Comment by scarecrowbob | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scarecrowbob | Hacker News Reader

I literally had this conversation with my boss yesterday, and I was a bit floored that they don't quite "get" it.

I'm the lead dev at a small co that does work, mostly custom WordPress, for gov / edu / SMB (mostly NGO or trade groups). I'm the senior technical staff... there's a junior dev and a "project manager who codes but doesn't read log files".

I've been working with this company for 7 years and never gotten a raise. We have "unlimited PTO" which really just means I have no idea how many days off I can take. I mostly work with the biz because it used to be quite flexible and was only a 30-hour-a-week commitment. That's become much less flexible as we lost the ability to stack hours without "approval", I've started to be the only person on-call, I now have a junior who more or less reports to me, etc, etc.

I'm looking for work now, mostly because the cost of realestate where I am is outpacing my ability to save for a down payment.

The thing that got me a bit worked up is that when I asked my boss if they'd ever done the math on what it'd cost to replacement (even leaving out the cost of training) and their response was that they were 100% sure I'd make more money at another company-- they are just paying me what they feel like they can afford.

Then they gave me an immediate 5% raise and 1.5% cash bonus.

None of this makes one bit of sense to me... if I leave, they are going to have to find someone (or several someones) who can operate containers in GCP, write WP/Gutenberg blocks, Figma->PHP WP themes from scratch, and write integrations/ imports/ scrapes for these sites they build.

I've been interviewing and know what that kind of work pays, and how much the folks charge for that... but this boss of mine seems prepared to let me quit rather than up my pay. For full disclosure, I'm making 70K/yr+ health insurance and who the hell knows how many vacation days.

It's fun to do job interviews after all this time, and pretty gratifying that folks are so interested to speak with me, but I'm a bit worried how this person is going to get the stuff done that I've been doing at the price they've been selling the work.

I really struggled with this a few years back. I was adamant that I didn't want to "play the salary matching game." My boss insisted they didn't have the budget for a raise. I didn't want to job hunt, then bring my new offer to my boss, etc. I let myself be underpaid for at least 3 years because I was sure that my results should speak for themselves. Then I got really bitter and fed up. I got a job offer that was a 50% raise. I took it to my boss and immediately our company magically had a 50% raise in the budget. I quit in the middle of that interview because I couldn't stomach the idea that he'd been intentionally underpaying me all that time.

It changed my outlook on companies and playing the salary matching game completely. While I'm still in demand, I'm always looking for a better offer. I am planning on this bursting sometime. In the meantime, I'm going to get paid.

We got bought by Accenture some time back.

After we were on system amd thelr regular processes were in place suddenly a lot of people got a massive raise to match the min amount of money this position at this seniority level has to earn.

So far so good. But imagine the surprise of management when people weren't happy about the raise (10 20+ percent in not few cases) but a lot of resentment was voiced for being paid too little for years stating that there isn't enough money for raises and once big corporate brother rules that there is a minimum salary to be paid the money can be shelled out.

I can totally relate with the colleagues who are currently looking at other options because they feel that they were lied to over the years.

This is because many businesses are ran from an accounting perspective.

When they give you a huge raise, payroll costs are up. Yet you won't necessarily deliver a revenue increase to match it. So it's a financial loss.

This might trigger you to leave, but accounting doesn't care about future potential events.

Similarly, I could make the point to my boss that an additional monitor, would increase my productivity by 20%.

Accounting disagrees. Hardware costs are now up 20%, which is real money spent. Yet there's nothing in the books suggesting more revenue. So another financial loss. "Productivity" is not revenue, it's an abstract concept in knowledge work.

It's a very one dimensional way to look at things, and far from a good one, but it might explain some things.

yep. This is a business led by accountants. I've also seen businesses led by sales people (great sales people, btw) - that wouldn't understand anything other than selling features. The best jobs have been with companies who have a technical leader. It still has downsides, but it's night and day compared to the other 2.

If this is what they can afford to pay and you move on then they will get to decide whether they can eliminate your position (maybe they can focus on a different part of their business and quit building custom WordPress sites) or pay more. Or get by with someone too junior to be able to do the work but hope that customers won't notice. Or maybe close the company down.

To be brutally honest, just go get another job with higher pay, if you can. It's not your company.

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