How to get a 40% pay raise in less than a year?
These are my own experiences with salary development. With the salary, also the responsibility grows. I don’t know which one I like more.
Salaries are still somewhat of a taboo. That makes it harder to determine your own value and suitable salary for you. When I started, I had no idea when I can ask my first pay raise. And then I didn’t know how much to ask or how often to ask. Everything was unclear. In this post, I’m not gonna talk about exact numbers here. I don’t care if your salary is 2k or 5k, I think the core concepts stay the same.
I work in a pretty small company. The one thing I love is the ability to proceed and level up incredibly fast. Mainly because small/medium-sized companies are more agile and often see your contribution faster than big companies. Big ships turn slowly, they say. So I hopped into a small one.
Find the demand
When I first started, I was more than happy with my salary. It was actually a great starting salary for a junior and correlated well with my responsibilities. Eventually, I saw that there was a greater amount of work for me to do. I noticed that I was getting hungry, and started to wolf down tasks. Soon I was the one who knew what was going on. I made a demand for me. So 3 months into a new job, I decided it a was time for my first salary negotiations. So I marched into the office, asking for a raise, while still in my trial period. Bold or stupid? You be the judge.
It was thrilling. This is where my company made a great move. They made me really explain, why I needed that raise. Why am I worth this much? How have my responsibilities grown? Thinking and really explaining this all, really taught me why I am worth something, and also pointed me that I’m responsible for what I ask. Time spent in a company is not a reason to give you more money. Bringing more value, on the other hand, is. I got my raise.
After that, things went more intense. Deadlines, new techs, big releases. I also gained a huge amount of confidence as a coder, consultant and a member of the company. I saw new reasons for the bigger paycheck on the horizon. To achieve that, I realized I needed to spread my responsibilities. I learned new techs by myself and started working with projects I don’t usually work. Being unprompted greatly increases your value, and also now I had more projects under my radar. This forced me to learn new technologies, to get my roots deeper. I loved it.
Now I started feeling a bit unsure. Do I really have the guts to ask more raise when I just got a hefty amount? Is this too soon, do I come off as a cocky? I chatted with seniors. One line struck me.
“No one is going to give it to you. You have to ask for it.”
8 months in. Junior status brushed off ages ago. Second salary-talk. I ask for more. “I was thinking the same”, boss says, as he agrees. That’s something that good companies do. HR actively monitors your process and reacts accordingly.
Of course, these are really unique experiences and are affected by many factors like the company’s current state, amount of bureaucracy, how big are your projects etc. The list is endless. The fact I’m pointing out is, that pay raises are not so complicated or scary thing to pull off as I imagined when I started.
Let’s break it down
- Find or create the demand. Make yourself a valuable player. No one is going to buy something they don’t need. I work as a Software Developer. We are naturally in a huge demand. That’s the first key point. Find the demand. In some fields, this will be much harder.
- Spread your responsibilities. If you are a newcomer like me, you still have to fare in a comparison between old employees. That’s the hardest part. Compensate your lack of knowledge with hard work and via other aspects. As a consultant/developer, I don’t code 100% of the time. I also have lots of social aspects in my work, and I try to pivot towards new, experimental projects by myself, on top of that I’m an ultrasocial person with good teamwork abilities. That’s where I really shine. Find your strengths and don’t be ashamed to use them.
- Ask it. No one is going to do this for you. The company wants to make money and offer you the amount you are satisfied with, while they save as much as possible in personnel expenses. It’s all matter of negotiation. Asking for a raise also promotes the image that you know your worth. That’s a desirable attribute.
- Explain it. Break it down to easily comparable aspects. Show that you are needed or projects won’t go as they are supposed to go. Explain why you are an important piece of the puzzle. Is the company in a rush? Do you lack workforce? Are there too much on your plate than there should be. Great. Now you have reasons.
That’s how I did it.
The writer is a Software Developer and a Consultant, based in Helsinki, Finland. All views are my own and not companies I work with.
