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Comment by morelandjs | Hacker News Reader

In my experience, you will not get anything productive out of such discussions. When your salary drifts too far, go audit your salary with an external offer. Ask for a match or leave. Spare your current employer the drama.

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Don't ask for a match - just leave. You're a marked man if you threaten to leave and then stay. I've seen that happen many, many times over the years.

If you want to work with your current employer then you could simply ask your manager whether they've heard anything about adjusting salaries for inflation. You can keep it informal and light, but their response will tell you everything you need to know about whether they're planning on adjusting salaries.

Does asking for a match imply that you are threatening to leave, though? It does seem like it, but I could definitely see it being framed as "here's the market for me, you should pay me more because I don't want to leave".

With a competent manager there should be no hard feelings when framed as a market adjustment. Competent managers know that employees become higher paid with time. It's up to them to decide whether or not to try and stick with an employee to delay hitting their "this is a big enough difference I should jump ship" amount or not.

It's no different than a business telling a customer "listen, you're gonna have to pay more because I have other more valuable work I could be doing". The customer can pay more or they can go elsewhere.

> With a competent manager there should be no hard feelings when framed as a market adjustment.

It's not "hard feelings", it's "Chris is more likely to leave than Pat."

In order to have an offer to match you had to go out and look for a job, interview, and get an offer. You're now going to be perceived as a flight risk. All you have to do is say 'yes' and you're gone. That's a threat, whether you intended it to be or not.

>Does asking for a match imply that you are threatening to leave, though?

It absolutely means you're leaving

If they match today, you've already telegraphed to them that you're not happy, and will leave as soon as you can

You're going to be first on the chopping block for layoffs, last in line for promotional consideration, etc

You're basically telling your employer "pay me more even though I'm not doing anything else for you"

I'm so tired of hearing this.

If your boss is a competent business person, you would be insane not to ask for counter offer. This way I got a 50% bump last year. No hard feelings, and nothing has changed.

I received an offer, and my employer has beat it. If they only matched I would probably still leave.

Your suggestion is a weird behavior. Just be direct. We are in tech and don't need to beat around the bush. I can quit my job tomorrow and start a new job next week.

Needlessly fearful and one-sided take.

It's exactly as true that if you ask and they reject, then THEY are a marked man. You are on the lookout and will probably leave as soon as it's convenient. If they don't care about that then all the more reason to move on.

No one has any loyalty and its a terrible, soul less, and bitter state of affairs.

Managers and companies gain more with honey than salt. We need more goodwill, we are not just cogs.

I do understand financials here enough. When 4 out of 12 have left our team in the last few months, they did so after counter offers came up still 10s of thousands short. Replacing them will be next to impossible.

Agreed. And I think it's useful to look at your compensation longer term rather than comparing it with inflation every single year. There are going to be big moments (promotions, switching companies, etc) where you get a large jump in compensation that far outpaces inflation. And there will likely be years where your employer didn't budget large enough raises all around to match inflation. It's fine if that bothers you enough to look elsewhere, but it's also worth zooming out and looking at the graph of your compensation compared to inflation - which will look like a bunch of steps compared to a relatively smooth line. There are certain teams I've been part of during my career that I've enjoyed working with far more than average. If, one of those years, I got a measly raise, I still would have stayed in place and enjoyed my work and not minded taking a smaller step. Then, eventually, when another catalyst for job change appeared (the project was ending, bad management moved in, etc), I would look for something that gives me a nice big compensation step to take (don't do this for too many years in a row though).

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