Hacker News Reader

Comment by slantyyz | Hacker News Reader

>> To me if I can get a better offer (ie over 10% salary increase) that's just a signal that the current employer is trying to take advantage of me.

It's more likely ignorance of your specific market price than malice.

First, the employer isn't even going to know your outside market price if you don't get an offer in the first place. For you to prove that you're worth the 10% salary increase, you would have to be vetted by a prospective employer as having met their requirements to be hired at some price.

Secondly, your current employer needs to agree that you're worth that 10% salary increase. Their perception of your value may simply not match your own perception of your value.

View on HN

The point is, when someone has offers from other companies for 10% increase (which imo is pretty low usually it is 20% or more), the employee finally realizes their value.

In these situations often the employee is getting raises that do not even cover inflation. So the employee now sees their market value and would like to continue working for the company, but they have realized they could take on risk for a 20-50% raise instead.

I mean the risk equation is simple, with such a raise you can save enough cash to justify the risk even if it doesn't work out.

I always ended up taking the offer from the more generous company, and they tended to increase my pay to offset more than inflation and then a bonus to justify staying.

I'm not disputing the realization of value, I'm only disputing the characterization that the employer "trying to take advantage of me", because it's unlikely to be true.

Eh, employers are the ones with much better information in this case. They are the ones who'll know if x% of prospective employees decline an offer or even interview due to the salary offered which will give them at least some idea of the market rate. I've been in the situation where we could not get any new employees due to the rate we offered, and when I suggested we increase the rate I was told flat out by a manager that "Software Engineers should be fine with this amount, we will not hire for over it"

I've had an manager once tell me, "I hear your request for a raise, but my hands are tied because 'the book' says we cannot pay you more." They actually had a physical book and you could look down the list and find "Senior Software Engineer" and there it was: The maximum salary they could pay!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com