Re:Never accept a counter-offer
by cookiecaper on Monday October 03, 2016 @11:21AM
(#12628070)
Yeah, annual employee reviews are undoubtedly the sanctioned time to bring it up. The boss won't be offended if you wait until then because they're expecting your compensation to be a point of discussion in that meeting anyway. However, you'll find that since they're expecting it, they have their hand-wavey excuses ready and won't take the request seriously. I'm sure a lot of people "ask for raises" in those routine reviews.
So if you do sit on your hands for 11 months so that you only ask your boss at the time when he won't find it offensive, you're still most likely going to walk away with nothing or a pittance, since as I said, bossess appear to believe any raise in excess of 5% is outrageous (again, a large bump is like an admission that they're cheapskates, so they don't like doing it).
On the other hand, most programmers can go out and get a new job offer within 2-4 weeks, and unless they're at the top of the pay scale for their industry and area, probably get a 20-40% pay bump. Which option is more attractive?
Typically, you wait for your yearly or quaterly review, tell him what great stuff you did for the company, how you will contribute again in the future then tell him you feel like a raise of x percent or n dollars would be appropriate. You don't say "you're underpaying me", but "the value I bring to the company increased, so I deserve more than I did last year"
I've never seen a boss get offended for it, at worst he'll make excuses like "sorry I can't right now, but at soon as things get better I'll think about you".
And nowadays in many companies, if you never ask for a raise you never get any. Your boss assumes you're happy with your pay, so why give more?