Totally Honest Software Engineering Negotiations
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I went back to my original employer and said I had a new job offer for $70k, and I didn't want to negotiate, I just wanted their final, last ditch offer
That's an incredibly awesome way to have a huge target painted on your back. A lot of employers get really pissed at this tactic but won't say so to your face. They will gladly give you that new salary for just enough time to get a (cheaper) replacement on board. Then your salary is changed to $0.00.
I found a solid startup, _one_I_would_actually_work_at_, and tell them I make $100k (a lie, I added $20k to my current salary).
Welcome to the 2010s, where credit bureaus now run additional services for employers and HR departments. My company regularly uses The Work Number from Equifax. I pulled up my report and it has my salary history for the last 20 years on it. Perhaps working for small startups that can't afford this service will let you fly under the radar when it comes to bluffing about salary history (and don't get me wrong, I'm all for not letting your next employer know what you were making before), but you gotta tread lightly here.
https://www.theworknumber.com/
My opinion is that one should tell the new employer what it would take to make you jump, and that's it. If they can't make that number then you have your answer. That, or they need to make up the delta in other ways.
Interesting. I've always suspected something like this existed and have argued with people against lying about salary history on the assumption that it does. This is the first confirmation I've seen. Thanks!
It's right in the text.
TWN includes base -- which is what banks care about.
In the information age, you better be extra careful about bluffing because it's easier every day to call those bluffs.
I also attributed The Work Number to Experian, but it's owned by Equifax.
Of course, lying is still mostly unnecessary, especially if you interview a lot and actually do have offers to back up your claims. Personally I think the hit your reputation would take from lying just isn't worth it.
A lot of people are not in this position. Negotiation certainly becomes critical. A little bit of homework and diplomatic work can bump your salary by thousands or tens of thousands with a few hours of work. This is impossible to do once you start your employment.
More importantly, this raises significant privacy issues. How can a current or former employer make sensitive data like salary information easily and publicly accessible, without permission? That ought to be illegal.
I agree that it's really wrong to lie about one's salary; the best answer is to not disclose that, and probably to point to available information like glassdoor, or just be honest about your expectations.
But I trust the credit bureaus as far as I can throw them. This will certainly morph into other uses for the data, like this:
Hiring Company: "Did Joe Pastebin earn $100,000 last year?"
Equifax: "Nope."
And out goes the bong letter.
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/exclusive-your-employer-ma...
In the US the Fair Credit Reporting Act gives collection firms the ability to access this data. In other uses (like the landlord example) the access is granted by the employee.
So, yet another argument for starting a startup rather than being an employee.
Their salary is public record and has always been that way. It was just a lot more difficult to find it until recently.
As for private businesses, I've never been aware of a law that says they can't hand the information out. They tend not to do it because of internal reasons like not letting the competition see it or keeping everyone from arguing about each other's comp all day instead of working. The FCRA allowed debt collectors a way to tunnel through companies that resisted cooperating.
What shocks me is that Work Number is legally allowed to publish data without the individual's authorization
Presumably it's a condition of employment. I mean most people sign a couple dozen forms when starting a new job, all it takes is one sentence on one form that says the company may share your employment-related information.
That all being said, ideally you'd work for a company that didn't force you to do these sorts of shenanigans. Such companies are more rare than they should be.
I believe the op was in the NE where there are limited choices for employers when it comes to hiring (unlike in SV, they're dime a dozen).
Also, I find it amusing the tacit assumption that its somehow moral for companies to look up salary histories via credit reports but that interviewees don't have a right to know the salaries the company has given to other employees.
The information asymmetry is part of the reason that this guy lied-- and to be honest, in 25+ years, I've never had a salary negotiation where the company didn't lie to me "oh, we can't afford that!" (when in reality they are just trying to lowball by pretending they don't have the money. It's a lie no worse than his.)
Yes, there are exceptions where credit difficulties could indicate an unstable employment situation (like having a security clearance or working in finance), but otherwise your personal finances should be completely independent of your employment.
No, then you use your savings, which should be higher because you were paid more, and you go get another job, which should offer a higher starting salary because most starting salaries are based off of what you were making previously.
The american worker is hilarious. Gotta keep fighting those unions!
You're not the underdog. You're the guy screwing over the underdogs. If that makes you feel bad then that's good, it should. Maybe that's a voice you should listen to?
Also, it'd be interesting to see his manager's perspective in this all as he claws his way up. I'm betting there were points where, just as he thinks he's getting what he wants all along by lying (why are his lies always in parentheses?), management is thinking they had this planned all along as well.
Guess what? Finding new people and training them is expensive. Pay good people what they're worth, work for companies that know what you're worth, and stop playing games for stupid short-term gain.
A manager's job is to manage resources to provide the firm with the maximum benefit for the least cost, and salary is one of the more obvious non-fuzzy components on either the cost or benefit side of that equation.
Which an alarming majority does, but still.
OP's second mistake is staying at the same company for so long despite the fact that (a) they have to fight for decent raises (b) the company sucks. Seriously, at the point where there are "serious problems in sales, engineers are leaving en masse", OP doubles down. They are now a highly paid manager in a sucky company.
OP's third and worst mistake is equivocating: "there's no harm in lying about salary". That's delusional. Yes there is harm, they repeatedly lied, and now who knows what else they would lie about. That proves they have no sense of ethics. It's true other people do it. It's true the company will lay you off the second they decide to restructure. None of that accounts for an ounce of lost personal or professional integrity. In our world as developers, we regularly have access to intensely personal or valuable information. What harm could come if we fudge a little bit about how good is our security implementation? What harm could possibly come if someone happened to offer us, say, $100k for a little tidbit of info about user102532@gmail.com? No one will ever know, right?
Do you really think claiming I make $70k in an interview, when I really make $65k, is the same as selling a user's information?!
Every man whose wife asks 'Does this dress make me look fat?' is going to lie.
No one is perfect; to use this to say they have no sense of ethics is poor reasoning.
Regardless, he got offered 65k and that was his reality. Now instead of owning up to it, he changed it to a nicer sounding number -- 70k. This is where things get interesting. Why not 75k? What's the harm if you're lying anyway? Perhap he didn't think it would be believable because he didn't think he was worth that much. If the employer actually checked his facts, they would have known he was lying and got annoyed. Yet it's fascinating to me that he went for 70k -- a mere 5k more.
OP - I went from making ~100k/yr to 175k/yr because I knew I had the power in the relationship and was probably not tricked by same things you were. I built value in myself and in the work I was doing, and therefore when it came time to negotiate, I shot for the stars and never backed down. I sound about your same age and never had to do it by lying or equivocating or any of these silly games. I did it by building value in myself. This is all you can truly do at the end of the day and then it's about staying firm in what your value is worth. Games will always be games and they are sprinkled with the fairy dust of "5k more" here and another small lie there, but they will never be able to match someone who is truly genuine through and through. These are the types where if they're not worth 70k, they work to make themselves worth 70k (whether thru negotiation or value-building or both). That's the difference and that's why some people don't like to lie.
More details of how you built value in yourself would be great.
However, the advice on initial negotiations is solid. Companies generally allow at least 15% headroom on their initial offer for negotiations, and potentially more for those with less industry recognition and thus less negotiating power. I've exploited this headroom in virtually every job I've gotten.
Even a successful company needs good engineers. They don't fire people just because they're "not loyal". Sure that medium sized company might want to replace you with a cheaper more "loyal" version, but what is their capability to do so? Beyond loyalty is dollars and cents.
I would say it's a solid tactic assuming the developer would actually go and work at those other companies. Worst case scenario of this tactic is that you tell them you've got a better offer and they tell you to go take it. Even then, you could likely backtrack and explain how in your heart of hearts you decided it wasn't the move you wanted to make. Unless you're underperforming in some other area, I've not met a software company that can afford to toss out good engineers.
Successful companies can still have a few crappy managers in them.
Loyalty just because your manager is a 'nice guy' is what weak engineers do who can't compete.
At least in this market, where talent can always find work. If the market ever turns and there is an oversupply, I agree you should probably STFU and do your job.
It's called leverage. Or a strong negotiating position. Or whatever else. Point being that he was valuable to them, knew it, and was willing to use that. This is how any and every negotiation plays out.
Notice the implicit assumption that employees should be loyal to companies, but companies are free to "jettison" an employee aggressively negotiating because that's not "loyal"?
The only reason engineers are not getting respect as an industry (and I've seen this get worse over the past 30 years) is because we sell ourselves short.
As I'm just now transitioning from being what I consider "mid" level to "senior" (relative titles I know), I'll try to keep your comment in mind for future jobs. It makes me a bit sad that this game has to be played so much in order to get the full value of your worth.
I was able to boost my salary to $160k in 2 1/2 years from a starting salary of $50k, but through tireless improvement of my craft (self-studying, experimentation, and contributions to major open source libraries, including taking over leading development on one 10k+ starred project on GitHub), smart job searching, and being unafraid to walk away from offers that are too low. I never lied about competing offers, and about compensation, although I rarely will disclose my compensation in negotiations - if I do disclose it, then I am not afraid of walking away if the offer does not meet my criteria. The plus side is that this shields you more from engineering employment downturns, lets you do good work to genuinely improve the state of engineering, and opens up doors that are not available to most people - I get emailed about some unique opportunities that most don't get to see. And this is not to say that I could not have gotten more - I have turned down $300k+ positions already (took less $ for better work-life balance & more vacation).
One friend of mine mentioned he turned down large offers in favor of 35 (!) vacation days & a solid salary in a low cost of living area.
One does not need to be dishonest to get the salary & benefits combination one wants - one just needs to be steadfast at attempts to deflect you from those aims (i.e. "But you only make xxxxxx amount" or "We cannot afford to pay that").
I was making it clear that it is an important part of preparing for negotiations by mentioning it to the extent I did.
I will say that by the third time he's demanding more money with another offer; they should have said, "good luck." Matching once makes sense, matching twice, maybe. But the third time, you should just let him go.
I was hoping this would be about negotiating feature sets and timelines, which would actually be relevant to the set of people working on software (rather than being relevant to the set of people trying to make money; of course there is overlap).
Put 4 angry software developer men with wildly different opinions on The True Way Forward in a room and see how long it takes for the yelling and physical altercations to start.
There's a certain book you should go and read... I think the fact that it does exist is proof itself of how adversarial relationships can get in Software Engineering: http://www.amazon.com/Death-March-Edition-Edward-Yourdon/dp/...
Metaphorically speaking, the only way a negotiation does not end up in a fight is when one side sucker-punches the other.
But, the first rule of software engineer negotiations is — don't work with cowboy programmers who refuse to listen to others.
Once we've reached a formal "we need software negotiations" stage, it seems we've already lost. We only reached that stage because there's such an adversarial environment that regular discussions were fruitless.
Then it turns into a giant ego battle—the winner becomes whoever has the most political leverage, regardless of technical merit.
My personal anecdotal experience suggests that women can indeed successfully negotiate salary. We just have to be more strategic about it, and be careful what impression we're making.
[0] http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/lean-out-th...
In my experience, those things are regrettably true. You have to work around those social expectations. It's just another hurdle. From your linked article though I think it does point at a good suggestion to countering that some:
“We’ve found that you need to offer an explanation for your demands that gives a legitimate reason that the other side finds persuasive,” Bowles says. “You need to signal concern for the broader organization: ‘It’s not just good for me; it’s good for you.’
A good tip for anyone, I think, but I think it's an especially important step for a woman to take when negotiating salary.
My next thought is around the belief that money / drive combinations can lead to happiness. Ya, ya .. lil bit softer end of the stick, but drive to go from $46-150K in a short period is one thing, but having a family / life / opposite experience of work is less about how much you make, but making the balance.
I do well, and I live in a depressed market of the US (rust-belt city), and I have a high-earning wife w/ no kids. Needless to say, my life is fantastic. I am not going to die at 45 from stress, either.
So balance will be the longevity, and understanding how you want to "grow" in your field is the other. It's great being ambitious, but just remember - the higher you go, the lonelier it gets.
Start with a conversation explaining why you believe you should be better compensated, highlighting the value you add to the company, rarity of your skills, market rates, etc.
If the request is rejected, or the increase offered is inadequate, then find an offer at another employer and use this to negotiate (or simply accept the offer and move on).
This approach shows good will, in that you gave your employer an opportunity to make things right before escalating to a threat of leaving.
Just say you're "unhappy". Keep it vague. See what they do. It's tough finding good people in this market.
I work in Georgia, an at will state, meaning I can be fired at a moment's notice for anything. There's no notice period, my salary stops right then. If I quit I don't have to give notice either but I do it as a professional courtesy because I wanna seem like an adult, even if the places that force my hand are nowhere near that. That means to follow the given advice I have to navigate a minefield to just keep my job at neutral, at best get the raise I wanted and at worst be escorted out the door right then and there.
I feel like this puts me in a terrible spot and it's one of the reasons I'm making well well below what I'm worth. This negotiation also can be attributed to why I hate the interview process and tend to stick with a place well beyond my time. Once I'm in a spot I can prove without fail that I'm worth well more than I'm paid but no one believes that can come from such a shy introvert with few hobbies outside of video games. I feel like things are changing on all fronts but it's a glacial pace at best.
That said, if the only way you will keep working in a job is if they will pay you more money, then you should certainly tell your boss that. And if they don't want to pay that much you should own it and just leave. But more importantly if you're only metric of "happiness" in your job is what you are making month to month, then you have bigger problems to work on.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahljacobs/2012/05/14/the-hi...
"(a lie, I added $14k to the original offer)"
"(a lie, I added $20k to my current salary)"
Trust is a public good. A culture of honesty and trust is better for the experience of each individual employee, and for the company as a whole.
Unfortunately, the OP is right about one thing -- one individual liar in a workplace of honest people will likely get ahead. He can lie about his place in the market, and divert more resources towards himself. He can keep the salary of others low, and take more money for himself.
The problem is that if everyone started doing that, the public trust would be eroded. This thing that's critical to a company's success, not to mention the happiness of each individual employee -- trust -- starts to weaken. It might not manifest itself obviously at first -- maybe it's just people being more closed off, less open, less invested. It might mean your engineers care a bit less about doing a really good job, because they don't feel as emotionally invested in their job. It probably means the good employees leave. And it means what you're left with are unhappy, uninvested, bad engineers.
In other words, it's probably a good individual strategy for maximizing short-term personal gains. But it's bad for the commons -- it's bad for your fellow employees and it's bad for your workplace.
And honestly, it's probably bad for YOU; your personal inner life. Once you become okay with lying, you start to treat other people differently. It affects your entire personality. I can't imagine that OP only lies in his workplace; most likely his deceptive habits have seeped into the rest of his life too. Maybe the OP is a sociopath and doesn't feel empathy for others -- but if he's a regular person, it erodes at your soul.
Personally, I feel that threatening to quit is a more adversarial process, but it's clearly working for whoever wrote this. Me, I don't threaten, I inform. "I'm leaving on X/Y/Z, thank you for the opportunity and you're all great." Granted, I've not always jumped strictly because of salary.
(a lie, I added $14k to the original offer)
See... it's hard to be "totally honest" in sales, even of your own time, because of the red queen effect.
This was an integral step in the process of raising your salary. If you volunteer all information honestly, I am pretty sure that most players in the system will not have an obvious path to increasing your salary. Otherwise it would represent an arbitrage opportunity for everyone.
Either you need more knowledge of history, or more caffeine this morning.
This is what I believe OP's biggest mistake is - had he interviewed more earlier, he could have gotten to $120K within a year most likely. He _was_ the guy making $75K back then.
Note I work at PayScale BUT this is exactly one of the types of problems we're solving.
I have NEVER had a raise offered to me. I've been a software engineer for 15 years now. I have always received raises though, because I asked for them, with leverage. I have climbed my way from getting hired to a 120 person company with a below median salary to making probably more than anyone in 6 months, by being good at what I do and asking or more in return.
Employee/employer relations are always a fight for survival. Be the lion.
Basically, competition is what drives prices up, but you can do it ethically without lying about your current compensation. And make sure you your attitude remains positive, don't act like a mercenary who'll quit the day he gets an extra dollar elsewhere. Happiness at your current job does matter.
I, recently, switched jobs from one big company to another. I was seeking opinions from friends (managers) in 2nd company. Their general advise on salary is: Negotiate as high as possible as I can _leverage_ my existing position. I have nothing to loose. So far, I understand. Then they gave examples of good engineers who were fresh grads, or were let go at other jobs and have no backup offers. In those instances, managers tried to low-ball or drive down salary. This attitude is not at all healthy. The 2nd company is not doing well at all (my group is doing great). This is not at all healthy for employee morale.
I would not encourage this culture.
Every time I read someone talking about their salary on HN, it seems astronomically high, but then again it's obviously biased, as the people who are not making as much are not going to brag about it. The same is likely true for crowdsourced sites like Glassdoor where people self-report.
How?
I think this wouldn't be so hard if you are in the valley (or other large tech cities in the US), or targeting large companies (Glassdoor). But how do you do this if you are in a different situation?
After a while, you should start seeing some common ranges between regular software engineers and senior engineers. Use those as a starting point in negotiations. Interview at enough places (10+), and you should see what your market value is.
Seriously, though, the pay curve you experienced isn't that atypical for young developers entering the market. Someone just out of college can always be had cheaply (except in a few unusual circumstances). For the most part they are an unknown quantity. If they come in and excel for a year they are suddenly worth a lot more, and that's just the way it works. My own pay curve looked very similar in the first three or four years of professional work... but it was twenty years ago. :)
Also thanks for your kind words about senior engineers in their 50's. We agree!
Some more thoughts...
Aggression
Your tactics are very strong and aggressive. If you're truly indispensable, this level of aggression can pay off in a big way. Two factors go into figuring out how aggressive you can/should be:
1. How badly the company needs you. 2. How badly you need them.
This seems obvious, but I think a lot of people overlook the relationship between those two things and your ability to negotiate aggressively.
The more they need you, and the less you need them, the more aggressive you can be. In this case, it sounds like you knew they needed you badly and you had many other options and little loyalty to the company, so you didn't need them very much. This is a situation where strong aggression is merited.
Knowing your market value
I especially like that you went and got real offers from other companies. This is the best way to estimate your market value—a key step to complete before jumping into a salary negotiation. If you can find out what other companies pay for your skill set and experience, and if you can determine what your current company will pay for your skill set and experience, you know how hard you can push.
Knowing your minimum acceptable salary
You didn't mention this, but I think it's implicit: It's also important to set your minimum acceptable salary before the negotiation. What's the absolute minimum you will accept in order to take the job or stay with the company? This is your "walk away" number, and it can be a very, very potent tool when you're negotiating. Pre-deciding this number gives you total control over your situation and helps avoid any knee-jerk decisions that you may regret later. Knowing your market value can help set this number accounting for more than personal feelings.
Here are a few more thoughts on things I might recommend doing differently (since I know a lot of people will read your post and hope to emulate your success).
I recommend witholding your desired salary
When you were looking elsewhere for opportunities, you said, "They asked me what my other company offered, and I said $60k (a lie, I added $14k to the original offer). They offered me $58k plus a $7k performance bonus, for a theoretical $65k package." It is not a coincidence that the company's offer was slightly less than the number you told them.
And again when you tell your employer about your other offer: "I went back to my original employer and said I had a new job offer for $70k, and I didn't want to negotiate, I just wanted their final, last ditch offer. This removed any potential for skilled negotiators to outwit me. Later that night they emailed me an offer for $66k and a few thousand more shares." Again, it's not a coincidence that they offered slightly less than the offer you had on the table.
Rather than telling them your desired salary, or what other offers you had on the table, I recommend simply kindly refusing to disclose these numbers. You very likely would have been better off using one of my favorite lines: "I want this move to be a big step forward in terms of both responsibility and compensation."
In fact, your story sort of bears this out. They obviously had a LOT more headroom for salary, and yet the salary you got was always slightly less than you had requested.
I don't recommend lying
A few times, you determined your market value by getting offers at other companies, then went back to your employer and lied about those offers at your company. This worked out for you, but seems pretty risky. Why lie? If they fact-check you at all, you'll be in a pretty awkward position of explaining the lies.
Instead, just don't tell them the numbers at all :)
If you were going to demand their best-possible offer anyway, why not just demand their best offer without giving them an anchor?
I think yours was a special case, but is still illustrative
As I mentioned above, you were very aggressive here, demanding a raise and threatening to leave multiple times. Most people probably cannot get away with this sort of aggression and will end up either leaving or having their bluff called pretty often. (I don't think you were bluffing here, which is why you could be so aggressive as I mentioned above.) I just point this out so those who may want to emulate your succes are aware that yours were very aggressive tactics that may often result in separation from the company or bad blood within the company if managers feel that you will constantly demand raises under threat of leaving.
I'm publishing a book on salary negotiation very soon. You can check it out here: http://FearlessSalaryNegotiation.com
Alternatively you could simply join a company where they value your expertise and progress :) We're hiring in Boulder and Amsterdam: angel.co/stream
It would be worth expounding a bit on the manager who was a skilled negotiator. What did that person do, how did you end up being glad with just an offer? I've read a lot about this subject but maybe others have not.
Is this in the Bay Area? (Edit: guessing Boston or that region based on the New England college)
Well buddy, not all managers are spineless like the ones you have in that startup and if you tried to pull this trick on them and to strongarm them into submission, they'd kick you out the door in a heartbeat esp. when you're a lousy junior dev who's learning on the job according to your statement.
I've been very critic of employers and business owners when they describe that some employees have a mercenary attitude when it comes to the workplace and I'd always feel offended by that but when you read an account like this where certain jerks boast about their ability to bluff people and fleece them of their money in that disgusting manner, you come to realize that they might have a valid reason behind their worries and reservations.
Personally, I don't see a problem with a mercenary attitude. It's simple, it's clear, and you always know where you stand with a mercenary. It's easy to work with, if you're willing to meet them on their terms. It brings the clarity of a transaction to what is ultimately a transaction anyway.
You may be operating under a different understanding. How do you define being mercenary?
Never ever use another offer as leverage, both the employer and the employee need to come to the table with good intentions.
Asking for more money is usual business, both for employers and employees, but with more money you are asking you need to explain why you are worth more money, why I as your employer need to pay you more.
For most part, when someone goes after other offers, even if you give him a raise, he/she will leave after since it's a symptom of not being happy and being confused that more money will make you happy, but it doesn't.
If an employee used another offer as leverage with me, I would probably 1) not give him a raise, 2) give him notice.
Lot of people come into those negotiations stressed out and assume that there's some magic behind it, there isn't, be honest, completely honest, state your case and more often than not you will get what you want.
As a rule, I never lie to my employer and I expect the same from my employees, same with people interviewing. I think it's wrong asking "how much are you making now in your current company?" during an interview, but if I was asked that I would be honest and I would not even say 1$ more than what I was making. You can explain why you think you deserve more, but never lie about how much you are making during an interview.
More often than not, employers won't give raises unless you do.
"If an employee used another offer as leverage with me, I would probably 1) not give him a raise, 2) give him notice."
Then you're a terrible manager who likely will drive out all of their talent.
"More often than not, employers won't give raises unless you do"
That might be true, but you still should not use another offer as leverage during negotiations, that's bad either way.
"Then you're a terrible manager who likely will drive out all of their talent."
Well, thanks, I really appreciate HN compliments and that one is definitely one of the best :)
I can't think of a single case when using another offer as leverage and saying "if I don't get X, I am leaving" is good, not a single one.
I do however think that no matter how much you are asking, if you are respectful and you are worth it to the company, you will get it.
I see no reason to reject that argument out of hand. Since no rationale was given for the policy of serving them notice if somebody speaks up, its fair to observe that its probably going to lose you some good people.
I had the exact same situation with an employee about 3 years ago, the client he was working with offered him a job with more money that he was making.
After a discussion with him, he said "I am happy here, but I cannot turn my back on so much more money" (it was 40% more).
This is completely different than what described with intentionally going out to get another offer just for leverage when you want a raise.
That has respect, it has honesty and that is something I am completely on board with.
In this world view, going out to get another offer isn't 'for leverage', its part of a career process that makes sense.
I also refuse to give out my salary history in interviews. I think it just obscures the main issue. The employer needs to pay the employee the market value of their labor, whether it is in the offer letter or after the 10th year of performance reviews. Just because gas is $2/gallon today doesn't mean it won't be $3/gallon tomorrow. And I have never had to report at the pump what I paid for my last 10 fill-ups before learning the price I will have to pay for the current one.
If you get a better offer, don't ask for a competing offer. Just leave. You shouldn't really even be volunteering to them what the offer is, or with whom. If your current employer offers a raise in a bid to keep you, let your soon-to-be-former co-workers know what they might want to ask for, and leave anyway.
The fact that you have a new offer in hand means that you were already dissatisfied enough to start looking for alternatives in the first place. Remember that? Spitting out extra money only after you reveal you haven't been happy does not alter the fact that the company has not been making proactive efforts to keep you satisfied.
Honestly, I don't want to have to ask for a raise. If I am forced to ask at all, don't make the mistake of thinking that I'm only going to ask my current employer. I'm going to be asking all of its competitors first.
It may be mercenary, but I think it well warranted by the current conditions in the job markets.
Not always. Sometimes it is just about the money.
I left a job I loved very much because another job essentially landed in my lap offering 25k more. It's a lot less challenging, the skills aren't really transferable, and the work environment kind of sucks, but 25k is 25k.