How would you guys approach this one?

[jon86]

I've also known people leave a company and then come back a year or two later on much higher pay.

It's known as "boomeranging" in the tech industry. It's a well known fact that you stay at a company for a promotion, but you leave (and join somewhere else) to turn that promotion into $$$$$$. Amazon is known for having a very generous boomerang policy, and people's compensation can jump 6 figures each time they do it if they time their boomerangs after a promotion.

 

[HangTime]

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.

Are you certain the commission package is the same as you are on? If you are getting up to 200% commission then you might be better off with lower basic and higher commission. I mean what if they call your bluff and see is as an opportunity to restructure your package again (£10k salary uplift but reduced OTE)?

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.

Yeah I left a job because I felt underpaid once but would have accepted a decent counter-offer. Nobody knows if I'd have left within a year but I doubt it, it was walking distance from my house and frankly whilst it wasn't the best place to work, at that stage in my career I didn't know any better (it was only my second employer and better than the first).

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.

Yeah I don't think it's that common except perhaps in cases like jon86 mentions where you have individuals with mountains of tacit knowledge or are just absolute rockstars in their field with excellent customer relations etc.
Part of the issue I think is that the people who can recognise the talents of the best employees are often not the ones who can signoff on counter-offers etc. So a line manager might know someone is awesome but the budget holder doesn't fully understand the extent of that, HR don't understand, etc. This applies to retention across the board i.e. managers often don't have the discretion to decide pay rises, I was in a position where I knew what people in my team were earning so I knew who was underpaid but I'd have to build a case for promotions, get buy in from my Director, and then he'd have to get approval from CIO and HR. Then that might get halted because of macro budget factors. The annual review cycles were a bit of a joke, the only thing I could influence was their bonus (via performance rating) but salary wise it was very much 'computer says no'.

 

[Iamzod]

Are you certain the commission package is the same as you are on? If you are getting up to 200% commission then you might be better off with lower basic and higher commission. I mean what if they call your bluff and see is as an opportunity to restructure your package again (£10k salary uplift but reduced OTE)?

It'll be the same yes, it's all changing shortly anyway so we'll of course have to see what that looks like.

I've only been getting that sort of number on the odd occasion, normally my commission roughly matches salary but every now & again something good pops up & I take some nice numbers home.