Oh, so I can get it right now?
The newcomer: Oh, I don’t have to work here? Thanks for reminding me!
Me: Nobody wants to work! Sorry for our slow service, Covid these hard times 9/11
Throwing my hands up and saying "Covid these hard times 9/11” is going to be my new favorite way of ending a conversation or apologizing to somebody.
Also supply chain, egg prices, Biden “I did that!” sticker. Damn lazy avocado toast is killing diamonds with tiktok.
You actually have to quit periodically and demand more money upfront at a new job.
In a span of like eight years, I did this 4 times to go from $11.25/hour to now $52/hour. All with a gen ed associates degree from a community college. The best time to look for a job is when you already have one. It’s your safety net. It enables you to walk away from the table when negotiating after crushing the interview. You are also interviewing them to see if they’re worthy of your valuable labor. They have no revenue without workers like you, and they have no profit if they pay you what you’re actually worth, so understand that technically every offer they extend to you is a lowball offer. Having the confidence of knowing this makes you appear competent enough to merit higher pay. They will look at candidates and remember that you were the one who had the sauce and stuck out.
Tell me your secret! I have a gen ed associates degree and I still haven’t figured out how to make it more valuable than a high school diploma. Everyone seems to want a four year degree.
If you’re any good with STEM stuff, look into power plants. I had to be a basic laborer to get my foot in the door but shifted to water chemistry. It took a lot of effort, but eventually I got in as an operator and have since gotten a couple of raises and a promotion. The downside is the schedule of rotating shift work, but that’s why they pay so well. On nights and weekends, it’s just me and two other guys running the ~750MW power plant, sometimes running our asses off to keep it running on the grid, but usually just keeping up with general preventive maintenance, minor upgrade/replacement projects, calibrations, and responding to alarms.
Another option especially right now is to look into data centers. Learn refrigeration cycles, UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), and refresh your mind on chemistry 101 and physics 101. I interviewed at and got an offer from one but turned it down because they were offering $40/hour plus up to 4% bonus while I was at $42/hour plus up to 10% bonus, all while HR was kinda being shitty with me during negotiation. So I walked away and contacted the supervisor and manager I interviewed with and thanked them and let them know that I thought they were great and that it was the money and disrespect from HR that made me reject the offer.
The newcomer can start interviewing and have a raise in just a few weeks! The boss is right, he doesn’t have to work years for a raise.
Ive been working at my company for 5 years. The previous senior person in the roll got that promotion after working their for 2 years, so when he left and the senior role became available everyone in the department was expecting me to get it… then they give the role to the guy who started 3 months ago.
So since then ive just stopped trying. Im not going to get another chance to be promoted until that fucker leaves, so now im working like the minimum effort junior that they treat me like. Going to coast like that for a while until i get a couple more qualifications, then go somewhere better as a senior.
Start sending out applications now, you may already be qualified, and getting a job offer in the back pocket is never a bad idea.
I am probably under qualified for thr job i want and while I may get a job still, i don’t think I want to be working at a company that’s going to hire under qualified people for senior roles.
Plus even just going through and updating my CV and writing cover letters is a lot of mental effort and time that I would rather just spend on studying for my certs.
Of course you’re not going to get a huge raise. Only three ways that happens:
- You directly generate money for the company, as in, you bring new revenue. Most employees are cost centers.
- You get a huge promotion, and even then, you’re not likely getting a 20%+ bump.
- GET ANOTHER JOB.
#3 is well-known and obvious to those of us in tech. I often forget that non-techs and young people may not have got the memo. My last job hops have bumped me 30% and 90%.
Non-tech example: My friend took an oil change job when we moved here. That was well below his skillset. He kept proving his skills, improving his skills, moving up a bit and moving on. Now he’s at $120,000 and is the service manager for the largest car dealer chain in the area.
And no, employers generally do not expect our lifelong loyalty. They talk like that, because it would be stupid to talk otherwise. I’ve answered “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”, with, “Let me dig in and see how it goes! I may move on at the 5-year mark to keep my skills growing and fresh.”
HR didn’t bat an eye. “Well, we hope you enjoy your 5-years here!”
Keep your resume polished and move on!
Option #4: Organize with your coworkers and form a union and collectively bargain for higher wages and better benefits.
That should be an option, and yet my initial reaction was “like that would ever happen.”
Boss 2 years later: “why did all of our newcomers quit?! I swear there’s no good employees anymore.”
“wHy dOeSn’t aNyOnE WaNt tO WoRk, AnYmOrE?”
The other thing I always tell people is every year you don’t get a raise that’s at least equal to inflation you’re getting a pay cut. Finding a job that does cost of living increases every year is a huge benefit.
Isn’t this the norm? I’d quit if my company didn’t do this.
Sadly no, my company does, but many companies see employees as resources, not assets.
Ugh. At the place I worked for a long time pre-covid, fairly often I heard the word “resource” being used in place of “human being.”
Can we put a resource on this problem? Who is the resource assigned to this? We won’t have an available resource until next month.
My company generally gives yearly raises, and before 2020 they were usually pretty generous. The last few years though, they haven’t even come close to matching inflation.
And you are getting a relative pay cut. Doing the same amount of work, but the money you take home doesn’t go as far.
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“We value none of our workers, it’s nothing personal.”
Nothing personnel kid
I had exactly the same experience. The manager answered me “wait, I can actually raise you! Here it is!”. I merely had to be a dick like them for them to do something. I still left.
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Your raise schedule should be outlined in your union contract! :)
But if I join a union, then I might have to pay union dues!!! Getting a 20% raise isn’t worth losing 2% to dues!!!
You need to phrase that differently.
It’s not 20% raise, it’s 1/5 more. And it’s not 2% dues, it’s 1/50 less.
See the dues are definitely worse!!!
It’s actually way worse than that. 1/50!!! Huge number
Ugh… I failed. Fixed in edit
The sad thing is, there are people who wholeheartedly agree with that reasoning…
One of the most vivid arithmetic failings displayed by Americans occurred in the early 1980s, when the A&W restaurant chain released a new hamburger to rival the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder. With a third-pound of beef, the A&W burger had more meat than the Quarter Pounder; in taste tests, customers preferred A&W’s burger. And it was less expensive. A lavish A&W television and radio marketing campaign cited these benefits. Yet instead of leaping at the great value, customers snubbed it.
Only when the company held customer focus groups did it become clear why. The Third Pounder presented the American public with a test in fractions. And we failed. Misunderstanding the value of one-third, customers believed they were being overcharged. Why, they asked the researchers, should they pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as they did for a quarter-pound of meat at McDonald’s. The “4” in “¼,” larger than the “3” in “⅓,” led them astray.
Have you considered how many video games you can buy using all that money you saved on union dues?
We talking full priced or steam summer sale?
Now you see why the right wing tries to neuter schools and education.
On a similar note, paying 10% of my total income to health insurance is absolutely worth it, because they partially pay for 3 doctors visits per year and tell me to go fuck myself when I need antidepressants or Advil.
The typical high deductible health plans these days only seem to work well for people that need like no healthcare, or people who need a ton of it.
My secret trick is to have an incurable condition where the medications to hopefully stabilize you or slow progress of the disease are so hilariously expensive that the pharma company will pay all of my out of pocket costs. It’s like my employer pays me my salary, then my insurance company pays an entire separate yearly salary to the pharma company.
Every half decent company will do this, union or not.
