Slashdot Mirror
Are Skimpy Raises the New Normal?
Lam1969 writes "Computerworld just released their latest salary survey, and it finds that IT worker bees have once again only received small raises. The article notes, "IT raises still lagged slightly behind the average of about 3.2% for all U.S. workers as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While the majority of respondents (69%) said their 2004 base salary increased from one year ago, 31% experienced either no change in salary or had their pay cut." It goes on to quote LAN specialist Stephen Noisseau as saying, "I guess that's the way the cookie crumbles ... I'll take 4% over nothing. We're getting basically cost-of-living raises.""
We're getting basically cost-of-living raises.
Welcome to the way the rest of the universe works. Be glad you even got that. Most poeple have to find new jobs to get a raise at all.
Don't worry, I'm sure another bubble will be along to get you a 100% raise every 6 months like the good ol days.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Is it really a valid expectation to automatically get a salary increase? What happened to earning it? I feel pretty confident in saying that 69% of all workers didn't perform above average, so why should they be expecting a reward?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
And keep in mind that a 0% raise is actually a pay cut, due to inflation. If you're not averaging about a 2% raise every year, your income in terms of buying power is declining.
IT does not generate revenue for a company, unless that company is of course an outsourcing firm. Get into a revenue generating line of work and then you'll make some bucks.
Well it is a situation where we are recouping from a huge bubble. We had the end of Y2k in 2000, then 9/11 that scared the chicken investors, Out Sourcing in 2002, By Late 2003 we became so disenfranchised that we were willing to work a large fraction of our pay, 2004 got a little better when they started to see the outsourcing isn't as much a value as they thought. So now most companies are still careful on their IT spending, and with a good supply of IT workers they are willing to save on their budgets as long as possible. So Raises will be COLAs for a while until we get more scares or there is a large business need for some new technology (Like the Web in the late 90s) But right now we are humbled back to the average income job. As it probably should be.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And while I may whine about the fact that most of the time I have to jump jobs to get a raise, if I hung around those places, i'd probably be likely to get the 3-4% every year or so, and I don't really have a problem with that.
What I do have a problem with is when I only get a 3-4% raise, yet, executives can give themselves 50% raises, 4 million dollar bonuses, etc. There is nothing a CEO can produce that warrants that level of compensation. PERIOD.
I say we find somebody crazy enough in congress to propose a salary cap for CEO's bill. Then tell everyone in the public about it, and see how many people really support something like that. Especially when the workers outnumber the C-level's probably 100 to 1.
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
It's simple Supply-Demand (Keynesian economic theory), when workers with a particular skill set are not in demand or supply excedes demand
Actually, it has a lot more to do with profit-center focus at a micro level within a company (at least, when evaluating most medium to large employers). For instance, Paypal employs many in our metro but looks at IT employees as cost-center workers one step up from fast food. Cost-centers "create costs" not profits, and are only there to support the profit center. Right now, the mode of operation in most corporations is lean (except for incentives for profit center performers) and subsequently IT people rank near the bottom.
Add to that a general exhausted attitude in execs about IT (things like endless security nightmares (which are always the IT shop's fault, not the vendor the CEO picked after reading a really cool marketing slick in the back of a magazine), licensing issues, and out-of-control IT spending over the past decade) and you'll find IT is a black-sheep in many organizations. We're in a midwestern market where the IT outlook is especially bleak - insurance companies, banks, food giants and others who are rebelling at IT's expense and telling the "geeks" to be happy with less for awhile. That IBM server farm ad (with the psycho sysadmin who believes servers "serve us") very much plays into this attitude of perceived IT excess.
Understand things go in cycles and this one will work itself out. As always, the more valuable you make yourself to an organization's process of making money, the better off you'll do.
It used to be that companies were loyal to employees, and vica-versa. Companies treated employees well, and employees did well staying at the same place. Now, changing companies is the standard way to get a raise. Companies had no loyalty to employees, so employees lost loyalty to companies. Now, companies have no real way to build up employee loyalty, since it is basically nonexistant no matter what they do, so they cut back on expenses they used to have that helped loyalty (now, apparently, including raises).
In a few cases, companies that use forced retention simply don't have to do as much to retain employees, since they count on lawsuits to deter employees from leaving.
"Senior management says, 'If you don't like the work, we'll get somebody in India to do it.' The computer people are seen more as part of the technology rather than part of the human resource,"
Translation:
Beggers can't be choosers.
What always gets me every time we have a discussion about raises is that any call for pay increases to the rank and file is met with fierce opposition by those who claim it will obliterate the economy via inflation and will rob shareholders of their rightful gains while sending corporations reeling into bankruptcy.
So, I must pose the question, why is it perfectly fine for managers (especially those in the upper echelons) hand out massive raises to themselves and their cronies that are often the equivalent of several times the average salary of their subordinates? The typical CEO makes 450 times as much as the average person they employ. Even when business is bad, layoffs are rampant and wages stagnant, the raises for the managers continue - because according to them, poor performance is always the fault of the lower rungs, while good quarters are always thanks to their expert stewardship.
The auto parts company Delphi is asking for their non-management staff to accept 50-69% pay cuts, (these workers were described as being basically worthless in a speech the CEO gave two weeks ago) while the managers that have presided over the company sliding into bankruptcy are going to get massive raises.
Please explain who spending tons of money to compensate workers who are being asked to produce more per hour, work more hours and accept fewer fringe benefits like comprehensive healthcare coverage is some evil, evil thing that shall destroy every company and drive them into bankruptcy, while distributing the same amount of money to the higher ups is no problem whatsoever?
Ask your prospective employer if they offer superior raises to overperforming employees, and what kind of range such a raise might be in.
I always ask this question, and as a result, i've never had a raise less than 9%.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Why should corporate profits leap by huge percentages while employee salaries do not?
Because during the years when revenues drop, those same employees will fight like hell against taking a corresponding pay cut. Are you really sure you want to tie salaries directly to revenues?
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Organized Labour = Paying for tyrant who tells you to stop work.
I lived through the 70s & 80s in the UK. Unions help nobdy but those elected to an office within the union.
I'd rather join the bloody masons than a union and I consider the masons scum.
My experience for the last few years has been for take home pay to decrease even though salary increases average around 3 to 4 percent. This is due to inflation and the fact that every year, the company passes a greater portion of health care costs off to the employees.
I've always felt that if I was around to receive a 3% pay raise that it meant that I was expected to do the same job I had done the year before. That meant I had plateaued, and my employer didn't expect anything more from me.
These are not "good things".
I always strive to learn new things, and to extend myself. If this isn't reflected in salary ($, stock or benefits), I move on.
I remember surprising an HR person by saying that in my 10 years since university, I have never received an annual pay raise smaller than 10% (10% being 6 months after I joined!), and averaged 20%. He was absolutely shocked.
People need to separate themselves from their jobs. The job they are doing may only be worth 3% more, but they, themselves, should be worth a larger pay increase than that.
The trick is to manage your own career, and find the opportunities.
But if you spend your working career taking at least 20% of your $83,000 and investing it wisely, you can retire and live like a king in India. The Indian workers won't be able to do the same in America.
Unfortunately, there's too many saps out there who complain about shit raises, but won't go out and do something about it. Don't like your raise? Get a new job, and then when you leave, tell them exactly why. If more people did that, raises would be higher for everyone.
The cake is a pie
I'm very good at my current job, but my manager wants me to learn more about my job. What's the point? I know my job better than anyone else including him. I have no drive or motivation to do so either. My last raise was 2.75% which may seem like a lot to some, but I waited 18 months for it. Here's a nice slap with a cluestick:
1) Gas prices have gone up a LOT more than 2.75% in the last 18 months.
2) Natural gas (Consumer's Energy) has gone up a LOT more than 2.75% in the last 18 months.
3) Our health "benefit" premiums have gone up WAY more than 2.75% in the last 18 months.
4) Tuituion at school has gone up more than 2.75% in the last 18 months.
5) Day care has gone up more than 2.75% in the last 18 months.
6) School lunches have gone up more than 2.75% in the last 18 months.
7) Grocery and clothing prices have gone up more than 2.75% in the last 18 months.
8) Car and home insurance rates have gone up more than 2.75% in the last 18 months.
9) Hell, the cost of a McDonald's extra value meal has gone up more than 2.75% in the last 18 months.
and the biggest slap with the cluestick goes to (drum roll):
10) The company's profits have gone up a HELL OF A LOT more than 2.75% in the last 18 months (I know, I work in a financial area of the company).
So what the hell? Your profits aren't down, business has been up, volume has way more than recovered since 9/11 (which was the original blame for all business' woes whether it really was or not). The scapegoat of a poor economy and a poor job market are no longer valid. The company isn't "hurting" any more. So why shit on your employees?
Here's why - because they're a large corporation who could really give a flying fuck about their employees. Seriously. They'll put on the politically correct speeches about "we're for family" and "our employees mean a lot to us" garbage, but they never put their money where their mouth is. Our "health benefits" are absolute crap. After paying the high premiums, I can't afford to go to the hospital because of the outrageous co-pays. My theory behind the horrible insurance is the fact that our company is Canadian-based. In Canada, they don't have to worry about paying for health care premiums because their health care system is integrated into the government and paid for by taxes. This way EVERYONE gets health care. If they are to stay competitive in the United States, they HAVE to offer health benefits, but they don't have to offer GOOD benefits...just enough to keep someone there. It makes perfect business sense, but you're pissing off your employees. Is it worth the hassle of creating employees that resent you for your greedy business tactics? I would think not.
Content Management System: A pretentious way of saying "text editor."
We have crossed into the realm of counterproductivity
Are you saying that the productivity of the CEO's is continuing to skyrocket, despite all this? This would explain why CEO's salaries rise like crazy and the gap between the rich and the poor keeps increasing. I didn't realize it was all the poor people's fault.
It's kinda like copyright infringement is on the increase, but the media industry is having another record breaking year, while laying off employees at the bottom level. A bit like that?
So, then you do easily agree that the 10-50% raises management gets yearly are grossly huge? The same things you claim decrease normal worker productivity have the same effect, possibly more, on the upper echelons. Where is their increase in productivity? Most of the people aren't complaining about how they don't get raises, but about how unfairly raises are distributed.
I do not begrudge effective, honest and successful CEOs their salaries. If they earn it, they earn it.
BUT
Ovitz did not deserve $140 million. Ken Lay did not earn his $42 million in 1999. Ebbers did not deserve a guaranteed 1.5 million annual pay for life. Jure Sola did not earn his $20 million bonus for hitting targets one quarter out of 16 as the investors in the company saw shares fall 78%.
The complaint isn't how much CEOs make... it is how much BAD CEOs make. Could I perform as well as a CEO? Well, pay me $1,000,000/month and I'll see if I can drive the nation's largest retailer into the ground along with 57,000 jobs like Chuck Conaway did.
Why do companies exist? To generate profit. If the CEO can't do that then the CEO needs to be replaced. And if the CEO is engaged in any sort of corruption, fraud or outright stupidity then he has to go.
Are all CEO's inept, devoid of skill and undeserving of large salaries? Absolutely not. Only a silly extremist would make such a claim.
However. I find it inexcusable to tell the employees that there isn't enough money for raises (or even adequate equipment) then siphon off several times the profit for one overpaid and underworked twit who just isn't bringing any value to the organization.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
it is precisely circumstances like these that led to the development of labor unions (well, plus a few deaths-by-locked-door-in-a-fire)
it's alarming how many modern workers buy the company line about unions and how they're only in it for the dues. why is it ingrained in modern companies that teamwork is the solution to problems, but then teamwork is lambasted as a strategy to improve conditions?
i had a discussion with my sister once in which she railed against the organized workers at her job because they didn't have to work as much and got paid more. ? why is that bad? it's in the power of every worker! (except those working for the tsa, thanks to mr. bush.)
the communications workers is the first place to look if you're looking to get started. you have nothing to lose but your lousy schedule and crappy raise percentages. and your chains, but that's more metaphorical.
go get it
If you run the IT department, you need to market the IT department. Things like What We've Done For You Lately; Ways We're Making The Company More Profitable; etc... If you come from the frame of mind that IT should be invisible until there's a crisis, then when things get tough, the Finance guys are going to look at that big department that spends a ton of money and say, "Just what exactly do these guys do?"
If you market the IT department and prove its value to the company, raises are much easier to come by. Been there, done that, a number of times.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I've been thinking about this. Perhaps it is time for tech to unionize. Don't get me wrong, I am firmly opposed to unions, particularly public sector unions. However, it is ultimately a zero-sum game. When the beaurocrats, teachers and city workers get a raise, that's a pay cut for us. First we have to buy the same bananas, bread and baby food that they do with less money then we get to pay more taxes on top of it. Personally, I am sick of it.
Oh Waaaaahhhhh!!!!!!!!!! I'll have to eat prime rib instead of porterhouse. I'll have to drive around in a one year old Land Rover instead of a 2006 Lexus. Waaaaaahhhhh! Boo Hoooo Hooooooooo!!!!!!
Puhleeze.
For every one of us whining about how our salaries aren't increasing at the rates that please us, there are thousands more with our skill levels or more who go to bed on a stomach full of rice or air.
These same people share 400 square foot rooms with their entire families and when their kids catch colds and die, they cry, bury them, and go work some more to feed the remainder of the family.
Too many people in this country (the U.S.), can't grasp the concept that we have it pretty damned easy. It's deservedly so (thanks to God and a stable government), but that doesn't mean we shouldn't appreciate it.
If you're able to pay your bills and put good food on the table, stop bitching. If you find that difficult to do, use your frequent flier miles and paid vacation to go to the Philippines, Bangladesh, Mexico, etc., so that you can witness real hardship being suffered by people every bit as (or more) intelligent than you who were simply born into a cultural or political system inferior to ours.
I bet when you come back, your job will seem pretty damned comfy, and your pay level will suit you a little better, and a drive on a crowded L.A. freeway will feel like a drive through the country (the voice of experience talking).
...and think about this (and be honest)....do you really deserve more?
Cheap-labor lobbyists bribed Congress to increase the H-1B tech visa limit recently. Lobbyists keep saying there is a "shortage" of techies, but there is no objective evidence to back them. Tech unemployment is still high by historical and population relative standards, and salaries have been flat. Why don't they pick on lawyers for a change? Why, because lawyers have (or use) power, we don't.
If we don't collectively apply political pressure, they will do to our field what they have done to agricultural workers.
Table-ized A.I.
I would never laugh in their face, or do something so short sighted.
Be reasonable: Tell them exactly how much it wil cost them to keep you.
If they are willing to pay it, then tell the new company you were going to go to
about it, and tell them how much it would cost to still hire you.
There is no point in throwing away perfectly good leverage.
"Or they (Like my company) will replace these people..."
Meager wage increases (if you get them at all) are now the norm rather than the exception. The change to labor laws under George W. Bush were not an anomally -- your employer now expects you to work longer hours for less pay and benefits. Consider yourself lucky if your job hasn't already been offshore outsourced, or not in the planning stages. Your 401K overseas investments are growing fastest because you are helping to finance your company's globalization. But do not expect to gain enough from these investments to make up for when your job finally disappears overseas -- it won't.
The government's job is no longer to be of any particular benefit to you -- only to your employer. The tax cuts, tax loopholes, and outright federal grants were never intended for you, but for your employers. There was never any possibility that your political campaign contributions would ever provide the politicians with either an evenhanded or even populist world view -- you cannot compete with your employers when it comes to buying those politicians because they do not come cheap.
Expect that the time will come when your job will disappear overseas, or that your employer will replace you with cheaper imported (L1-A or H1-B) labor. And do not expect that you can fall back on the experience from those summer construction jobs you took while a student -- those jobs are now taken by the hundreds of thousands of illegal alien laborers that have continued to pour across our borders. This is no accident, but a concerted effort by the George W. Bush administration to force all wages down for his corporate sponsers. Between open borders, the INS "catch and release" policies, and zero enforcement against employers hiring illegal aliens, the plan is to do for domestic skilled blue collar jobs what has been done to the shoe, textile, steel, and IT white collar jobs.
The only substantial wage and benefit increases are destined for the pockets of upper management and the executive board room, and especially for those companies who not only cater to government contracting but also make the largest campaign contributions. And by the way, don't make too much noise when you protest the current status quo, because the term "terrorist" is largely undefined in the latest and greatest version of the US Patriot Act.
Welcome to "1984", and be certain to take your daily dose of "soma". Not taking your meds could provide you with an extended stay at Club Med - Gitmo.
Um, I think 4% is pretty standard for anyone across any industry that is considered a worker that gets their work done in a timely fashion and in good order. If you want that 10% raise, you better be implementing procedures to save the company millions of dollars and make sure your management knows about it. The only justification you could make for a higher raise while "just doing your job" would be for a smaller company where the earnings are more transparent to the workers. If there's only 30 people at the company and profits rise 30% over the year due to everyone "just doing their job", then yeah, a higher raise is arguable. But all that fancy stuff you do as a server admin for a large company, managing server space, making backups, handling software licensing schemes, that's all your job. You're expected to do it and do it reasonably well, that's why you were hired. And in return, you can expect a cost-of-living raise plus a small service incentive increase. The average raise at my company this year will be about 3.5% and I'll be content with that. Mainly because I'm still learning some of the processes and I don't know how everyone else will review my performance thus far. While I think I've done a great job on everything I've worked on, I figure that's what is expected of me. But if I end up patenting some new technologies in the coming year that I believe will help the company, I may feel different. If you can backup your claim for a higher raise, then by all means go for it. But don't sit there and whine that you only get 4% for just doing your job.
Besides, hasn't anyone ever told you? You don't get rich working for someone else.
to not work for other people. Start your own company and make your own W2. It's one of the best things I've ever done!
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
The vast majority of my family owns their own business or works for one of the members who does. As someone with experience on both ends of the spectrum... company ownership and working for "The Man"(tm)... I can say for certain that the primary reason most people are offered 2% (or whatever) raises, is because the boss or bosses are fairly certain they can get away with it. Sometimes this backfires. In a company with highly skilled and specialized folks, this can often mean you lose some of your best employees. Either way it's all a calculated risk. Questions that are asked:
Is the cost of the additional salary more or less than the cost of replacing the potential loss of personel?
What percentage of those who find other jobs can be lured back in with an offer for a bit more?
Is the product produced by the employee worth the money being paid?
Can an employee that costs less create the same quality of product in the same amount of time?
In the end, if you truely believe you're worth more than you make, and the company you work for seems unwilling to compensate you in this manner, everyone is better off if you find that job. In reality, your true market value is only what the highest bidder will pay. And, in our current job market, there are typically at least a dozen people willing to do what you do for the same or less... supply and demand at its best.