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One critique, if you explore leaving your company don't use it as a bargaining chip. That raise your boss offers you is only to buy him enough time to find your replacement. You will not be viewed in the same light or with the same dedication to the "team," justified or not.

This may be true for some bosses, but it's not a good general rule. You often don't hear about it, getting an outside offer and a raise happens all the time, and within a month it's pretty much forgotten.

If you present it by saying "I really love it here and want to stay, but the compensation being offered here is really good," then your boss should be fine. If your boss can't handle a business negotiation, then you should be looking to get out anyway.

Bottom line: it's a market, and you have to negotiate. Once the papers are signed, things usually go back to normal.

"it's a market" and "you have to negotiate" can't be stressed enough.

hell, the simple fact that you can negotiate should be stressed more.

you know what else should be stressed? collective bargaining..it helps sometimes when your fellow coworkers band together to get a raise or to make the work environment better.

Do you have experience with collective bargaining?

As far as I can tell lots of hackers abhor it.

They abhor it but they may never have tried it. A lot of other workers have collectively bargained and received higher pay and other non-pay benefits.

Also, it's not like you have to form a union or anything. Just collectively bargain for a raise or whatever this one time.

Has there ever been a controlled study about whether collective bargaining leads to higher wages in the long run? (Excluding effects like lobbying for restrictions on entering the market.)

From what I know, I can't rule out that collective bargaining for higher wage is like advancing the tide with a bucket.

in my experience they abhor what you get when you start handing money and power to the collective, and stop paying attention to what it's doing to you.

That depends on the nature of your work.

If you are an artisan doing commodity work (read: bored at work, your open source project is fun), you are absolutely right. You are underutilized and easily replaceable, and your boss will want to replace you with someone cheaper. Regardless of the size of the counteroffer, you should leave.

If you are doing work that few others can do, and you make it clear that your only problem is money, they will accept that you looked outside just to get a market valuation. This is especially true if you accept a counteroffer lower than your external offer (i.e., "I like this place enough to accept $10k less").

But if you take a counter less than your outside offer, try to get some non-financial compensation (i.e. extra vacation, at least verbal commitment regarding a promotion, etc.)

The point I was making is that it might help to acknowledge non-financial comp you already get. I really like my job and I wouldn't work at a bank for a $20k pay raise. I don't need my boss to increase the non-financial comp if he can't fully meet a bank's offer, since I already get it.

(Our vacation policy is "don't be unreasonable" and our only ranks are "founder/owner" and "everyone else".)

Extra vacation, sure. A promotion? That depends on what you're already doing, and when responsibilities a promotion carries. I've seen several instances where people got promoted but didn't receive an adequate enough raise. If you believe you deserve more pay for what you're doing, asking to do more to get a bit more money may mean you're still on the losing end of the deal.

Not in my experience. My company spent months waffling over a raise for me. My boss suggested that I look for work elsewhere and then used it as bargaining chip and got me the raise. I can't easily be replaced and as long as what they're paying me is less than what I'm making them, they don't want to lose me. Everyone's situation is different however.

Completely disagree, both from the perspective as an employee who has used it as a bargaining chip, and as part of evaluating my own assistants. I've not viewed my assistants in a different light, and the only difference I noticed from my own bargaining was an acknowledgement of my value to the enterprise. Most people understand that it is a free job market and good talent will ask for increased compensation as their value grows over time. I'd rather have someone under me ask for more pay than grumble about not getting what they believe they deserver (and having the bargaining chip of an offer from another company shows they truly are worth that much).

I don't really think that's typically the case. If they think you'll be relatively easily replaced, they'll just let you go when you tell them you have an offer.

The point is they might keep you on for a month or two until they find your replacement (and the other job offer evaporates), then let you go. A lot of companies are shady enough to do this.

As a manager I would not recommend this.

Sure, find out your worth, be realistic, then just sit down and have an honest conversation with your boss. Putting them in the position of thinking they have to offer you "stay money" without first having the decency to just sit down and have an honest talk with them is a slap in the face.

If your boss can't respect that, then they deserve to be blind-sided when you leave. But anyone who does what's suggested here is not someone I want to work with.

Sure, if your boss is insane, this might not go well, but if they're among the small minority where you genuinely fear for your livelihood just broaching the subject with them, then you probably already know everything you need to, and having to twist their arm to get what you want means you should probably be looking for a new position regardless.

I do agree with the "Almost 50% of them are wrong". If the business can routinely hire great people for less than "market", and keep them, then your sense of where the "market" is is off.

Putting them in the position of thinking they have to offer you "stay money" without first having the decency to just sit down and have an honest talk with them is a slap in the face.

As I said, you don't demand "stay money" from your boss first thing. You just tell him you feel you deserve $X and have the exact honest conversation you describe. That's step 2) of my plan.

You only mention competitive offers to your boss after he tries to lowball you. Without hitting the market, you'll never know if your boss is lowballing you and you'll also have no leverage for negotiation. That's step 3, if your boss didn't give you a satisfactory package.

Don't forget you need a firewall between steps 2 and 3. Provoking a bidding war may damage your reputation.

This is absolutely correct. Most people tend to fear step one much more then they should. I recently changed jobs and their offer was exactly what I was making at my full time job and my side jobs. I asked for a 5-10% bump, got it and now I have a new job (and I'm pretty happy about it). What surprised me the most was that I wasn't worth some arbitrary number to them, or a potential value that I wanted to be worth. I was worth exactly what I was able to get other people to pay for me, and a little more because they needed me too.

In step 1, it's also very important to put a dollar value to various non-comp issues.

E.g., if a bank wants me to work for them, it will cost them $50k more than a startup.

eh, personally, I think it's /much/ easier to just ask for a raise first. My experience has been that you usually get it, and sometimes you get something much higher than you would expect. Unlike interviewing around, just asking takes maybe 10 minutes of effort and has zero downside.

No employer will be offended by you asking for more. Hell, lots of people think that ambition is a good thing. If you don't get what you want from just asking, /then/ the above makes sense. but really, most of the time there is free money to be had for the asking... get that money before you spend effort job hopping. If you do end up job hopping anyhow, usually your new salary is your old salary plus some percentage on top, so even if the boss gives you 3% and you think that's insulting, eh, that means you start 3% higher when you negotiate your next job.