I’m an 8 year data center network engineer who recently broke 100k for the first time. When I got asked my salary requirements I actually only asked for 90k as my highest previous salary was 80k with lots of travel, then I found out they gave me 100k because it was the minimum they could pay someone in my position. I’ve read before about people making crazy salary increases (150%-300%) and am wondering if I played it incorrectly and how I could play it in the future. I plan to stay with my company for the next few years and upskilling heavily and am eyeing a promotion in my first year as I’ve already delivered big projects by contributing very early. I’ve progressed from call center/help desk/engineer etc (no degree, just certs) so my progression has been pretty linear, are people who are seeing massive jumps in pay just overselling their competency and failing forward? Or are there other fields in IT like programming/etc that are more likely to have higher progression scales?
It’s only a sample of one but I almost doubled my salary by switching jobs. I was bullied and harassed in a shitty startup for more than 3 years. I got fat, almost had a depression and I was not doing anything interesting. Even my skills were decreasing.
A bunch of managers asked me once to do something illegal. HR was also telling me to do this because “it’s an order from the bosses.” That was the last straw and I told them to fuck off, and I resigned.
I was underpaid at this shitty company, but I accidentally found another job at a good company with nice people. My salary almost doubled overnight. I don’t want that much money but it was nice “fuck you” to my previous manager that I deeply thanked for being such an asshole.
When someone asks what you were paid or what your salary expectations are, ask them what the budget is for the role. They have one. They will not want to tell you, and you shouldn’t tell them your expectations
I did this several times and never got a proper reply. They say stuff like “It depends on the person and is calculated individually”. You can’t really argue over that unless you’re willing to be very pushy or just straight up walk away from the table - which is something you don’t want to do in most cases.
Why not be pushy? Why not be willing to walk away? Everyone’s situation differs but a server tech is not going to be lacking for work opportunities. If it’s calculated individually, you say “ok what would it be in my case?”
If they say “it depends on what you’re paid now” that’s a HUGE red flag and you should walk
Not everyone’s opportunities are the same. If you can afford to be pushy and can afford to walk away, then sure - do that. However, I personally would not put the whole opportunity on the line and walk away just because a recruiter won’t tell me a range. In my last interview they didn’t give me any range, while I gave them my expectation, which was a bit inflated, and they just accepted my offer. Could I get more if I knew the range? Probably. But I can’t be mad at them, as they matched my expectation. And I enjoy the job so far.
It all depends on the situation, as you also mentioned. I’m just arguing that saying “walk away if they don’t tell you a range” is a bit of an exaggeration and might do more harm to some people than good.
I mean, if an employer pulls an offer because you asked for the range then you dodged a bullet. As I said and as you said, everyone’s situation is different but - I’m the context of OP’s post they seem to have had the option to negotiate.
this is a conversation you usually have before the technical stuff. you’re making sure your ideal pay and their band is in sync.
being pushy early in the process is terrible advice.
Yeah, in my case, the decision to hire me had been made, but HR would of course onboard me. I got kind of blindsided as the person who asked me wasn’t the person who would be making the decision, she was basically a proxy. I asked what the range was and I got some generic “it depends”… I checked most of the boxes for skills but I don’t have a degree and for some reason that’s off-putting to large companies. Anyways yeah it didn’t feel right to be pushy so early
So, what happens then?
A stare and patience contest begins.
As a manager that contest would be ended instantly and I’d tell you to give me a number or get out
Then you’re a bad manager, that’s not how negotiations work lol
You’re not negotiating by refusing to give a number. At this point you denied the negotiation that was started by me asking for your expectation.
Unless you have enough knowledge of pay for your position and industry you are operating at a disadvantage. You are not obligated to provide a number to start the negotiations, and asking them what the budget is is not “denying the negotiation”
You are interviewing and the interviewer usually asks the questions. After all the interviewer already has a job and you are supposedly looking for one. In this scenario you are always operating at a disadvantage, because I know the budget and you don’t.
You are not obligated to provide a number by law or anything, but if I ask for one and you go “no you” that is just… Weird and unprofessional.
I’ll end the discussion here though and wish you all the best with your future negotiations. I just wanted to provide a counter point from the perspective of an IT manager.
It’s a negotiation. Unless you have a lot of knowledge about the industry you’re working in and what market salaries are, you’re at a disadvantage. You don’t have to say a number. They do - they’re offering you a job. If they refuse to offer you the job until you tell them your salary desire, they are trying to low ball you and you likely don’t want to work there.
I have never been an interviewer or interviewee where you are not supposed to give a number.
Of course they try to low ball you. You counter act by giving a number that allows you to haggle. That is how negotiation works.
Supposed to? According to who? There is no law saying you have to give a number. They want you to give a number. That doesn’t necessarily make it a requirement.
I already answered that in my other posts.
I am the interviewer, I ask the questions. I always ask that question because it is required information for me within the hiring process. I need to make sure your expectation is in my budget.
I don’t need to make the process unnecessary complicated by engaging in you not telling me.
If you won’t tell me I’ll either give you the minimum or ask you to leave because I really don’t want to deal with people that make things unnecessarily complicated
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT86J7mpN/
That was basically how the meeting went lol
The NDA bit got me ngl
Truth is this is an antagonistic negotiation oftentimes. You want to be paid more, they want to pay you as little as possible. There’s unfortunately no playbook, just advice and experience.
FWIW if they were that evasive I’d just say “look I’m not going to name an initial number, I’d like you to name a range.” But I’m at a somewhat senior level so I have a different experience than others might
even then, a position may not be for a certain level so they’re can be a fairly wide band of pay depending on how the interview goes.
i think most folks vastly overthink it. just ask for the money you want to make. either it’s in the ballpark or it’s not. all this “don’t say a number first” stuff is bullshit imo.
you definitely do want to know if your desired pay matches their range though. that’s very important.
I usually follow it up with a salary range and they end up matching the lower bound.
Yeah, saying a range makes no sense. You hope for the high end, but all they hear is the low end. I always say a specific number.
A range gives you flexibility. I hope for the high end, sure, but I know they’ll go for the low end so I throw a range where I’d be happy with the low.
Since it’s a range, it’s easy to say No way I’d work for you for less than [low end].
If you give a fixed value they’ll low ball it and you’ll generally end up in.between theirs and yours, so you’ll have to aim high.
If you give a fixed value they’ll low ball it and you’ll generally end up in.between theirs and yours, so you’ll have to aim high.
Exactly. That’s why you say a specific number, which you hope you’ll get (which is a high end of your range), but in your mind be prepared to accept a lower offer (which is a low end of your range). If you say a range it’s like if you said just the low end of the range, the high end doesn’t matter anymore to the recruiter. That’s at least what I’ve been doing recently and it usually works well.
99% of the time, the only way people get a raise around these parts is by switching jobs. There’s never budget until you resign.
I haven’t seen any huge increase 'cos I don’t have access to manager’s records.
When I started at the company I currently work for, my then manager saw how hard I was working and negotiated an 11% raise on my behalf during my first annual review, and another 10% following. She was cool as hell and protected me from the upper management bullshit that was going on at the time. She left because they had her working 65+ hours every week for a CEO who was/is pissing away the company’s capital and goodwill with clients.
My current manager is the bullshit, I haven’t had a raise since my old manager left three years ago and I’ve been looking off and on for something else while I steadily lower my effort to be commensurate with my effective pay.
You can find her online. Maybe she can hire you at her new job
My first “real” job (I used to work at McD’s and Walmart, barely three months each) was 120k a year as a software engineer. I left that job for 200k within six months and here I happily stay
Was making 80k at my last job, asked for 110k when interviewing and my new job offered my 125k, then after a year they bumped it to 145k. I work in devops.
Two years ago our software lead left. Me with 3 years experience was the most knowledgeable person on the team. He left because we had gotten acquired. 3 months later they gave me a raise from 92 to 103k, which I showed annoyance with. 6 months later the new company decided to throw money at the people they couldn’t afford to lose so I went to 128k. 6 months later I went to 143k
This is on a small team at a government contractor
TLDR: 51K (56%) in 1 year without switching companies
I didn’t finish my degree so ended up going ops -> devops route.
Salary include estimated benefit values (ending salary) 12/hr -> 50k (60k) -> 70k (80k) -> 115k (125k) -> 115k (counter offered 185k upon resignation which I rejected) -> 190k -> 210k
There’s a lot more to the story but that might give an idea of possible bumps. Each jump I took mostly to progress my career where they were looking for skills that built on top of what I had already been doing. I went from like a windows admin, to network admin, to windows/network automation, to ansible automation for anything (and other devops-y things), to a cloud consulting company which focused on automation, to a internal platform architect on a team, to a small business where I’m pretty much the infrastructure wizard, with a junior team member, who does the infra deployments, changes, design, cicd for dev and own team, etc.
When I took a pay decrease from 125k -> 115k it was because the weekly cash was still slightly better but the benefits were far worse. I mostly took it because I needed to get to a cloud focused company to progress my career where I wanted it to go and my company at the time couldn’t get me any meaningful experience in cloud stuff at all. The pay jump after that really proved that the experience was worth it. I kind of wish I never joined the 190k company and instead took the counter offer. The 190k company I ended up really not liking leadership’s direction and handling of things.
Super happy now at 210k company where I am a bit of a manager. I really like the people, responsibilities, etc. Pay is pretty great, more than I need for sure, so paying extra on the house and good bucks in retirement for later. Of the higher paying places I’ve been at it is the only one I feel fulfilled and not constantly frustrated.
That’s great, can you elaborate what you mean by ops>devops? Do you support infrastructure or applications? I know devops is kind of a catch-all term now for automation, did you work on understanding cloud deployments from the POV of the servers/application or from infra?
I only ask because some of what I do is considered “devops” in the sense that I’m working on network automation, but a lot of times when I hear people discuss devops they’re talking about supporting applications
Yeah, happy to elaborate!
When I first started (hourly) I was doing basically field tech work at an msp. That means I was just a monkey following a document and would call for backup if I experienced any issues. I started getting some basic tasks to come up with newer processes, script some existing ones, and generally manage existing clients. I mostly got familiar with OS stuff, took a few Microsoft certs, that sort of stuff.
Second and third job I was doing more engineering of my own. I’d get higher level tasks like design an implementation of a next Gen firewall here, design next developer image, implement monitoring system, revamp backups, etc. Third job involved some public site management but I wasn’t yet too responsible for app deployments themselves though was often involved as escalation in app support.
Fourth job was more of the same but focused on automation this time. Our group was called ‘automation team’ and we revamped processes at a larger regional bank while adding automation. Before I left there we transitioned to DevOps team, but was more of a DevOps processes and platforms team. We wrote a lot of ci and automation but the goal was to have existing app support teams to own it. That model largely worked and we helped train the ops folks to be DevOps folks.
I moved to a cloud consulting company bc I wanted cloud experience and to get closer to app deployments. If you work on line of business applications then you’re more likely to demand higher pay while doing more interesting and important work. Managers usually need to improve the product so they’re less likely to be wanting to stick to the status quo.
The last two are similar, both justify architecture in the name. The previous though had a lot of bad practices, status quo managers, and was generally miserable. I’m currently quite a generalist because we’re at a small business. That said, main responsibilities include writing and supporting cicd pipeline, all infrastructure changes and automation, 3rd party mail system config, etc.
If you have any more questions lmk.
That’s great. That’s basically the route I’m looking to take, though my background is mostly with networking, so I have some catching up to do in sysadmin skills. Thanks for your insight! I’ll give you a follow (idk if that exists in the fediverse lol) and maybe follow up with you later. It’s great you’re willing to be a resource for the aspiring engineers. That’s the kind of spirit I try to embody.
No problem - I’ve had a couple unofficial mentors myself. In the tech world it’s also impossible to not be riding the shoulders of the giants before us.
I got just about 60% by switching the company. Previously biggest bump that I got internally was about 30%, when I put an ultimatum on the table. Without the ultimatum I’d probably get like 10% max. It’s always either switching the job or the threat of switching the job that will make them pay.
I’m job hunting right now and turning over a lot of similar questions, about how much I should be asking for.
A few years back I got over 80% by switching sectors - I was underpaid at a public sector job I loved, and switched to a private sector job in the finance industry and a higher COL area. Similar to you, they offered more than I asked for because corporate had specific pay brackets for that position.
I think your pay depends a lot on the specific area/tech stack you’re working in and who you’re working for. Some tech stacks just pay more on average than others, bigger corporations can usually pay more than smaller companies, and private sector will always pay more than public sector (but usually with worse benefits). You can check Glassdoor or similar sites to see what people with a similar title make at the company you’re applying to, but that’s only helpful at really big companies where there are enough employees reporting to give a good average.
I don’t wait to be asked how much I am expecting to be paid. I generally ask the HR person what the salary range is for the role. You have 8 years experience so you can demand the top end of that pay scale.
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT86J7mpN/ This is basically a shot for shot remake of how the meeting went down
I’m from India so these numbers might be a bit weird. My yearly comp has basically gone like this from 2017 to 2023
$0.7k -> $3.6k -> $4.8k -> $20k
$0.7k annually? Is it anyhow possible to live with that low salary in India? I can’t even live a month with that here, even if I don’t buy anything but the cheapest food and live in the smallest apartments here…
It is possible to live on that, there are people who live on less than it. Personally all of it went to supplementing my Mom’s income so we could survive.
There are plenty of entry level jobs in India that offer those kinds of wages. There are more that offer less.
Yes, it’s exploitative.
Almost same for me also I started with $1.5k in 2017, now it is near about $20k
200% increase once I moved to the U. S from Sweden. I’m so happy to finally leave Europe
That was unexpected (at least to me), like idk it feels like Sweden a good place to stay. Yeah the American salaries can be crazy… but after you count everything… idk I don’t think I personally would have done it.
A good place to stay? I was renting a 2bd apt in Stockholm for 22000 SEK while making only 60k before taxes, after tax it was something like 38k. Yeah, sure, my kids daycare was subsidized and I didn’t have to worry about my health insurance, but what I was left with after taxes and rent was barely enough for us. Tbh I even was behind 1500 SEK copay on daycare a couple of times because of how little money I had. We had to eat mostly ätsnart items from ICA, I couldn’t afford to buy a bicycle, so I had to borrow one from a neighbor and fix it up, just to save some money on commuting because of expensive fares. The bicycle got stolen eventually. After one year our landlord booted us even though I asked them in advance to renew the contract, a friend of mine told me that this is because I would be eligible for första hand rent contract after living there for 2 years, so landlords never renew 2nd hand rent contracts. We couldn’t find another place to live afterwards and had to rent an Airbnb for a while. I moved to Cleveland OH afterwards. I make 2 times more now while paying only 1,600$ for a 3bd house. Our landlord is begging us to renew the contract. We can afford a car. We live normal life now.
Yeah I can see why it would be better. I expected better conditions on Sweden. That said still personally I would have probably tried somewhere else in Europe before America, that again that’s just me.
Good pay, probably
But overall, sweden has better safety nets if you lose your job. Healthcare that doesnt bankrupt you, education for your children that doesnt cost anything, etc
For a “working solo” dude i guess it matters less. But if you move your whole family…
I’m fresh out of grad school, and the shift from 22k to 60k has been life changing
Over the last 5 years I have went from 50k to 90k. Same company, but recently got promoted to a new department.