What am I worth?

PaulStat

PaulStat

PaulStat

Soldato
Joined
1 Mar 2003
Posts
5,508
Location
Cotham, Bristol
As per title really. Been in my job for just over two years now and have recently taken on quite a lot more responsibilities with as yet no pay rise. Boss recognises this and has said find out market rate and he'll fight for me to get it.

Part of the issue is how do I work that out. Summary of me

- 18 year career in various roles of development
- Lead developer dealing with both frontend and backend. Java/Angular
- Leading small team of 4 (including me)
- Acting as tech lead / architect for a key complex project for the client. I design all of the REST APIs, DB schemas, Ldap integration, Authentication, Authorisation RBAC etc etc
- Project is heavily IAM/IDAM based and I have about 6 or 7 years experience in this field so I have strong knowledge of JML processes and authentication/authorisation protocols such as Saml, oidc, oauth, kerberos. As well as experience in a few different IAM based products such as Okta, Netiq and Sailpoint (not used in a few years).

So current salary isn't bad at about 75k base. But now that I'm officially doing the design (was doing a lot of before but I was aiding an architect who has now left) , implementation and leading a small team to meet that design I think I'm due a decent pay rise. I'm not sure what's realistic though.

Given how keen my boss seems to ensure I don't go anywhere I suspect I can fit into the 75th or maybe even the 90th percentile.

Is north of 100k realistic? If so how far north?

Note I don't have any formal architecture qualifications like TOGAF for example
 
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How big is the company and how much pull does your boss have? Most companies will limit promotion increases to 10-15% unless there is a strong business reason to make an exception.

If it was London for a good tech company I would say well over £100k. I'd imagine Bristol is a fair bit less than London though.
 
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Its a bit mercenary, but you should check out jobserve and linkedin for jobs that match the skill set and see what they're paying. Much as your manager will want to keep you, they could well get a "no" from higher up. Your description sounds like a "Lead Software Engineer" which can easily be over 100K, but depends on market sector.

Is there any reason the architect you were working with wasn't replaced ? One argument is you're doing two jobs, so £150k :)
 
Do interviews. What ever offers you get is what you are worth. Your own job is unlikely to match any offer you get. If you don't get any offers you know your present job is the best you'll get for now.
 
Salary doesn't look egregiously low for out of London. Similar to what I'm on in a principal role, with similar experience, although I'm in game dev.

It's been a long time since I've worked outside games so not sure how far out of line it is. I used to earn a lot more than 75k 10 years ago with <10 years experience in the finance sector, so depends really what area you're in.
 
My gut feeling is £90-110k base, but I don't work in this field specifically so could be wide of the mark.
Obviously it depends a bit on the sector / company, could be more in some cases.
 
Thanks all, company is a consultancy so whatever the client sector at the time.

Architect wasn't replaced as it's difficult finding people with the necessary clearance and I was already deeply involved with the design.
 
PaulStat said:
As per title really. Been in my job for just over two years now and have recently taken on quite a lot more responsibilities with as yet no pay rise. Boss recognises this and has said find out market rate and he'll fight for me to get it.
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That's kinda BS, if you've been given extra responsibility then you should have had good reviews for both years and those good reviews should have come with above average pay rises. Further to that "quite a lot more responsibilities" ought to mean a promotion and a pay rise too separate to your annual one.

I presume your annual pay review/bonus could be due around now if they'd done this properly then you ought to have had a rise and/or promotion to go with the extra stuff you're taking on and then with good performance in doing that you'd expect another above average annual pay rise/bonus.

The company/HR should know the market, they hire people, they're the ones with visibility of all the salaries in the organisation.

PaulStat said:
So current salary isn't bad at about 75k base. But now that I'm officially doing the design (was doing a lot of before but I was aiding an architect who has now left) , implementation and leading a small team to meet that design I think I'm due a decent pay rise. I'm not sure what's realistic though.
[...]
Is north of 100k realistic? If so how far north?
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100k+ can easily be realistic for both a senior developer with no leadership responsibilities and indeed a lead developer with a small team. How far north depends on the industry, what others are paying, what your company can afford to pay for that role.

You'll likely find you can earn far more by jumping ship, especially if you push for a job title change ASAP, the fact your boss can't promise anything other than he wants to fight for it etc.. isn't exactly reassuring, why is he so inept that he's not had this conversation with management weeks/months ago and why are you running off to find data points.

It could be an awkward situation because he's been such a numpty and didn't sort this out sooner, as someone else mentioned HR can have hard limits on % raises, if you've got some internal rule you're unaware of which caps things at say 15% then he's screwed you unless he can persuade some MD to overrule it. You should have got your 15% + title when you took on the role and then another fat raise due now as part of your annual review assuming you'd done well in the new role, that could have got you to 100k even with a 15% limit in place.

Essentially you could look on glassdoor or similar for positions at rival firms (or just broader tech firms) and cherry-pick a little then come up with some figures to justify a significant raise to say 110k, 120k whatever... if they say yes then great but even without HR limits in place they might well just fob you off with some waffle and "meet you halfway" after all they told you to name a figure... if you name a lower figure perhaps they had a higher one in mind anyway and they say yes to yours. It's just so dodgy getting you to do this.
Lastly, they might just come back with HR limits raises to 15% which means the whole exercise was a waste of time and your manager is an idiot for not knowing that already.

I'd send your CV out and start interviewing elsewhere perhaps, ideally, you want a new job title first though to reflect the extra responsibilities and show some progression in this role as that's a huge positive on any CV.
 
These threads are always so difficult to answer as the OP always wants justification that they should be on six-figures, but it's so rare you get a pay increase of that % when staying in the same job. We have no idea how good you are at the job so it's hard to answer. The best way is to go out there and take some interviews and see if you get offered what you want.

Any reason they haven't promoted you into the architect role?
 
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Worthy said:
....

Any reason they haven't promoted you into the architect role?
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I wouldn't call that a promotion* .... Architects don't write code and they need him to keep doing that. Obviously depends on the organisation, but architecture is typically a parallel career path and not necessarily paid as well as development and rarely more (in my experience anyway).

* Arrogant developer viewpoint :D
 
peterwalkley said:
I wouldn't call that a promotion* .... Architects don't write code and they need him to keep doing that. Obviously depends on the organisation, but architecture is typically a parallel career path and not necessarily paid as well as development and rarely more (in my experience anyway).

* Arrogant developer viewpoint :D
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Typical developer attitude :D
 
peterwalkley said:
I wouldn't call that a promotion* .... Architects don't write code and they need him to keep doing that. Obviously depends on the organisation, but architecture is typically a parallel career path and not necessarily paid as well as development and rarely more (in my experience anyway).

* Arrogant developer viewpoint :D
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Agree that it's a parallel path, but in organisations I've worked in architects have usually been same grade as a senior manager or even director in the dev team.
 
Hah yeah I get it's a hard question as my abilities are unknown to you all. I was also struggling to answer it, hence the question. Part of the problem was defining what my job title should be as I don't just wear one hat :D

I am actually going through a promotion cycle at the moment but that would just be a grade bump with a meaningless internal job title and a minimal bump in salary.

Had another chat with my boss today and he seemed very confident to push over the 6 figure mark as it's a valid business case. I guess we'll see
 
PaulStat said:
I am actually going through a promotion cycle at the moment but that would just be a grade bump with a meaningless internal job title and a minimal bump in salary.

Had another chat with my boss today and he seemed very confident to push over the 6 figure mark as it's a valid business case. I guess we'll see
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It's not meaningless if it's a promotion and can be sold as such on a CV, two years+ at an employer starting as X job title, promoted to Y job title is good to have if you do decide to move elsewhere, if your manager is confident he can get the pay rise then that's great, just go and cherry pick yourself some datapoints to give to him, if he comes back with some waffle about internal rules restricting how much they can give but next year he'll really push hard for you blah blah etc.. then take what you can in terms of new title and pay rise and get interviewing!
 
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Are you seeking specifically a 6 figure salary or to find a more fulfilling role and happy to stick on a similar salary or are you happy where you are but feel you're being underpaid for the work that you do? If it's the latter, the best thing to do is just to be honest and present your points/facts to your line manager and explain you feel you should be on more considering the work you do.
 
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