Quote:
Originally Posted by Coach
TLDR: It took me too long to realize employers are not doing you a favour. This is a mutually beneficial relationship. I do the work, and you pay me. If I do more work, you pay me more. If I do better work, you pay me better. It's not a charity. They need you as much as you need them. Sometimes more so. Nothing is being given here, and you should stand up for what you believe your value is. If a company or boss isn't willing to pony up, if you can, walk.
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My first job post school was working at Shaw. Started as a frontline TSR and eventually worked my way up to internal IT helpdesk. Busted my ass there, always the top ticket closer. Then we get a new team lead who has zero IT experience and all she does is look at numbers. And her first move is to meet with me to ask why my numbers for that month weren't as high as last month. I ask her if it might not be more beneficial to talk with the other team members who weren't even closing half the tickets I was, and she flatly states "You established your own baseline, and we expect you to keep that standard". She followed that up with an email CC'ing the manager detailing my "poor performance" and demanding I fill out and sign a performance improvement plan. Well I lit into her, also CC'ing the manager, refused to sign that ####, and immediately started looking for a new job. Ended up getting fired the next week with a healthy severance package and got a helpdesk job at an oil company a week later that paid 50% more
That experience taught me a valuable lesson, companies do not care about you as an individual, only as a number on a spreadsheet. So do what's expected of you, but don't go above and beyond expecting to get rewarded for it. And if you want a raise the best way is to jump to a different company. I've worked at several different companies since then, always getting a healthy salary bump when moving. That's pretty normal though in IT, maybe it's different in other industries