bad - I got a 6% raise for being awesome, a 6% raise for a promotion, a 1.5% raise for salary adjustment, and 1% raise for having a special skill set. That works out to more than 14.5% over the course of 12 months. Now, I have an amazingly awesome manager that fights for his people... but my promotion last summer means, if I'm really lucky and really push for it, I MIGHT see another promotion next summer, so this year's total gain will be relatively weak. But hey, I'm 41 months out of college at this job and my salary is already 150% the original value (despite the first year only gaining about 8% total), which also begs the question as to how underpaid I was when I was hired... so it does come, albeit slowly, but it will come. Now lets hope in a few months when I play my "I'm worth $20,000 more than you pay me" card, I don't have to prove it by finding another job.
Worst comes to worst... job hopping is the #1 way to gain salary boosts. Just don't do it too often and try to stay in one place at least 2 years so as to harbor no ill will (or so it goes in the US software developers market).
Murphy's Paradox: The more you plan, the more that can go wrong. The less you plan, the less likely your plan will succeed.
I had a video conference with our Director in Hong Kong today and it looks like that transfer is going ahead...
...
...
...
:-O.
Not really sunk in yet but suffice to say my head has been all over the place all afternoon. There is a possibility that i'll be heading over for a period of 6-10 weeks in 10 days time before returning for a month or so. I'd then head back over for a couple of years. I think I'll be making a new post sometime soon!
Thanks again guys.
I wish that my money problems included a pay raise that would pay my entire monthly student loan payment. You may not see a monetary difference to your pay, but a 4% raise that will pay your loan payments is nothing to be upset about, especially in the first year of employment.
Murphy's Paradox: The more you plan, the more that can go wrong. The less you plan, the less likely your plan will succeed.