The best way to get a Promo is to get another job.

My theory is that in the last couple of years, the market is booming however for most people, salaries haven’t kept up with it. At Microsoft my rate of raise was lower than inflation (so in essence I was getting paid less every year). Jumping ship was a huge jump. I interviewed at a bunch of places and got an idea what the market would pay for me. I negotiated slightly above and been happy.

I've been saying this for a long time. It's especially true in technology and engineering.

I think the reason why the best way to get a promotion and a raise is to get another job is because once you've been working for a company for a few years your salary and benefits are "pinned" or anchored by HR, and you're only going to be able to advance within their acceptable terms, rates, and limits. There's also a lot more negotiation overhead—you have to spend a lot of effort in making your case for a promotion. Whereas with a new job you start fresh and you can negotiate on fundamental terms.

My best way to get a raise used to be to quit my contract. Got 50% more for staying. Now I get 33% raises (without asking/negotiation) to prevent me from qutting :-P That said, I started very low, so 50% was not much.

As Dilbert said: the company policy is to reward disloyalty.

http://dilbert.com/strip/1997-06-29

Dilbert was such a great strip before the writer went all in on politics

I recently understood what was it that made me quit reading Dilbert: because he's an asshole now.

For me, Dilbert used to be like a character in a Kafka novel making funny remarks about all the nonsense. And he used to build things too. Nowadays the "humor" is mostly people insulting each other to their face.

Sucks, though. As you say, it used to be such a great strip.

His strips don't seem to contain much politics, though?

Not normally, but when you read some of his strips after reading some of his articles you start noticing done of the undertones of what he believes in in them. Especially when Dilbert is interacting with women.

I don't necessarily share the commenter's criticism, but one of the characters was made "officially gay" in response to current political events.

http://dilbert.com/strip/2014-02-07

http://dilbert.com/strip/2014-02-08

That second one was very weird.

Maybe the problem is not with a comic, but with a reality it reflects.

Is kind of like when Republicans stopped listening to the Dixie Chicks in the '00s...

They`ve been criticized for over 18 years for being right-wing: https://www.alternet.org/story/4260/the_trouble_with_dilbert...

Back in 1997. Funny how timeless some things are.

I got the advice from a friend.

Interview game >>> Engineering game.

Also from Scott Adams himself: Your day job must be to find a better day job.

This. A million times this.

I experienced a similar situation just a few months ago. I'm now being asked to step in and take over the project from the very person who got the promotion because said individual never truly had the leadership skills to begin with, rather, they only had the leverage of walking out the door.

It's a very difficult pill to swallow when my manager turns this situation around on me, stating (I'm paraphrasing), "If you truly want to be a senior, you have to know when to swallow your pride and do right by the team."

Our industry is just plain bananas.

For some reason raises suck these days. Where I’m currently employed the raise for a level jump almost doesn’t justify the amount of work to get there. So either I’ll jump through all these hoops to get a very modest raise or stay at the same level until the better parts of stocks vest and go find another job.

I always tell people that the best raises are the ones you get when you land a new job.

I never saw the benefit in working much harder to get a 5% raise when I could just go someplace else that would actually value me more.

I never understood this mindset. Why would an employer pay someone that they have to train more than someone they already have?

I understand companies only being able to afford recent college graduates, but I don't understand the reasoning behind the larger companies paying a replacement more than the person who left.

I guess they're betting on higher performance from new employees trying to prove themselves?

What I saw was that managers don't think the person would leave. Because he doesn't have the guts. Or they don't want to pay him more than a manager would earn an so on. The people that decide this are the kind of people that do not change jobs unless they have to. They think everybody else is like them or worse.

Then when the person leaves they need to hire somebody else and they pay as much as it is needed to hire that new person. So it happens because it is a two step process with two independent decisions from the management and I have yet to see a manager that realizes that the two decisions are connected. I've even seen managers doing the same mistake over and over and never learning anything from it.