The "new to the workforce" thing raises a flag for me. It can create a LOT of discontent to give a new guy a raise for performance reasons. At many companies, raises are due to length of tenure (sad, but true). Prepare to be told, "But you've only been here for a year. It'd be bad if we gave you a raise."
I don't think you should shop around, but you do need to understand market rate. Have a casual conversation (coffee?) with your boss (say that you'd like to talk about how your compensation will evolve as you continue to work for the company) and ask them a few questions.
1) Where does the company feel it should pay folks? Do they like to pay a little above market rate to encourage retention, at market rate to be competitive, or... (don't finish the sentence)
(almost everyone will say at market rate)
2) Does performance effect that? If an employee is top notch among his peers, should that effect his pay?
3) Where would you place me among my peers and could you give me some advice about how I could excel even further?
The big Q: Given that we agree that I'm in the top n%, do you feel like my compensation is appropriate? My research has indicated that an average salary for a person of my level is X (might be worth padding a touch for anchoring purposes).
NEVER give the indication that you're shopping. There are plenty of places to research salary without doing interviews. Most managers know that once people start interviewing, there's no point in trying too hard to keep the person. Stress that you really like your job and you see a long/bright future at the company.
At many companies, raises are due to length of tenure (sad, but true). Prepare to be told, "But you've only been here for a year. It'd be bad if we gave you a raise."
If a company wants to buy tenure and you want to sell performance, it's a bad fit. Find someone wanting to buy what you are selling and do business with them.
If the language section of your resume lists Java, J2EE and Java 1.6, you should stick around. You'll never get a better deal elsewhere.
I totally agree. But take two programmers. 1 is good and has been there for 5 years. The other is GREAT and has been there for 6 months (and is 20 years old w/out a college degree). The second programmer gets a fat raise, placing him above the first in terms of pay. The first doesn't necessarily agre that the younger fella is clearly better: "Yeah, he cranks out code and he kisses the right asses. But a lot of it needs to be rewritten and he gets 'creative' with the spec," or somesuch. "Performance" is subjective. In the above scenario, you might have 5 disgruntled good programmers when you give you young star a fat raise.
I'm all for a meritocracy, but it's tricky with anything that's hard to measure (exception: sales).
Completely agree, was going to say, any company that doesn't recognize performance early on (vs. tenure) is not going to have very talented people who stick around very long. A bad fit period for anyone who wants to be part of a top notch team.
I don't know if you appreciate people pointing out grammar mistakes, but I think you meant to say affect instead of effect in your second bullet point.
Comments
The "new to the workforce" thing raises a flag for me. It can create a LOT of discontent to give a new guy a raise for performance reasons. At many companies, raises are due to length of tenure (sad, but true). Prepare to be told, "But you've only been here for a year. It'd be bad if we gave you a raise."
I don't think you should shop around, but you do need to understand market rate. Have a casual conversation (coffee?) with your boss (say that you'd like to talk about how your compensation will evolve as you continue to work for the company) and ask them a few questions.
1) Where does the company feel it should pay folks? Do they like to pay a little above market rate to encourage retention, at market rate to be competitive, or... (don't finish the sentence) (almost everyone will say at market rate)
2) Does performance effect that? If an employee is top notch among his peers, should that effect his pay?
3) Where would you place me among my peers and could you give me some advice about how I could excel even further?
The big Q: Given that we agree that I'm in the top n%, do you feel like my compensation is appropriate? My research has indicated that an average salary for a person of my level is X (might be worth padding a touch for anchoring purposes).
NEVER give the indication that you're shopping. There are plenty of places to research salary without doing interviews. Most managers know that once people start interviewing, there's no point in trying too hard to keep the person. Stress that you really like your job and you see a long/bright future at the company.
At many companies, raises are due to length of tenure (sad, but true). Prepare to be told, "But you've only been here for a year. It'd be bad if we gave you a raise."
If a company wants to buy tenure and you want to sell performance, it's a bad fit. Find someone wanting to buy what you are selling and do business with them.
If the language section of your resume lists Java, J2EE and Java 1.6, you should stick around. You'll never get a better deal elsewhere.
I totally agree. But take two programmers. 1 is good and has been there for 5 years. The other is GREAT and has been there for 6 months (and is 20 years old w/out a college degree). The second programmer gets a fat raise, placing him above the first in terms of pay. The first doesn't necessarily agre that the younger fella is clearly better: "Yeah, he cranks out code and he kisses the right asses. But a lot of it needs to be rewritten and he gets 'creative' with the spec," or somesuch. "Performance" is subjective. In the above scenario, you might have 5 disgruntled good programmers when you give you young star a fat raise.
I'm all for a meritocracy, but it's tricky with anything that's hard to measure (exception: sales).
Completely agree, was going to say, any company that doesn't recognize performance early on (vs. tenure) is not going to have very talented people who stick around very long. A bad fit period for anyone who wants to be part of a top notch team.
> Java, J2EE and Java 1.6 Care to elaborate? 'Java' colliding with the 2 others?
I don't know if you appreciate people pointing out grammar mistakes, but I think you meant to say affect instead of effect in your second bullet point.
Check out: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/affect#Verb
and: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/affect#Usage_notes
Performance might affect pay, or it might effect a change in pay.
Or neither, of course.