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Comment by DVassallo | Hacker News Reader

I was making $500K/year in my last job, and I never asked for a raise in all my career. IMO, the best way to get market-level compensation is to find an offer from another employer that you're willing to move to. Once you show your employer the other offer, the burden goes to the employer to justify why they should keep you at a below-market rate.

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When you show your employer an offer you received from another employer, aren't basically saying "Pay me more" and asking for a raise? I can't imagine going to your manager and saying, "Look, these guys want to pay me more. haha. OK, back to work."

There's a soft way to ask for it. You basically point out that your manager is at risk of loosing you. Note that you need to understand both how much you bring to the team from your manager's perspective as well as your manager's budget considerations.

It's possible you outgrew the position altogether and the group you're in isn't interested in what you've become, at least not at that price. Or it's possible that what you've become is truly worth it to the team and replacing you with someone new would noticeably set the team back.

Yes, maybe. But it doesn't require asking any questions or negotiating (which is what the article is about).

Yes but that's largely due to stock appreciation at Amazon.

You and I both know that the target comp for SDE-3 at Amazon is significantly lower.

Only in the last 2 years. My comp went from $70K in 2011 to nearly $400K in 2016 without stock appreciation making any material impact. I got an offer from Oracle in 2016 for $380K. Amazon matched it, and then stock appreciation added another $80K in 2017 and $130K in 2018.

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