Getting Paid Fairly When Job Responsibilities Spiral? 495
greymond writes "I was originally hired as an Online Content Producer to write articles for a company website as well as start up the company's social media outlets on Facebook and Twitter. With budget cuts and layoffs I ended up also taking over the website facilitation for three of the company's websites (they let go of the current webmaster). During this time the company has been developing a new website and I was handed the role of pseudo project manager to make sure the developer stayed on course with the project's due date. Now that we're closer to launch the company has informed me that they don't have the budget or staff in place to set up the web server and have tasked me with setting up the LAMP and Zend App on an Amazon EC2 setup. While it's been years since I worked this much with Linux I'm picking it up and moving things along. Needless to say I want to ask for more money, as well as more resources (as well as a better title that fits my roles), but what is the best way to go about this? Of course my other thought is that I'd much rather go back to writing and working with marketing than getting back into IT."
Dear Playboy, it happened to me (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait until 1 month to launch (Score:5, Interesting)
Then tell them "More money or I go. Yes, I know that I'm basically what the whole thing hangs on. I'm your project manager, your web monkey, your server manager, your everything, basically. So, let's discuss my payment, title and other job perks".
But phrase it nicely. Managers don't like to have a dagger at their throat. Even if they basically handed it to you.
Amnesia an option? (Score:1, Interesting)
Amnesia? Do you recall what a LAMP is for? I think they are used to shine light on the book I'm reading.
Tell them you aren't happy with the changes and that you'd like a normal work week in the job you were hired. Be prepared if they elect to have a different idea, so hopefully, you've saved 12 months of living expenses.
You don't want to work at a place that fires people for standing up for their needs as humans.
You need to not work all the time.
You need to have a family life and life outside work.
You need to be fairly compensated for your skills and work. Anything above the original deal (offer letter) is a chance for re-negotiation, which you are happy to entertain.
That greener grass over the fence is better than being an over worked ox.
More Information Needed (Score:2, Interesting)
How long have you worked there?
What's your education level (do you have a degree)?
How is your relationship with your boss?
Do you have another job offer you could use as leverage
I don't know why the first post above got modded zero because unfortunately the AC is correct. Its nothing personal.
If they can't afford to complete projects then it is very likely they can't afford to give you a raise. Then again you are essentially exceeding your job description. If they hired you to write and then asked you to also edit other articles, that's one thing but they're asking you to take on a whole other role in a different department. I am curious though, how much does a writer for a blog site pull down?
Re:Amnesia an option? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd advise having an exit strategy in the works. Start interviewing because there is no better time to negotiate a new job than when you currently have one. You don't want to work for a company that is willing to "knowingly" take advantage of you. If you're comfortable with your management chain, bring this issue up to them.
Under no circumstances "threaten" to leave, or tell them that you've got a new job and want them to match salaries, etc. Get yourself an offer you like, and then start negotiating with your current employer. If you tell them you're looking at leaving or that you've got a new job offer, their motivation will only be to placate you until they can replace you. If you "work with them" on aligning your salary with your tasks you've got a better job at keeping a long-term relationship with them.
Otherwise, find a better job opportunity and take it.
Re:Welcome to the world... (Score:2, Interesting)
Why do you post in monotype?
Re:Bad, Bad Idea (Score:3, Interesting)
This is absolutely true.
Unless the manager knows the company will go bankrupt if they fire you, they'll kill the company rather than admit you are irreplaceable.
I've seen companies pay a million bucks to PROVE that a $50k employee wasn't irreplaceable.
Your best option is do your best and FAIL at the web server jobs because you don't have those skills.
You absolutely don't want to be the IT person at a company like that. You'll be working nights, weekends and holidays while everyone else is drinking at the bar partying.
Re:Give up. (Score:3, Interesting)
If they dont have the money to pay this person, they certainly wont have the money to pay the 2-3 people that they would likely have to hire to replace this person.
If I were the person and I truly knew the company was cash strapped I'd accept things that arent immediate money... like stock options, extra vacation time, setting your own hours or telecommuting for some of those 60-80 hour weeks. The latter could save you huge $$$ in terms of gas expended commuting.
Re:Dear Playboy, it happened to me (Score:5, Interesting)
I was in the same spot, hired as a web content person, next thing I knew I was IT manager for the corporation doing PC support, hands-on sever, PBX, twisted pair, web development and CSM rec, integration and more. I was working 60-80 a week and after 6 months I got a "good job" and no raise, another 2 months and I had to ask for a raise. I got a big "why and NO", needless to say my enjoyment of my job went to zero and it showed. I was asked to resign 3 weeks later. They has to hired 2 people to replace me.
So this is part of the issue: under those circumstances what you ask for is not a "raise" but an appointment to the position you are doing (which co-incidentally happens to come with a jump in salary). If they see it as "Joe Bloggs wants more money" they'll tend to say no. HR and management are well-practiced in trying to minimise salary creep across their organisations. If they see it as "Joe Bloggs is asking to step up to the next stage of his career, he's clearly been gaining the experience necessary, and if we say no he's likely to take that step up elsewhere" they are more likely to say yes. HR and management are also well-versed in how they are *supposed* to support career-development (even though it takes prodding to get them to do it), and the fact they have given you extra responsibilities suggests you are an employee they don't want to lose. Of course, you also have to be 'not bluffing' -- if they don't move on the appointment, don't be grumpy but just go elsewhere using the experience and skills they have given you. It's a small world, and you may well end up working for them again in a more senior role later.
Re:Dear Playboy, it happened to me (Score:1, Interesting)
My scenario is just the opposite:
I am working for a start up of around 60 people : I would like to think that I am one of the most important people in the company.
Two of the most important projects just hinge on my work alone, and we are breaking new ground because of the work that I do in the company.
The owner is a very nice person - and has even asked me whether I need a raise - subtly. I am an extremely meek person - and even though I would prefer a good raise (who wouldnt?), I am feeling extremely shy to say that to him. When I joined the company 1 year back too, I joined with a moderate salary even when the owner was suggesting that I should be getting more salary - and that was again due to this meekness.
I think this should be a usual problem - how do you people solve this?
Re:This guy is not flamebait (Score:3, Interesting)
That's what your job has evolved into, and that is the pay. Arm twisting will accomplish nothing for you except a quick trip to the street. They're broke. You've already said so. That's why they're laying off all the people you've replaced and have no budget for staff.
You try to go oil drilling with these guys and you won't get a thing except a fresh new bullseye on your back.
My advice? Talk them into a title change only. Emphasize you're not digging for a raise, but you'd like something to reflect your new duties. Get your new impressive title, then bust ass for the next 3 months to get settled in with your new title. Then get your ass to careerbuilder and craigslist and use your new fancy title to negotiate a better job. These guys are garden variety passive aggressives PHBs that will continue to dump on you until you break. Ditch them.
Not horrible advice but I'd advocate he back off his hours a bit. He's being paid for 40 hours and they're expecting 60-80. I don't care how you cut it, that's not fair. But further, it's also going to have notably adverse affects on his job performance as well as personal life. You want him to be seeking other jobs? When? That type of schedule completely precludes a job search. I think he needs to level with them that they're paying him for 40 hours, and he is willing to put in some OT but cannot maintain a 60+ hour workweek. As long as he is not asking for more $, they might accept that. If they don't, at least he took the moral high road.
Re:Amnesia an option? (Score:3, Interesting)
[At 40 hours/week] I wasn't performing nearly as well (according to their "metrics") as my co-workers who were putting in 60+ hours a week - so when layoffs came I was chopped.
They managed to lose every account I managed (support accounts) a year after I was canned and that cost the company several million a year in revenue in contracts alone, but then I was having a hard time managing all that stuff anyhow + everything else they wanted to dump on me.
I'd lay odds you don't miss that job one bit. Further, I bet you feel better about yourself now than you did then. You certainly feel better than your 60+ hours/week ex-coworkers who are stressed out and have no personal lives. And knowing the wrong they did you cost them millions HAS to feel great.
Re:The main issue (Score:3, Interesting)
The going rate for what he does is what the company can get away paying someone to do the job. Look at the situation through the lens of game theory. You have one actor, the company, whose best interest is to keep their costs low and profits high -- one way of doing that is to lower overall personnel costs by having one person take over the responsibilities of three or four. On the other side you have the employee, who has described their case above. Currently the company is able to have a large win because the employee is 'cooperating' while the company is playing the role of a defector.
If you need a resume (Score:2, Interesting)
If you need a resume then you're doing it wrong. Make a name for yourself and sell your name - the whole time you're employed. If your status changes from "unavailable" to "?" on your website, FB and Linkedin and you don't have a dozen offers of employment in 24 hours, then you've failed. If your friends in the industry keep touch many of them are checking to see if you're available now because really you're not that interesting but they get a spiff for bringing you in. If you're selling yourself properly then you're happy where you are and you still get 4-8 unconditional offers a year, and dozens of inquiries that might be. You can call around to your friends if you get desperate, but then you're in a weak position. All else is fluff.
You don't own the vanity web domain that is your name? You don't use it to advertise your self? So sad for you. What were you thinking? Maybe you don't belong in tech. That's a grand placement for a blog that shows off your achievements, your knowledge, your puissance, your value. I bought my name (though it's now a flat page and not a blog). Everybody I know did that. If you enter my proper name in Google, the first hit is the page I want you to see, and most of the entire rest of it is links to public sites where I aired my carefully considered forward thinking opinion - and a few hits are to a scary guy who shares my name but most obviously isn't me even though he lives near me (damn you FencePost!) I googled me just now, and that's how it is. Most of us did it several different ways. A domain is like ten bucks a year. Come on: if you can't invest that much in yourself, what's somebody going to think?
Hint: people are going to "Google" you before they offer you a job. The output associated with your name should be interesting, forward looking, and non-toxic. The Internet being what it is, you don't get to revoke output associated tightly with your name so if you're prone to stupid, racist, sexist or obscure arguments while posting sober or impaired, it's best if you use a pseudonym while doing that so you don't make yourself unemployable. It's probably best to have a general alt to use for your common activity, and post under your real name only in your most careful, sober and considered capacity. Unfortunately this guidance is far too late for me, but hopefully my strengths overcome my Internet shortcomings and my learning will educate others.
Start interviewing (Score:4, Interesting)
I have three friends who have successfully gone the route of starting with interviews and letting the rumors start. If you can secure an offer from another company for significantly more you can either jump ship or let your current place match the offer. One friend of mine got a pretty significant raise this way, after having to suffer with a pretty significant pay cut last year he's above his original salary then bump all of his coworkers up too. He wondered the point of the salary cuts, when the company gave in so quickly to pressure.
The only trick to it, is you have to be serious about taking the other offer. You must be in the mind set that you will walk away when deal doesn't meet your requirements, and it is important to think about what those requirements really are before you negotiate.
what not to do (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope my story will serve as a cautionary tale. In 1995 I was hired as the junior person in a two-person IT department. My boss immediately began training me so I could cover for her during vacations and illnesses, and of course she covered for me.
In 2005 she left abruptly. Because her departure was unexpected I naturally began to do her job in addition to my own, just as I did when she took vacation. I also asked for a temporary salary bump to compensate me for the added responsibility, until either (a) I got a promotion to the senior position and someone was hired into the junion position, or (b) someone was hired to replace her. Because of our longevity we were both at the top of our grade in salary, but the bottom of her grade was above the top of mine, so a bump to the bottom of her grade would have meant an increase for me.
After six months of being rebuffed I concluded that they were happy with the status quo: they were getting what had historically been a two-person job at the price of one junior salary. I felt put upon, because I was no longer able to take vacation.
Here is where I made my mistake: I became obstinate, and declared that I would no longer do the jobs that had historically been the responsibility of the senior person. Within a week I was unemployed.
Be smarter than I was. There is some good advice in this thread, which I wish had been available to me.
Yep (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen some funny situations like this. Friend of mine was in a similar thing of they kept heaping on more work and refusing to raise his pay. They didn't lay him off, they just wouldn't pay him any more so he left. About 2 weeks later they were calling him, desperate. The new guy couldn't figure something out, the site was down, nothing was working, they were so screwed would he please, PLEASE come in and fix it? He literally laughed and said ok sure, for a couple grand up front. They said no, he hung up. They called him a few more times begging before finally, angrily, agreeing to pay a hefty consulting fee. He went in and fixed their problem and they tried to hand him a bunch more work and he said "Nope, see ya!"
They went out of business around a year later, due to I'm sure many other bad decisions.
It is silly to think employees will just take whatever you tell them to and should be happy for the privilege. No, the good ones will leave and will find other work. You can say "Well nobody is irreplaceable," and while that is a general global truth, it can be false in specific situations. You can find that someone you shuffle out was extremely important to your operation, and you cannot replace them in the time frame that is needed and for the price you can afford. As such part (or all) of your company may suffer performance wise or even fail.
New people are not immediately 100% productive, it takes time to learn systems (the more specialized the longer) and finding good people can be hard. In particular if you need someone who is willing to hit the ground running immediately, do a ton of work, etc you are usually talking a consultant and an expensive one at that, or a consulting firm and several consultants. You can spend a year's salary in a few weeks easy depending on what you need.
Re:Bad, Bad Idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, technically, if you have to know, yes, I'm kinda irreplacable. Last time I checked there are about 5 people on this marble we call Earth that have the set of skills I can offer. Granted, there's also only a market for about 500, but you can probably see that there's not always "100 candidates per job". Sometimes, you have 100 jobs per candidate. Or, in other terms... I probably make more money than you. And I don't even have to play golf to get it.
But let's assume I'm replacable. Yes, you can fire me. And hire someone else. Who will need about 1-3 months to get "into" the job, depending on his skill level. If he is one of the few people who can pick up an IT job made for 4 people in just 1 month, expect to pay him WELL. After that time, he could become productive. After that time, though, he usually also finds out that you're essentially underpaying him, because he has the workload of four people to carry on a one person paycheck. So there's two possible outcomes: He's either also asking for more money or he finds something better without first asking for more money. Either way, you're again looking for someone who will, again, need 1-3 months to get into the game.
The idea of hire and fire has NEVER worked well in IT. IT ain't bricklaying or plumbing. It's not "you've done it once, you do the same here". You never do the same job in two different companies. Even if they happen to have essentially the same goals. You will never be able to "plug and play" someone. And you can utterly forget it when it comes to development.
In other words, yes, you can easily hire someone else. If you can handle the lost output of about a quarter. Always provided that you don't fall for someone only claiming to have the skills you want and HR being too stupid to weed out the duds.
Re:Dear Playboy, it happened to me (Score:5, Interesting)
When you ask for a raise or a promotion, you are upping the ante and entering into a haggling situation. You are implicitly saying "Scrutinize me and you'll find that my skills and contributions to the company far exceed my level of compensation, to the point that there's a real chance of another company offering me superior compensation". Remember, the vast majority of companies won't give a raise because it's the fair thing to do, they give a raise because it's a better value to secure that employee's skills in the workplace than to risk having them hired up by another company. That said, the best advice I've been given is to never ask for a raise unless you have a job offer from another company in hand.
Beyond that, all the companies I've worked at as an adult have had an unwritten policy of saying "No, why?" to anyone's first raise request. This makes sense because for a good portion of people requesting raises you will be calling their bluff; they will either back down and take the same pay they had, or show through their actions that they weren't worth a raise at all. A select few will come back with a bargaining chip and an ultimatum ("This is what the market says about my value, and these will be the consequences of you not giving me a raise"), and ask for a second raise... In my experience, these are the people who actually have a real chance of getting a raise. Additionally, some of the companies I worked at had policies in place that required both HR and the employee's direct management to approve a raise, so there was no way they could say 'Yes' the first time someone asked.
As it stands, you asked your company to intensely scrutinize your contributions to the workplace and then immediately showed them that your job at their company isn't important to you.
If I were your manager, I probably would've fired you too. My logic would have been: "Hmm, so he asked for a raise because he must have received a job offer, and after the initial meeting he's no longer doing his work... That would indicate that he has accepted a position at another company and was using the raise question here as leverage for negotiations at his new job. He has no intention of staying, and his continued presence in the workplace is a risk to the company".
Re:Bad, Bad Idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't sell skilled tradespeople short. The ability to feel something's not right and avoid ripping out that unmarked underground gas main isn't something every backhoe operator has. Ditto for when it's safe to open-trench, and when you need to use a trench box. Or close-in work on buried electrical lines, with people standing next to the bucket.
Re:Amnesia an option? (Score:3, Interesting)
Bad advice.
The current employer will see this as blackmail.
You turn down the new employer, the current employer sacks you a month later, and you're screwed.
Take the job with the new employer. If they want you back, they can then offer more money - sit on the offer - it will be good for a raise with your new employer at the 3-month review.
But don't go back to the old one for at least a year.
Play hardball (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Bad, Bad Idea (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Bad, Bad Idea (Score:3, Interesting)
When your qualifications require things that aren't required for the job, it's easy to find that everyone is unqualified.
eg: Requiring post-secondary education for a job which neither legally or even to save face requires it. This usually applies to almost all IT positions.
eg #2: Requiring a mix of experience and formal education that is extremely unlikely. Such as requiring university level education including classes explaining .net products, and 10 years IT experience.
eg #3: Requiring multidisciplinary education/experience for a single discipline job. For example, requiring java/php/assembler/ee knowledge to maintain a smaller company's servers.
eg #4: Requiring zero past convictions when your job neither legally requires it and neither do your customers, such as expecting the screwdriver geek assembling your systems to have never been convicted of a sex crime, so you don't even consider the guy that was caught peeing in a fountain when he was 16 and drunk.
I could go on, I've seen it all and it's idiotic. You want these things? Be prepared to pay the $200k a year that goes along with it. Or be prepared to get the guy who shows up to work every other Wednesday.
Companies need to start considering every resume they receive that passes the absolute most basic requirements for the job, and then sort them by likelihood of being a quality employee. Then you get good labour at a decent rate, and you have more than 2 candidates to choose from.
Re:Bad, Bad Idea (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact of the matter is that these are high-tech jobs that require a great deal of skill and knowledge.
And it repeatedly hits me in the face like a brick when I see that people outside IT not only don't realize this, but think it's easy. "Could you have this done by $time?" -> "No. That'll take $time x3, if I'm doing nothing else. How about $later_time?"
Yet, if the coin is flipped, I have seen "support professionals" (of the higher grade range, which also do other things), dept. managers, business managers, clerical/accountant types, and the like all replaced in function by IT folks. On a couple occasions I've seen IT people shore up the accountant position in addition to their duties.
IT is Hard - and such a statement is akin to saying "Engineering is Hard". I'd not want an EE anywhere near bridge design, network/system design, or the like. Maybe municipal water system design. However: the point is that these are not mutually inclusive disciplines any more than astronauts and brain surgeons are. Similar starting point (necessary "infrastructure" capacity within the individual), different endpoint.
Re:Bad, Bad Idea (Score:2, Interesting)
Whats the name of your company? I am sure many slashdotters can and are willing. The only jobs I see that are hiring are fast food and grocery stores where I am at. There are many entry level college students as well that can not find a job. If you are willing to train you can find some very motivated people fresh out of school.
Re:The main issue (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:what not to do (Score:3, Interesting)
What's the moral of your story? Looks to me like that wasn't a place you would want to work no matter which way you look at it.
If I had been smarter, I would have found a way to return to persuade them that two people were required for the job: myself as the senior person, and a new hire as the junior person. After 10 years of training, I could have retired with a nice pension due to 20 years of service.
The nice thing about a long-term internal support job is you get to know all of your customers personally.
roles and responsibilities not aligned (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Just don't be a cock... (Score:3, Interesting)
Obviously I disagree with you entirely.
Either his employer behave fairly and offers him the right compensation for the work they have asked him to do, or they behave unfairly and they do not.
Employer-employee relationships should not be a free-market free-for-all.
Re:The main issue (Score:3, Interesting)
Why did the company I work for except I needed a pay rise? precisely because I the cheapest option was to pay me what I'm worth, rather than risk losing months of productivity on a new member of staff, and having to pay them the same as I requested and employment costs on top.
I don't know about companies in the UK, but over here in the USA, you're really screwing yourself by asking for a raise, because they usually WILL look for a way to get rid of you when it's convenient for them, because you've just shown yourself to be "disloyal".
It absolutely does not matter that recruiting a new person and waiting for them to come up to speed will cost a lot more than just paying you market rate. You're thinking too rationally here. These companies are run by greedy, power-hungry sociopaths, and they'll shoot themselves in the foot if it means being able to screw over an employee they don't like. Why do you think so many of our companies are able to run themselves straight into the ground despite having good funding and talented employees?
Over here, your best bet is to just interview for a new job, and take it. Don't try to get a raise. Companies DO NOT want to give out raises (except maybe 1%), that's just all there is to it. They want a workforce of pussies who will take whatever pay the company gives them, work 60-80 hours/week, come in on weekends, and never complain or go elsewhere. These companies probably think that if they fire enough "disloyal" employees who do look elsewhere, that they'll eventually have a stable population of "loyal" employees who never complain that their salary is 50% of market rate. It doesn't help that there's actually a substantial number of employees who really are like this (at least in my field, engineering).
Re:The main issue (Score:2, Interesting)
I, along with 31 other people (plus one department manager and 3 shift managers) were hired to do end user technical support and basic QC work for a company web site (a research service) at $8/hr. 8 years later we had a staff of 15 (covered by a total of 6 managers who didn't seem to do anything at all) with half the vacation time and 3 times higher medical benefit payments than we had when I started due to a "benefit restructuring" 4 years into my employment when we were bought out by a larger company.
And our job duties had gone from supporting that one website to supporting 9 websites and 130 specialized CD-Rom products; most with wildly different technical formats (they dissolved the 4 companies and dropped 2 support contracts that used to handle support for them), handling billing support phone calls (they dissolved the billing department), handling customer orientation calls and doing customer training (they eliminated the sales support staff that used to do that), filing new paperwork (sales support and billing paperwork that was handled by those departments), scanning old paper documents into electronic documents (they were going to hire people to do it, but decided to drop it on us), sorting and addressing marketing flyers (over 8 years the marketing department went from 25 people to 3 and we got their spillover), processing returns on products due to incorrect mailing addresses (the mail department over 8 years went from 6 people to one semi-retired old lady who worked part time 3 days a week), handling internal support calls when some sales rep's computer was so bogged down with adware that it would blue screen 5 or 6 times a day (they dissolved the Internal Help Desk department), and any of a half dozen or more "special projects" that were dumped on us from sister companies, other departments, or stuff the mangers and their assistants should be doing but just "didn't have time" for.
But I got supremely lucky and ended up becoming financially secure when my parents' business got bought out for an insane amount of money (I got 10% which was enough to ensure I could live fairly well without ever having to work again). I didn't tell anyone about it but I did start saying I wouldn't take on more responsibilities unless there was an appropriate increase in pay and benefits when they'd try to drop more and more work on us. I wasn't being beligerant or anything. Just reasonable. I wanted to keep working because I have a family and am no socialite, I liked most of the people I worked with, and sitting around the house watching TV every day would drive me mad pretty quickly. But I also didn't have to eat crap and smile about it.
Within 3 months, suddenly my submission of a daily report we each had to submit into a database (that had no activity logs attached to it and which the managers all had full admin access to) suddenly wasn't appearing in the database at the end of the week. My assertion that I was submitting it was countered (if he was doing it, they'd be there. Everyone else's is!) by the managers I'd become a PITA to and I was fired for not being "capable of performing basic job duties". Which was nothing less than I expected. Although I didn't think they'd be quite that sleazy about it. After all, I'm in an at-will work state, they could have just said GTFO without contriving false incompetance.
But, it did serve notice to everyone else working there just what sort of employer that place had become. And it started a chain reaction. That was just about 3 years ago. Within 6 months of me getting fired all but one person in the department had found a new job and left the company and not a one gave any notice (and when the last one graduates from College next year, he's outta there). Within a year they'd lost half their customers to competitors because the support and training had become attrocious due the fact that the economy hadn't tanked yet and most of the people they could get to stay past the first 2 weeks were a bunch o