Yes with promotions, bonuses and overall good reviews, which are only marginally based on technical achievements (when it should be absolutely based on that).
Yes, that's part of the reward, but normally you get raises, bonuses, etc. based on yearly or quarterly reviews. If you are not entry level, and you just focus on programming while getting a good pay, and you are not seen as underperforming, consider yourself lucky.
If you want a raise or promotion, you should talk to your boss or otherwise figure out how to remind them regularly of your value. Ask them for a quarterly or monthly one-on-one, and take an interest in what they do and what the team priorities are. I don’t know about your boss, they’re not all the same, but managers tend to like see initiative, engineers who make other engineers more productive, and engineers who have and spread an optimistic attitude. Promotions are about taking greater responsibility.
An alternative but dangerous approach is to make it known you’re looking elsewhere for work. Don’t do that if it’s relatively easy to replace you, and definitely assume the management thinks it’s easy to replace you, especialy if you haven’t been talking to your boss. ;) But there is the chance that they know you’re valuable and haven’t given you a raise because you seem content and they believe they have the upper hand - which may or may not be true.
The problem is that “your boss” usually has to conform to the budget set by their manager working alongside HR.
When I left a company for increased compensation, which funny enough has only been 3x in almost 30 years across 10 jobs, it’s been between a 25%-60% raise. It’s almost impossible for any manager to push that kind of raise for anyone without a promotion.
Even at BigTech promotions usually come with lower raises than if you came in at that level.
Don’t do that if it’s relatively easy to replace you, and definitely assume the management thinks it’s easy to replace you, especialy if you haven’t been talking to your boss.
Everyone is replaceable. If you are at a company where everyone isn’t replaceable, it’s a poorly run company with a key man risk. I never saw any company outside of a one man company or professional practice where one person leaving was the end of the company.
> The problem is that “your boss” usually has to conform to the budget set by their manager working alongside HR.
Very true! Though isn’t it also normal in that case for HR to be recommending inflation raises at least? The exception might be if you came in at a salary that’s higher than your peer group and/or high for the title range. Parent’s problem could be that - either peer group correction or not possible for manager to raise at all without a promotion by company rules. There’s lots of reasons I can imagine, but in any case I wouldn’t expect a change with status quo, right? If you haven’t been talking to your boss, continuing to not talk to your boss is unlikely to change anything.
It sounds like the combination of a poorly run company and a lack of initiative on the commenter’s side if they haven’t even spoken to their manager in two years.
But yeah, the company should be doing at least inflation raises. A company only has at most two full review cycles to not get me somewhere in the range I think I should be making before I start looking for another job.
But I do understand that it is a shit show out here right now. I was looking for bog standard enterprise dev jobs with AWS experience as a “Plan B” while waiting for the “Plan A” interviews to work their way through. I have never seen anything like this in almost 30 years.
It was not this hard for me to get software developer job interviews in either 2000-2001 or 2008-2010. Admittedly, that’s partially because I was only looking for remote jobs and there the competition is fierce.
Three years into my career and my total comp hasn’t risen once - it’s honestly exhausting at this point but I’m still learning a ton, feel as if there is solid job security, and love my team. At some point I’m going to have to make that scary jump though if it continues.
That’s fair. There have been plenty of points in my career where I chose leveling up over compensation and even chose a lower offer between two offers because it would prepare me for my n+1 job better.
