Getting poorer

MightyQuin said:
Totally unfounded and baseless accusation.
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Well, that depends. If the company is doing OK financially and management are still drawing good bonuses but he's getting poorer each year, it's a valid accusation. Either way. it's a good idea to look elsewhere. It's not a great idea to accept sub inflation increases unless you have no choice.
 
Yes, that is why I think I am unhappy. They push our targets up 20% every year and we have been getting it every year. My division is like 700 people and we make over 3 billion rand for the bank I work for. So we are raking in the profits and for 3 years we all get are below average raises. They will counter that with the bonus's that have been given but like I said. I would rather take a cut to my bonus and lock in the raise as bonus's in my view should never be used for monthly expenses due to the fact that they are never guaranteed.
 
2,5% last year. Been in this job for nearly 6 years so started applying last year for something else.
 
Last year about 8% Bonus has been rougly 10% of basic yearly package ( before med aid co contribution and such )
 
Cius said:
Yes, that is why I think I am unhappy. They push our targets up 20% every year and we have been getting it every year. My division is like 700 people and we make over 3 billion rand for the bank I work for. So we are raking in the profits and for 3 years we all get are below average raises. They will counter that with the bonus's that have been given but like I said. I would rather take a cut to my bonus and lock in the raise as bonus's in my view should never be used for monthly expenses due to the fact that they are never guaranteed.
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I go for bonus pretty much exclusively (haven't had a base pay increase in 5+ years and don't care). Questions to ask yourself, is how much of a cut would it be to your bonus for this to actually be a win for you? Is such a cut actually realistic? Should such a scenario arise, would having that money as base pay really help? (I.e., they could cut the base pay or retrench you too). What is your future bonus potential?

Bonuses can be huge, while base pay growth is weighed down by concerns of reducing incentives and lack of cost control. Even bonuses have a certain inertia (cutting bonuses reduces morale, so there is a bias to push them up). Overall, trading bonus for base pay is seldom worth it since the upside of bonus pay is so much higher than the downside (especially realizable if you are particularly good at what you do).
 
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a big % increase does not mean everything.

when Is tarted working in 2010 I had a teeny tiny salary. in spetember 2010 I got a 22% increase.
Sept 2011 I got a 23% increase
Sept 2012 I got a 20% increase
Sept 2013 I got a 25% increase
Sept 2014 I got a 22.5% increase (the only person in the department to get an increase that year)

July 2015 I left that company and by starting wiht a new company I got a 50% increase.
March 2016 I left that company and got a 5% increase
August 2016 I left that company and got a 5% increase at the new company.

in december I was offered my old job at the first company back. I told them my current salary and told them due to moving I will need at least a 10% increase on my current salary and benifits to make it financially viable. they can not afford me at all.

here is the kicker. becausse of just how low my starting salary was in 2010, I still earn less than the starting salary of a developer in my field, because no HR department can afford to sign off on the jump that I would need to make.

I am a back end dev, with 7 years of experience, and fresh out of uni people get paid more than me.
so to all the people saying OP is not appreciated, take numbers into account. a 3% increase on a 100K salary is way more than a 23% increase on a 4K salary.
 
I have been with the same company for 10 years. There have been good increases in the past (10-20%) but the last few were all 5-6%

They started putting a big focus on KPIs and the performance appraisal process and I missed my KPIs the first time we did it and got a rather sad increase, ended up being about 5%.
I had just ignored the KPI's and just done my work - focusing on what was urgent and important. I realized that what the other guys were doing was was gearing everything they do around the KPI's so take tickets that were easy and close them quickly, responding to tickets as soon as possible and just say "attending" then hand it over to someone else if you cant fix it. Always push the issue back to the customer if they have left out any detail and then resolve the issue if they cant give more information. If you see an issue that was resolved by the customer - close it your self so that it counts on your name.
I call this KPI hacking... and I tried it this year. I smashed all my KPI's and everyone was happy. I did less work and spent more time KPI hacking than working. If the junior guys pushed issues to me (I'm the senior) then I push it back to them the same way we do it to the customer and give them pointless admin as punishment. "Have you tried restarting it ?"
Sadly the increase this year was still low - we all nailed our KPI's - as did my boss. We all got shocking increases I was lucky to get 6%, this was quite perplexing as the company had met its SLA with the client and our KPI's were all linked to the SLAs.

There were two reasons. The first was was a consultant who showed the CEO that he could save over a million rand by limiting our increases to 6%, which covered his salary. CEO was obviously impressed.
The main reason though was that we were not invoicing enough. Like actually not invoicing for work in time and also not invoicing for all those little extras I do. With all the extra time I have on my hands due to KPI hacking I have plenty of time to do extra reports for customers and make suggestions on how process can improve and how we can squeeze more money out of the end customers. In addition to those things not being billed or invoiced for they are often ignored.

So when I don't work the company makes money, when I do work they seem to make less money. Oddly enough this has made me quite despondent about my work and job. Oddly enough putting KPI hacking on my CV has not seemed to help me get a new job.

Also - 6% is not covering the bills.
 
cguy said:
It may be worth putting your resume out there regardless. You don't have to take the offers - if you get something dramatically better, take it or use it to renegotiate, if not, it should help satisfy that nagging concern that you are being underpaid.
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This is a solid idea. I get junior guys approaching me every now and then, complaining about being underpaid and demanding double their salary. I tell them that that's not doable, but if they bring me an offer from someone else, I'll try my best to beat that offer.
I'm yet to have anyone bring me an offer, or even leave the company on grounds of renumeration, while reporting to me.
It's important to know what you're worth, and you're worth whatever someone is willing to pay you.
 
2010 - 8%
2011 - 5.5%
2012 - 7%
2013 - 7%
2014 - 6.5 %
2015 - 6%
2016 - 5% (new company)
 
Messugga said:
This is a solid idea. I get junior guys approaching me every now and then, complaining about being underpaid and demanding double their salary. I tell them that that's not doable, but if they bring me an offer from someone else, I'll try my best to beat that offer.
I'm yet to have anyone bring me an offer, or even leave the company on grounds of renumeration, while reporting to me.
It's important to know what you're worth, and you're worth whatever someone is willing to pay you.
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Why do you have to renumber your minions, I just give them a number when they start and that way we can all remember it.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=renumerated
 
Lol, Ive gotten 2-3% increase every year, and a bonus is something that other companies give their people. I think you should fish around in the market to see if you get vastly different offers or whether you are on par with what they are offering thus confirming that you get what the market related people get.
 
I won't solely blame the company here. I mean prices have gone up ridiculously out of proportion
 
Hamster said:
Including theirs
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Not necessarily what of your company sells goods and services like accounting or something.

The price of meat and chicken and eggs and milk and toiletries went up far more than the industry average for your business.

(just an thumb sucked example)
 
ambroseg1 said:
Wish people would stop talking rubbish about the economy being bad. It is not. When entire industries can shut down for an entire month or longer to go on vacation, the economy is just fine. When the majority of companies give the level of service which has become a trademark in this country, the economy is just fine.
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I know a company that had 4 rounds of retrenchments last year. So everything is not "fine" as you put it.
 
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