How would you guys approach this one?

[Iamzod]

Back in very late 2021 the company I work for was purchased by a larger group, i've gone from working for a 7 man company to one with a few hundred staff.

My role was effectively sales based, I dealt with contract renewals & retentions officially although it turned into more of an account management sort of role after a few years as I gained too much knowledge & built a relationship with some of the larger clients.

Pay was pretty naff at the small company but conditions & environment excellent so stuck it out as I didn't even need to commute, it was walking distance & then Covid hit & it became home based where I remain to this day.

When we got purchased I got a £3k pay rise and a drastic commission restructure which made much more of a difference than the basic rise as it went from possibly being 25% of my basic salary to 200% of it in a good month & then 6 months later got another £8k on top as I was asked to concentrate on our bigger clients only so my role & title changed, i've done pretty well at that since & earned a pretty decent pay over the last 18 months.

However, there were two of us drafted into this role when it was created, the other guy recently left & this afternoon I've come across an advert for what looks like his replacement with a salary bracket £10 - £15k more than i'm on, it's been pulled since but I called the recruitment company earlier pretending to be someone else & they confirmed the numbers saying it'll be back up soon, ex-colleague wasn't on that either as i've still got his details so asked him this afternoon.

Is this a recruiter just trying to attract someone or am I being played, what to do?

 

[ivrytwr3]

Isn't that just the nature of business now? You don't earn more by staying loyal? The only way to gain decent rises is to move companies.

It seems your role is worth more, however, i don't think you can use the "they are on more, so i want more". Everyone has to do their own negotiation.

Book a meeting with your manager and ask for a rise based on evidence ie your sales figures, responsibilities, comparative salaries and the job advert for your ex-colleague?

 

[A2Z]

I agree it's very insulting to think someone with 0 experience in the company, who you will most likely need to train up, to do the exact same job as you, will be earning more.

Same thing happened to me with my first proper job straight out of uni. I asked to at least be matched to this new salary, and got told I already received a pay rise that year...

Following week I handed in my resignation, found a new better paying job, that's how I approached it.

 

[peterwalkley]

Some questions:

Was the role advertised as the (higher base) + commission ?
Can you get a better income by moving jobs ?
Would you still be able to be home based or need to take commute costs into account ?

Sounds like a fair whack of your income is the commission you are earning. Is anyone coming in on that higher salary going to earn the same commission as you since they'll need to learn the customers, products etc to be as effective.

On the one hand it sounds like you've got a good position there and this job ad is the only downside you've seen. On the other, if you're the only account manager, you are in a good bargaining position if you have a credible threat to leave.

I'd hold fire until you see the job ad come back up again and what it says this time. You've got evidence for "the conversation" then.

 

[dowie]

Same thing happened to me with my first proper job straight out of uni. I asked to at least be matched to this new salary, and got told I already received a pay rise that year...

Following week I handed in my resignation, found a new better paying job, that's how I approached it.

The funniest version of this happening that I've seen was a friend of mine about 2-3 years into his first grad role. Upon learning that the new guy he was helping to train was earning more he asked for a pay rise and, of course, was denied then ended up getting a job at the company that the new guy had just left!

They essentially swapped jobs and both got a 10k+ pay rise to 50k-ish when each of them could have stayed in the job they were already proficient at.

The other issue is internal rules re: pay rises... like HR says you can't hand out more than 15% without approval from a senior MD, global HR etc..etc... A manager of an international/cross border team was recruiting (internally) one guy in London who was on like 50-60k, noted that he was kinda junior and mentioned that the pay band for the role was quite broad at 85-120k but that he'd have to start at 85k as the people on 100k+ were "senior developers" etc.. or team leads (only small teams of like 3) and was that OK? The problem is she hadn't asked him about his current pay and HR then had a fit... he was offered a 5k interim rise to take the role which he then knew he was at least 20k underpaid for even the low end of the pay range and left within a few months.

 

[OspreyO]

I would say this is normal. You are what you negotiate. If you are planning on playing hard ball you have to be prepared to leave though.

 

[Iamzod]

Well, i decided to fire an e-mail at the CCO and my line manager earlier simply asking how I apply for this position as I think i'm a better fit than any external or internal candidate.

Nobody replied, but we have a weekly meeting so i'll be asking questions then.

 

[OspreyO]

Not sure I'd have pushed that hard that fast. But that's why I'm not in sales....

 

[sidimmu]

Well, i decided to fire an e-mail at the CCO and my line manager earlier simply asking how I apply for this position as I think i'm a better fit than any external or internal candidate.

Nobody replied, but we have a weekly meeting so i'll be asking questions then.

Frankly I wouldnt of bothered and gone looking for a new job, they wont ever have your respect or trust again so why bother?
Like you said, its a completely different company and management compared to what it was before.

 

[Iamzod]

Frankly I wouldnt of bothered and gone looking for a new job, they wont ever have your respect or trust again so why bother?
Like you said, its a completely different company and management compared to what it was before.

Here lies the problem & this is why i'm conflicted, on a decent month I can bring in more than someone earning £100k p/a, that's hard to turn away from.

Will I get that in this role elsewhere? Maybe, but I do recognise that the commission structure is currently excellent.

However, why should a newbie get an extra £15k for doing bugger all?

I'm getting the commission because i've bloody earned it over 7 years of making customers think i'm the best thing since sliced bread, why should some nutface from elsewhere earn more before they pick up the phone simply because they are new?

 

[sidimmu]

I'm getting the commission because i've bloody earned it over 7 years of making customers think i'm the best thing since sliced bread, why should some nutface from elsewhere earn more before they pick up the phone simply because they are new?

I'm not saying it rights, just saying thats how larger corporates act and sometimes its best to just walk away and look for something else.
Otherwise you just end up fighting a losing battle. Walk away for a year or 2, go back as their manager at a later date if you really wish.

 

[OspreyO]

It's rare in my limited experience for a company to make a serious efforts to hold on to people. Even key senior people. There's either an accountant pushing some financial angle or senior person who wants a team they picked themselves.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen I've just rarely seen it happen. But I'm not at this level. Maybe others who are at this level and have seen it happen.

 

[jon86]

It's rare in my limited experience for a company to make a serious efforts to hold on to people. Even key senior people. ... Maybe others who are have seen it happen.

I've only known it to happen a handful of times in my career.

It happened to me when I told a former employer that I was going to leave for a £40K job (with a not insignificant commute); I was being paid £30K at the time. The group MD intervened and got the company CTO to personally get HR to bump up my salary to £40K and he moved me into a much more interesting role. I stayed at the company for a few more years, and the new role led me to much greater opportunities a few years later where I was earning much more than £40K. I'm very thankful to the group MD for that opportunity.

I know of someone who joined an early startup some years ago that's since grown massively and is now worth a ton of money. This person's team has all moved on so this person is the last person who has significant institutional knowledge about the startup's products and how/why they operate in the way that they do. This person's line management ensures that the person is very well paid (more so than their experience might suggest) simply in a effort to keep this knowledge in the company. Tribal knowledge can be worth a lot of money.

My last boss told me that he will never entertain giving a counteroffer and always just lets the person leave. "The same reasons why they want to leave now are the same reasons why they'll leave in 3/6/12 months." This wasn't the case for me in my earlier career but I have heard of a lot of stories of people who (still) left not long after getting a counteroffer.

 

[OspreyO]

I think the problem for companies is they can't recruit the staff that want at the current wages. But in offering more to get those staff they leapfrog existing staff salaries. They might justify it by higher academic qualifications. Least that what's ours have done. Of course it kills progression and causes all sorts of issues.

We have have as many leaving as joining. Which doesn't sound that bad. Until you consider we are losing people with years of experience and domain knowledge. Just replacing them with more expensive staff, who know less, and are more likely to leave.

 

[dowie]

My last boss told me that he will never entertain giving a counteroffer and always just lets the person leave. "The same reasons why they want to leave now are the same reasons why they'll leave in 3/6/12 months." This wasn't the case for me in my earlier career but I have heard of a lot of stories of people who (still) left not long after getting a counteroffer.

That's hilariously flawed logic if the reason is simply; "I otherwise like working here but I feel I'm underpaid".

He seems a bit dumb, while a company may be selective re: counter offers, some people perhaps aren't worth it and some people you may even be happy to see gone as they don't add any value there will often be people the company ought to keep.

It's pretty standard to the point where a good recruiter might not only sus out your desired salary range early on but might also, as part of that conversation, directly ask about why you're leaving and whether you'd accept a matching counteroffer from your current employer simply because they're hoping to have eliminated any surprises (for them) if their client does eventually want to extend an offer.

 

[OspreyO]

I think once you getting the mindset of leaving enough to start that process. Its very hard to do a 180 in your head.

If management have overlooked someone to the point they want to leave. It's unlikely management that shortsighted will have an epiphany either.

At a certain point though you realise no one really cares. Everyone can be replaced and no one really cares if it causes a problem. Rarely will it be so bad that it will effect management personally.

 

[dowie]

I think once you getting the mindset of leaving enough to start that process. Its very hard to do a 180 in your head.

If management have overlooked someone to the point they want to leave. It's unlikely management that shortsighted will have an epiphany either.

Not particularly, if the issue is simply pay then you can just be pragmatic about it and anticipate that you may well get a counteroffer (which is also why good recruiters ask about it).

It's not exactly uncommon so it doesn't require an epiphany from management unless they're totally clueless, one of the first things asked when someone quits is "why" - they want to know whether there is an issue within that person's team (potentially with the manager responsible for it) and/or if there is anything they can address if the employee is in good standing (not currently on a PIP, has at least had meets expectations performance reviews etc.)

It is very easy for this sort of scenario to arise in tech in situations where the market price for some skills has increased significantly more than inflation over a few years, someone employed at the same place for say 3 to 4 years, even with good reviews and above inflation pay rises can still end up lagging the market (also in some cases people didn't negotiate well when they joined and that's added to this situation too).

 

[jon86]

That's hilariously flawed logic if the reason is simply; "I otherwise like working here but I feel I'm underpaid".

He seems a bit dumb, while a company may be selective re: counter offers, some people perhaps aren't worth it and some people you may even be happy to see gone as they don't add any value there will often be people the company ought to keep.

I don't necessarily agree, and I can see from his perspective why he wouldn't entertain making a counteroffer.

1. Just because a skillset is valued higher elsewhere doesn't mean that the employer places the same value on that skillset. If a skillset now commanded a £5K premium and he knows that the employer's value of that skillset hasn't increased to that level, he would be the first to say, "go and get that payrise, thank you for your service".

2. He has always made it clear that he wants to have the "I'm not happy, what can we do about it chat" before the person has another employment offer. From his perspective, if the employee hasn't already expressed their desire for some sort of growth (with pay rises to follow), there's been a significant communication breakdown and that's mostly caused by the employee. He has regular 1:1 meetings with his employees when any topic is on the table to be discussed.

3. He doesn't like being put in a position of "give me more money or I'll quit". If things have got this far, it's time to cut the losses and let the person leave.

 

[dowie]

I don't necessarily agree, and I can see from his perspective why he wouldn't entertain making a counteroffer.
[...]

I'm simply commenting on the flaw in what he said:

"The same reasons why they want to leave now are the same reasons why they'll leave in 3/6/12 months."

That's flawed because if the reason is money then you can address that and it's not necessarily true that they'll want to leave in 3,6,12 months. Ditto to some other reason that can be addressed, if you address it then...

It might well be the case that they don't wish to match the offer and that's fine, it doesn't negate that if they did then they may well have addressed the issue for that employee.

In the more general case, it isn't always possible for a manager to offer the raise that someone would like, these things can be tightly controlled by HR with general caps on the % that can be given (like say 15% max) this can change when a candidate is otherwise due to leave as that triggers a bunch of things internally and a manager has a stronger case, if they don't want to lose a candidate then the relevant MD or C level person might approve bypassing HR rules on pay.

Of course, it is often better to try and approach these things proactively and to push for pay rises without going down the route of securing a rival offer but the notion that a counter can't solve anything is very flawed.

 

[EvilRob]

Right, sometimes you just need an offer to bypass HR rules. No point getting upset about it, it's just the way most companies work. I've also known people leave a company and then come back a year or two later on much higher pay. As long as you have a good manager it's all fine - they may well be on board with what you're doing. None of this "you'll have a black mark against your name" rubbish either.