what's the highest increase in salary you've had or seen?
I'm an 8 year data center network engineer who recently broke 100k for the first time. When I got asked my salary requirements I actually only asked for 90k as my highest previous salary was 80k with lots of travel, then I found out they gave me 100k because it was the minimum they could pay someone in my position. I've read before about people making crazy salary increases (150%-300%) and am wondering if I played it incorrectly and how I could play it in the future. I plan to stay with my company for the next few years and upskilling heavily and am eyeing a promotion in my first year as I've already delivered big projects by contributing very early. I've progressed from call center/help desk/engineer etc (no degree, just certs) so my progression has been pretty linear, are people who are seeing massive jumps in pay just overselling their competency and failing forward? Or are there other fields in IT like programming/etc that are more likely to have higher progression scales?
was making 125k. Got laid off. Interviewed at another company and asked for 200k. Ended up with 185k. Got laid off again and still haven't been able to find a job. Ups and downs :/
I'm happy at my current job but know I'm underpaid. Not to toot my own horn but I'm pretty sure I'm un-fireable short of like an HR issue... This sort of scenario definitely makes me think twice about leaving / stirring the pot.
I played a negotiation game of spending two weeks of research to explain to my company that I should be paid $165k, based on roles similar to me.
They said, "Well those are in expensive cities." And I said, "They're all remote jobs. And they're all hiring."
They came to the table with 155k, which was 30k more than a month prior. The scary part was a few months later, fucking Musk fired a bunch of Twitter people, and triggered the layoffs. So now I can't do that negotiation again.
You can and you should. Musk's layoffs and the ones that followed are a coordinated press campaign. The total impact on unfilled jobs for IT professional programmers was a tenth of one percent.
But according to the news cycles, without Musk's microservices there's plenty of us to go around now. /s
Yes. Companies are hiring slower right now because there's less venture capital money sloshing around, but they're accumulating company-ending-event technology debt while they do it.
Mark my words they will be desperate for your talents and paying accordingly soon. I predict another big hike in base pay as the game of chicken ends in a mad scramble. We will also see more companies paying long term consulting rates instead of staff rates for IT solutions.
Source: As a developer who hires developers, I'm watching this trainwreck from both sides of the track.
I've heard from some friends/family that are trying to break into entry level cybersecurity or programming roles and it's extremely difficult right now, why do you think there seems to be such a high demand for skilled workers but seemingly no demand for entry level?
You just learned a valuable lesson. Always add like at least 25% to what you think you can get. Unless you are very aware of what the salary range should be. They'll almost always make a counter offer if you've gone over. It's hard to walk it back if you lowball yourself though.
Hell yeah this is the way. Negotiate for 25% more, and expect to land at 10-15% more.
I like the tip someone said where if they want you to name a number, you reply with, "Im currently in the middle of interviews with positions whose salary range from (range 1 to range 2)".
When someone asks what you were paid or what your salary expectations are, ask them what the budget is for the role. They have one. They will not want to tell you, and you shouldn’t tell them your expectations
It’s a negotiation. Unless you have a lot of knowledge about the industry you’re working in and what market salaries are, you’re at a disadvantage. You don’t have to say a number. They do - they’re offering you a job. If they refuse to offer you the job until you tell them your salary desire, they are trying to low ball you and you likely don’t want to work there.
I did this several times and never got a proper reply. They say stuff like "It depends on the person and is calculated individually". You can't really argue over that unless you're willing to be very pushy or just straight up walk away from the table - which is something you don't want to do in most cases.
Why not be pushy? Why not be willing to walk away? Everyone’s situation differs but a server tech is not going to be lacking for work opportunities. If it’s calculated individually, you say “ok what would it be in my case?”
If they say “it depends on what you’re paid now” that’s a HUGE red flag and you should walk
even then, a position may not be for a certain level so they’re can be a fairly wide band of pay depending on how the interview goes.
i think most folks vastly overthink it. just ask for the money you want to make. either it’s in the ballpark or it’s not. all this “don’t say a number first” stuff is bullshit imo.
you definitely do want to know if your desired pay matches their range though. that’s very important.
Truth is this is an antagonistic negotiation oftentimes. You want to be paid more, they want to pay you as little as possible. There’s unfortunately no playbook, just advice and experience.
FWIW if they were that evasive I’d just say “look I’m not going to name an initial number, I’d like you to name a range.” But I’m at a somewhat senior level so I have a different experience than others might
It’s only a sample of one but I almost doubled my salary by switching jobs. I was bullied and harassed in a shitty startup for more than 3 years. I got fat, almost had a depression and I was not doing anything interesting. Even my skills were decreasing.
A bunch of managers asked me once to do something illegal. HR was also telling me to do this because "it’s an order from the bosses." That was the last straw and I told them to fuck off, and I resigned.
I was underpaid at this shitty company, but I accidentally found another job at a good company with nice people. My salary almost doubled overnight. I don’t want that much money but it was nice "fuck you" to my previous manager that I deeply thanked for being such an asshole.
Two years ago our software lead left. Me with 3 years experience was the most knowledgeable person on the team. He left because we had gotten acquired. 3 months later they gave me a raise from 92 to 103k, which I showed annoyance with. 6 months later the new company decided to throw money at the people they couldn't afford to lose so I went to 128k. 6 months later I went to 143k
This is on a small team at a government contractor
TLDR: 51K (56%) in 1 year without switching companies
I worked on a team where everyone but one employee was making 100k+. He was the only one who worked his way up the ranks, and he was only making 49k. I pointed out to him that his job title didn't match everyone else on the team, as titles matched pay bands. He got more than a 100% raise when he showed our manager.
I don't wait to be asked how much I am expecting to be paid. I generally ask the HR person what the salary range is for the role. You have 8 years experience so you can demand the top end of that pay scale.
I didn't finish my degree so ended up going ops -> devops route.
Salary include estimated benefit values (ending salary)
12/hr -> 50k (60k) -> 70k (80k) -> 115k (125k) -> 115k (counter offered 185k upon resignation which I rejected) -> 190k -> 210k
There's a lot more to the story but that might give an idea of possible bumps. Each jump I took mostly to progress my career where they were looking for skills that built on top of what I had already been doing. I went from like a windows admin, to network admin, to windows/network automation, to ansible automation for anything (and other devops-y things), to a cloud consulting company which focused on automation, to a internal platform architect on a team, to a small business where I'm pretty much the infrastructure wizard, with a junior team member, who does the infra deployments, changes, design, cicd for dev and own team, etc.
When I took a pay decrease from 125k -> 115k it was because the weekly cash was still slightly better but the benefits were far worse. I mostly took it because I needed to get to a cloud focused company to progress my career where I wanted it to go and my company at the time couldn't get me any meaningful experience in cloud stuff at all. The pay jump after that really proved that the experience was worth it. I kind of wish I never joined the 190k company and instead took the counter offer. The 190k company I ended up really not liking leadership's direction and handling of things.
Super happy now at 210k company where I am a bit of a manager. I really like the people, responsibilities, etc. Pay is pretty great, more than I need for sure, so paying extra on the house and good bucks in retirement for later. Of the higher paying places I've been at it is the only one I feel fulfilled and not constantly frustrated.
That's great, can you elaborate what you mean by ops>devops? Do you support infrastructure or applications? I know devops is kind of a catch-all term now for automation, did you work on understanding cloud deployments from the POV of the servers/application or from infra?
I only ask because some of what I do is considered "devops" in the sense that I'm working on network automation, but a lot of times when I hear people discuss devops they're talking about supporting applications
When I first started (hourly) I was doing basically field tech work at an msp. That means I was just a monkey following a document and would call for backup if I experienced any issues. I started getting some basic tasks to come up with newer processes, script some existing ones, and generally manage existing clients. I mostly got familiar with OS stuff, took a few Microsoft certs, that sort of stuff.
Second and third job I was doing more engineering of my own. I'd get higher level tasks like design an implementation of a next Gen firewall here, design next developer image, implement monitoring system, revamp backups, etc. Third job involved some public site management but I wasn't yet too responsible for app deployments themselves though was often involved as escalation in app support.
Fourth job was more of the same but focused on automation this time. Our group was called 'automation team' and we revamped processes at a larger regional bank while adding automation. Before I left there we transitioned to DevOps team, but was more of a DevOps processes and platforms team. We wrote a lot of ci and automation but the goal was to have existing app support teams to own it. That model largely worked and we helped train the ops folks to be DevOps folks.
I moved to a cloud consulting company bc I wanted cloud experience and to get closer to app deployments. If you work on line of business applications then you're more likely to demand higher pay while doing more interesting and important work. Managers usually need to improve the product so they're less likely to be wanting to stick to the status quo.
The last two are similar, both justify architecture in the name. The previous though had a lot of bad practices, status quo managers, and was generally miserable. I'm currently quite a generalist because we're at a small business. That said, main responsibilities include writing and supporting cicd pipeline, all infrastructure changes and automation, 3rd party mail system config, etc.
My jaw damn near hit the floor when I got the offer. A lot of it is wrapped up in stocks, but the base salary is 175k with a cash signing bonus of 160k spread across the first two years' paychecks.
Despite that (and even when saving quite aggressively), I still can't afford more than my tiny condo in my area. It's silly.
Was making 80k at my last job, asked for 110k when interviewing and my new job offered my 125k, then after a year they bumped it to 145k. I work in devops.
$0.7k annually? Is it anyhow possible to live with that low salary in India? I can't even live a month with that here, even if I don't buy anything but the cheapest food and live in the smallest apartments here...
It is possible to live on that, there are people who live on less than it. Personally all of it went to supplementing my Mom's income so we could survive.
There are plenty of entry level jobs in India that offer those kinds of wages. There are more that offer less.
41k -> 60k -> 70k -> 85k -> 100k -> 110k (2018-2023)
That 41 -> 60 felt huge.
60 -> 70 felt like a drop, it was a job change and I lost overtime and we were paid every 2 weeks instead of twice a month. (26 paychecks instead of 24)
These days, what makes all the difference are the bonus programs. My income is generally 25% higher than my base through company stock programs, bonuses and high performance grants.
The simple answer is, maybe. You could have had more if the competition wasn't better. But you will never know if they were. My advice would be to focus on the fact that you just got a big raise, and enjoy the work. In a year, ask for more, say 10%, and if you're good and fit the culture, they'll do it. If not, start looking. Just be careful of jumping jobs too much.
I've been in leadership for a number of companies now. I've only had one manager actively tell me it was of no consequence to them. They retracted that after two good applicants, one with 6 jobs in 6 years was in the mix. Personal experience and gut, but it tells me you are in the minority.
I got just about 60% by switching the company.
Previously biggest bump that I got internally was about 30%, when I put an ultimatum on the table. Without the ultimatum I'd probably get like 10% max.
It's always either switching the job or the threat of switching the job that will make them pay.
My first "real" job (I used to work at McD's and Walmart, barely three months each) was 120k a year as a software engineer. I left that job for 200k within six months and here I happily stay
When I went from being Head Chef in fine dining, at $34,000 a year, to being a General Manager at Taco Bell, for $36,000, but because of some law that was passed and went into effect in 2019, I got another $3000 per year raise, giving me a salary of $39,000 a year two months after I took the job.
I guess when I threw my back out a year later at 36, 20 years after I took my first Line Cook job, and started working for myself, growing flower, fostering dogs, and building computers would be my highest pay raise, since I either went from $39,000 a year, or really $0 a year, to making almost $100,000 my first year, and now I'm considering "retiring" at 43 years old because I have consistently made about $1,500,000 after taxes for the last couple years. I only need about $10,000,000 to retire and buy a house in the town I want to live in, that I currently live in.
I also self describe as "the luckiest bastard to ever live," so I'm well aware that most people couldn't do even half of what I have stumbled through. I'm being completely serious there. Any of the two plane crashes, or many of the 36 car wrecks I've been in should have killed me. That doesn't include the mountain climbing accident that had me falling a full 125 feet onto a dry creekbed made of limestone. It also doesn't include the many instances of me making, and testing, my own explosives. I shouldn't have lived past puberty. I was playing around with things that no one should play around with, and somehow I've made it to 43, while actively antagonizing the US cops every chance I get. I "literally" told a cop at the age of 5, "I know where my mother is, she knows where I am. You can fuck off, thanks." That didn't go over well.
That was unexpected (at least to me), like idk it feels like Sweden a good place to stay. Yeah the American salaries can be crazy.... but after you count everything... idk I don't think I personally would have done it.
A good place to stay? I was renting a 2bd apt in Stockholm for 22000 SEK while making only 60k before taxes, after tax it was something like 38k. Yeah, sure, my kids daycare was subsidized and I didn't have to worry about my health insurance, but what I was left with after taxes and rent was barely enough for us. Tbh I even was behind 1500 SEK copay on daycare a couple of times because of how little money I had. We had to eat mostly ätsnart items from ICA, I couldn't afford to buy a bicycle, so I had to borrow one from a neighbor and fix it up, just to save some money on commuting because of expensive fares. The bicycle got stolen eventually.
After one year our landlord booted us even though I asked them in advance to renew the contract, a friend of mine told me that this is because I would be eligible for första hand rent contract after living there for 2 years, so landlords never renew 2nd hand rent contracts. We couldn't find another place to live afterwards and had to rent an Airbnb for a while.
I moved to Cleveland OH afterwards. I make 2 times more now while paying only 1,600$ for a 3bd house. Our landlord is begging us to renew the contract. We can afford a car. We live normal life now.
But overall, sweden has better safety nets if you lose your job. Healthcare that doesnt bankrupt you, education for your children that doesnt cost anything, etc
For a "working solo" dude i guess it matters less. But if you move your whole family...
My last raise was 10k. But that was after 7+ years of no raises (agency work, slow times). When COVID hit, our business picked up for 2 years straight and I finally convinced them it was stable enough to commit. We're a small company and they'd rather give out bonuses or assistance with personal expenses than commit to an annual salary increase (which I get), but COL has spiked in recent times, so the raise was well past due.
If I had the chance to follow my dreams, I would have been a paramedic, followed by either park ranger or some form of rescue team. Unfortunately, as a poor immigrant, I had to focus on pay, and paramedic pay was only about 2x minimum wage where I live, so I decided not to follow my dream. Thankfully I ended up in something else I enjoy. All that to say, you're a hero in my book, and I've always thought paramedics should be paid significantly more.
~220% total comp for me last year, switching companies from a job with okay but below market pay, and becoming a senior software engineer in the move. I think I can feasibly double one more time if I try, but it'd be a bigger push and likely involve working for FAANG. Anything more that is outside my reasonably likely career path.