Sep 21st, 2022 | Tom Talks

WILL WE EVER GET ENOUGH APPRECIATION FOR WHAT WE DO? Don't hold your breath. Tom explains.

HOUR 1

Comments

Submitted by woj00 on

Love this. I will add from my experience over the years:

1) Never accept an increase in responsibilities without advocating for a corresponding increase in pay. People will leave or layoffs will happen and bosses often take all of "Linda's" work give it to you. From management's perspective, this is a huge plus. They get one less salary to pay while you get double the work. They often do this to their most reliable, highest-performing employees.

2) Titles and corner offices don't pay the mortgage. You might hear something along the lines of, "There's no money in the budget for raises this year, but we can bump you from "Garbage Man" to "Sr. Custodial Engineer". - This is used to avoid paying an employee more while still technically "giving" something.

3) My shortest tenure at a professional job was three weeks. I got an offer for a better job at the end of my first week and was gone before I knew anybody's name.

4) During a salary negotiation the manager actually said, "No one here makes over $100,000/year" - Not exactly a huge motivator.

5) Create a living list of your accomplishments adding to it over time. Be ready to present this as proof during performance reviews. The idea should be to provide management with documentation of your valuable contributions, then leverage those contributions into a pay increase. It's harder for management to ask for more effort or list a bunch of "areas for improvement" if you come prepared with evidence of your value. This also helps when updating your resume when moving jobs.

You absolutely must advocate for yourself.

Thanks for this Tom!

Submitted by Intel1983 on

I have nothing to be angry about because after 5 years in the army, I separated from the army in Germany and I'm loving life here. Tom inspired me to get through those rough times during my service.