How do you feel about less-than-inflation annual payrises?

thebandit said:
This entirely depends on your outlook on work, someone just turning the handle, turning up and doing their 8 hours probably would feel miffed at less than inflationary pay rises its essentially a pay cut. My company went through a 5 year period until recently of no pay rises whilst inflation was 10%+, I stayed, I like the work and the company, it wasn't making much money at the time, but I could see where it was heading.
If you don't like the pay you get then vote with your feet, I only ever give my guys the standard pay rise unless they want to leave and I want to keep them, then we negotiate. Anyone who's working for a career not just a job should be moving every ~3 years I think, it’s the best way to increase pay above the standard inflationary.
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I’m not convinced that offering a pay rise to stay is a good approach.

My annual pay review issued a pay rise of 0.9% last August.
I was promoted to programme manager earlier this year, but my boss was not able to give me a pay rise due to the company policy where you have to go up to the next pay grade (which I can’t do unless I’m managing £15M+ of turnover). My boss said the only way to get a pay rise is to leave.

With the insulting pay rises and the amount of effort it takes to get a new job at senior level these days means that if I find somewhere else, I won’t be enticed back.
 
darkblade said:
I’m not convinced that offering a pay rise to stay is a good approach.
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I had a manager a few years ago that had a personal policy to never offer any counteroffers. He knew, from personal experience, that they only work in very rare occasions, and he'd rather just let the person move on. The same institutional reasons why the person looked for a new job in the first place are the reasons why the person will inevitably not stay more than a year or two, even with a counteroffer.

darkblade said:
With the insulting pay rises and the amount of effort it takes to get a new job at senior level these days means that if I find somewhere else, I won’t be enticed back.
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There's plenty more fish in the sea. I don't anticipate ever working for the same employer later in my career. While some folks do boomerang among large US tech companies, it's not all that common. Also, with the overall stagnation in compensation increases over the last few years, I doubt that boomeranging is as lucrative anymore unless you're significantly going up in level in your next role.
 
jon86 said:
I had a manager a few years ago that had a personal policy to never offer any counteroffers. He knew, from personal experience, that they only work in very rare occasions, and he'd rather just let the person move on. The same institutional reasons why the person looked for a new job in the first place are the reasons why the person will inevitably not stay more than a year or two, even with a counteroffer.
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Fully agree with that. If someone wants to leave, generally I believe you should say, thanks of your good work and best of luck in the new role. If someone has been making moves to leave, they have enough motivation. Any pay issues should have been dealt with before, by negotiating on pay rises for example.
 
dirtychinchilla said:
If that's the answer you get, and it's not what you want to hear, then going back into a negotiation with an offer isn't really going to improve the situation.
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At least in the past, on rare occasions, mentioning that you have a better paying offer elsewhere could sometimes make magic money appear, because sometimes HR would have a magic money bag for retention. It's infuriating that this is sometimes the only way to break the pay rise glass ceiling but I've seen it happen a number of times throughout my career.

It happened to me once with a UK employer. I simply stated to my boss' boss that I had found a more enticing job offer (with a 33% raise) and I was going to leave the employer of four years to pursue this new opportunity. My boss' boss was able to make a counteroffer and have HR match my offered salary plus move me to a much better team that led to some amazing new career opportunities. I stayed with the employer for another two years before my new boss headhunted me away to his new US employer, and the rest is history.
 
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dirtychinchilla said:
If that's the answer you get, and it's not what you want to hear, then going back into a negotiation with an offer isn't really going to improve the situation.
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That's a pretty naïve point of view, at least in the tech world. It's basically the way all companies work. If you started at a low grade/pay and get promoted quickly, the internal pay increase policies will almost always mean you end up below market value. Your boss needs an external offer to put in front of HR to be able to waive the internal policies and sort this out for you. The "they should have valued you and paid you properly in the first place" argument is just noise because the next company will likely work in exactly the same way.
 
EvilRob said:
That's a pretty naïve point of view, at least in the tech world. It's basically the way all companies work. If you started at a low grade/pay and get promoted quickly, the internal pay increase policies will almost always mean you end up below market value. Your boss needs an external offer to put in front of HR to be able to waive the internal policies and sort this out for you. The "they should have valued you and paid you properly in the first place" argument is just noise because the next company will likely work in exactly the same way.
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Fair enough. It's not a sector I work in so I'm not really familiar with how other industries or indeed, other companies, work
 
After nearly 15 years of working in the public sector, im just happy to get a payrise.

But for the two annual pay rises I've had it's been above inflation, which is lovely. Long may it continue.
 
Begbie said:
After nearly 15 years of working in the public sector, im just happy to get a payrise.

But for the two annual pay rises I've had it's been above inflation, which is lovely. Long may it continue.
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But the 13 years of nothing has put it way behind, it's why I left. The private sector is a long way ahead pay wise now, not even comparable in some industries.

Private sector/contractor jobs paying 30-40% more, with a lot more perks.
 
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Nasher said:
But the 13 years of nothing has put it way behind, it's why I left. The public sector is a long way ahead pay wise now, not even comparable in some industries.

Private sector/contractor jobs paying 30-40% more, with a lot more perks.
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It's why I left, the jump has seen be about 70% pay increase, plus numerous other perks. And actual pay rises every year.
 
Arterion said:
As per title, really. CPIH inflation currently at 3.9%; our annual raise was 2.75%. Usually this is a signal to me to start looking around for other employment.

What about y'all?
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If the company is making profits and they are good profits or increasing profits and they don't increase wages in line then it is time to move company.
 
Tram said:
If the company is making profits and they are good profits or increasing profits and they don't increase wages in line then it is time to move company.
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It depends on market rates for the jobs. If they are going down, a company isn't going to give big pay rises just because they made a good profit. Hopefully they'd fund bonuses well, though.
 
fez said:
I'm effectively self employed and have had the same day rate for the past 2.5 years. I am really struggling to decide whether to increase my rate. I likely have to start charging VAT if I do that but thats neither here nor there for the companies I work for as they are VAT registered too. The bigger fear is that they turn around and tell me to **** off. The IT sector in the UK is poorly paid outside of a few sectors and this job is pretty good for my work life balance. Oh and the IT sector is generally taking a beating at the moment. I don't think the people I work for have any money or cashflow issues, its just the risk.

We are also just about to get what is likely our last stonking great mortgage and the increase would help with that and the two black holes we birthed a few years ago. Losing my main source of income would be....challenging. The business has about a years worth of my salary sitting in it so not the end of the world but not great.

I just think that inflation has eaten into my day rate quite a lot and that its not unreasonable to increase it. I was considering 10% ish. What do people think. My partner is public sector so doesn't really have a clue about these things. Not sure I have much more.
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Are you a ltd company contractor? If you are then surely the only time you are able to raise your rate is when they want to renew your contract, would seem wrong otherwise.

I quite often raised my rate when my contract was being renewed
 
Bear said:
Are you a ltd company contractor? If you are then surely the only time you are able to raise your rate is when they want to renew your contract, would seem wrong otherwise.

I quite often raised my rate when my contract was being renewed
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I work through a limited company for the tax benefits (what little there are these days as the government seems hell bend on getting everyone on PAYE and not taking any business risks...)

I can fundamentally charge whatever I want, whenever I want, I don't have a contract with any of the companies I work for. I work the hours that suit me and the hours that suit them and bill monthly accordingly.
 
fez said:
I work through a limited company for the tax benefits (what little there are these days as the government seems hell bend on getting everyone on PAYE and not taking any business risks...)

I can fundamentally charge whatever I want, whenever I want, I don't have a contract with any of the companies I work for. I work the hours that suit me and the hours that suit them and bill monthly accordingly.
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Yeah, Im in the process of wrapping up my ltd company and working inside IR35 now. Ive given up caring how much tax I pay so long as Im happy with what I take home.

It sounds like you are working outside IR35 to get the tax benefits. How do you define what your work package deliverables are if you are not contracted in anyway?
 
Bear said:
Yeah, Im in the process of wrapping up my ltd company and working inside IR35 now. Ive given up caring how much tax I pay so long as Im happy with what I take home.

It sounds like you are working outside IR35 to get the tax benefits. How do you define what your work package deliverables are if you are not contracted in anyway?
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Its just a very loose arrangement with them. It works for both of us. Allows me to be flexible with work hours and what days I work which allows me to spend my time with my children and get out on the bike when the weather is nice.

Have to say, I am very much hating the idea of ever having to go back to traditional working if that happens in the future. Well, that and the fact that the developer market is largely ****** at the moment with offshoring, AI and the lack of money sloshing around in the economy at the moment. It doesn't really matter that AI is largely **** and offshoring is an awful idea in most cases. All that matters is CEOs think they are saving vast sums of money by not hiring decent local devs.
 
They save money in the short term. But later find the overall quality drops and they can't meet orders, because they got rid of all the talent. So profits just keep going down.

In our company they off-shored all of the support on the software side. Something breaks, production stops until they come online and start working on it. As opposed to a guy upstairs spending 5 mins on it immediately. He gets paid more, but stopping production costs £10000s an hour or more.
 
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