Three women, three salaries, three stories
These women shared their salary history. Here’s what you can learn from them
Salaries are a complicated thing. How much you get paid now, how much you want to get paid, how much you hope to get paid in the future — it depends on so many factors. Education, experience, performance, company size, personal goals, negotiation skill. Everyone’s story is different, but every story offers a lesson to be learned.
We wanted to hear some of these stories, so we reached out to the Pay Up community and asked women to tell us where they are, where they want to end up and how they’re working to get there. Here are the stories of three very different women who share their salary histories, their victories, their regrets and the best lessons they learned along the way.
Sharon: Where she wants to be
- Age: 52
- Job: Independent consultant
- Level of education: MS, additional certifications in specialty
- Years of experience: 35 total, 23 in current field
- Typical client: Manufacturing companies, 10,000+ employees
- Location: Atlanta metro area, Georgia
Salary goal: $100,000
Currently making: $100,000-$150,000
The story:
Early in her career, Sharon was making $23,000 in a position. She had been in her position for three years, and after she found out her coworkers on her project were making more money, she asked for a raise. She says she “got slapped down — they said no, they couldn’t afford it, plus, I didn’t have [a four-year] degree so I wasn’t worth it.” She eventually left that position for one that nearly doubled her salary, and eventually ended up getting her degree, which continued improving her earning potential.
Sharon says she learned a lesson from the experience: “Your worth in a recruiter’s eyes is how much someone else is paying you.”
Her ideal salary now is right around $100,000 — about what she currently makes in a year — based on research she’s done and based on her experience level due to where she’s worked in the past.
Setting this goal was an exercise in strategy for Sharon. “Once you get above 10 years of experience, the salary band starts to really widen as specializations come into play,” she says. “I’m not an expert on what the rate bands are, but I have learned that when I discount myself from the market, I’ve just lowered my value.” So when she’s negotiating now, she researches a competitive range for the company and her skill set, and then ask for a number right in the middle.
Even still, she says, there’s a strong argument to be made that she’s underpricing herself, but she’s happy with her $100,000 number, partially for competitive reasons: “Aiming a bit lower than the top end [of my ideal range], while still staying firmly above the line of being so low that I trigger doubts about my qualifications and competency, is a tactical move.”
Sharon’s salary history:
- First: $3.50-$6/hr multiple jobs
- Second: $21,000, raised to $23,000
- Third: $41,000, raised to $51,000
- Fourth: $55,000, raised to $71,000, then $100,000 including stock options
- Current: $100,000–150,000
Meg: Took a setback to set herself up
- Age: 37
- Job: Manager, large data firm
- Level of education: BA, additional certification in specialty
- Years of experience: 16 years total, 1 year as a manager
- Approximate company size: 5,000
- Location: Denver, CO
Salary goal: $200,000
Currently making: $103,500
The story:
There’s a part of Meg that still thinks her salary should be $2,000 higher.
At her previous job, she remembers looking up and realizing that there was zero chance for her to advance into a management position. She began looking for new opportunities.
A former colleague of hers had been hired at the company a few months prior, and “he called me up and said, ‘Hey, we’re hiring. This is what they gave me, and you need to ask for that.’” So when the question of salaries came up in the interview process, she asked for the salary he was making — $104,000.
The company came back with an offer of $102,000 and told her there was no wiggle room for negotiation. She says even though it’s only a $2,000 difference, “It honestly has rankled ever since.” Meg doesn’t know why she was offered less than her colleague. “Occasionally I think about it now and think, ‘Wow, this is stupid.’”
Ultimately, she accepted the job, because the paid time off was an improvement over her previous position and the company offered her the room for growth she was craving — enough, in her mind, to make up for the additional $2,000 she’d hoped for: “I went from a very small company, under 50 employees with no path for advancement, to a large multinational company. Vacation was better, medical was better, better 401k match — and on top of that, a clear path to advancement. I could tell at the previous job that I was never going to get to management.”
Meg is confident that it was the right decision to accept this job, even though she didn’t get the salary she asked for. Since joining the company, she’s moved into a management position and has even gotten a small raise. She plans to continue developing her managerial skills, and when she senses she’s hit a ceiling in her current company, she’ll jump jobs again. She hopes to double her salary within 10 years.
Meg’s salary history:
- First: $38,000, raised to $50,000 over four years
- Second: $55,000
- Third: $65,000, raised to $75,000, then $79,000
- Fourth: $86,000, raised to $97,000, cut to $86,000 in company-wide pay cut
- Fifth: $86,000, raised to $92,000 + bonus
- Sixth: $96,000, raised to $100,000
- Current: $102,000, raised to $103,500
Natalie: Knows better for next time
- Age: 28
- Job: Graphic and UI/UX designer
- Level of education: BFA
- Years of experience: 6
- Approximate company size: 25
- Location: Louisiana
Salary goal: $100,000
Currently making: $52,000
The story:
When Natalie was offered her current position, her third job, the company asked for a salary range. Without doing much research at all, she gave them $40–45,000, an increase from her salary at the time. The company offered $45,000, which surprised her. “I either expected them to come down and try to fight me on it, or just give me somewhere in the middle … I thought I was asking for the moon! Turns out I wasn’t.”
Natalie also later found out that a man hired right before her for the same position was making about $60,000, which helped her realize she could have asked for more initially: “The fact that it was so quickly like ‘ok we’ll give you as much as you’re asking for, end of story,’ told me more about the range I asked for than finding out about my coworker did.”
Since joining the company, she’s gotten a series of merit raises that have increased her salary by several thousand. She feels like she’s being paid “decently” now, but Natalie “can’t help but think that I could have asked for more at the start … I just didn’t know any better and didn’t do any research before.”
She plans to move to a new city next year and will be looking for a new job, and this time, she says she’s going to increase her initial ask to be where she thinks it should be: “I definitely expect to be making twice as much as I am now. That’s my goal, and I’m confident that I can do it.”
Natalie’s salary history:
- First: $33,000, raised to $35,000 after one year
- Second: $38,000
- Current: $45,000, raised to $48,000, now $52,000.
These stories were compiled based on information provided in an online form and follow up phone interviews. We have used only first names or middle names to enable the women to speak freely.
Pay Up is a private, Slack-based community dedicated to fostering conversations about the gender wage gap. It was formerly managed by the Washington Post.
