This is a copy of a post I just made to the Fabled board regarding my job. I'm keen on any input you fine folks may have:
I started at my job 3 months ago, as the replacement for a friend of mine who was leaving the position to go onto bigger and better things. My understanding was that they needed a graphic/web designer who could also do some IT (computer support, etc.) work. I was hired on the spot at $16.50 an hour as a "probationary" rate, meaning that they would boost me to a normal rate after 90 days. My friend was getting at least $20/hr, and he later remarked that he thought they were going to offer me substantially more. While I agreed with him, I was desperate for work at the time, and accepted the offer.
Some personal background:
- I've got about 10 years of IT experience in Windows environments, though I've administered Macs and Linux systems as well. I can build a machine from the ground up, and I can keep it running for years. I haven't gotten into much shell scripting yet, but I can get around a command line pretty well; I am currently learning the joys of SSH.
- I have a Master's degree in Multimedia. My education, while a bit shoddy, covered stuff like photo manipulation, graphic design, computer-based animation, video, and even a bit of 3D. I am pretty decent in most of the major Adobe apps (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Premiere), and the big Macromedia apps (Flash, and Dreamweaver). I can hand code HTML and CSS, I can read PHP, and could probably write stuff in PHP with a week or two of practice.
- I can do a bit of coding - writing a device driver is a bit out of my league, but I've written thing like small arcade games in Flash. I was the technical lead on my graduate project team, which was sort of a home grown Reactrix system (like those interactive projector dealies they have at fancy malls). I had to teach myself some basic object-oriented programming to do it, too.
Over the past 3 months, the scope of my job has ballooned. I've done:
Catalog design - mostly with the Adobe CS package.
Web design - mostly PHP 4 driving around HTML with CSS; my predecessor wasn't big on documentation, either, so I usually have to reverse engineer anything I have to modify.
Web administration - the company has about 20 sites that I am responsible for running, though they are fairly simple sites.
Marketing material design (postcards, etc.)
Video editing.
Product photography.
Printing.
Copywriting.
Proofing.
Product design.
Yahoo store administration - the company does a little bit of retail business through Yahoo, which involves a proprietary and apparently undocumented scripting language.
All of the IT administration - security, installs, desktop support, server support, etc; if it involves a computer in any way, it's my responsibility.
I've replaced every workstation in the place. I specced out the replacements, too.
Last week, I put in a Samba server based on Redhat 9.
Data recovery.
CRM software - I installed SugarCRM on a Linux server that I built, mostly to handle my own project management. They've also had me looking into packages like ACT and SalesForce.
Invoicing and accounting software - I've spent a few dozen hours looking at business management software.
Email administration - I arranged a 3rd party mail service provider to control our spam and storage problems - tweaking MX records is a little daunting when you've never done it before, and a big chunk of your company's sales rely on working email.
Data entry.
I frequently have to transcribe handwritten emails, and correspond with sales reps, customers, and consultants.
Shipment tracking.
I do a bunch of the work that a receptionist would do, if we had one. I answer phones, take down orders, prepare marketing materials, do customer support, take down messages, and route phone calls.
That's just off the top of my head. Between my project management software and my big whiteboard, I've got at least 5 major ongoing projects, and over 40 simultaneous action items. I'm experienced enough to not get especially stressed out over the workload; none of the things, individually, are particularly challenging.
Back to the story, though: I've been doing all of this at a probationary rate of $16.50/hr and basic benefits for the past 3 months. I brought this up with my boss(es) yesterday, and today, they came back with an offer of $18/hr, thinking that I would be happy to get a small raise.
I think that my friend was grossly underpaid at $20/hr for the number of professional skillsets that he had to juggle, and that was before I knew the extent of his responsibilities. Granted, it's a small company (I'm employee #10), but they seemed pretty happy with me so far - I am frequently complimented on the work I do, whatever it happens to be that hour.
Am I greedy for thinking that I'm more valuable than that? I only came to this job after 4 months of job hunting; this in the SF Bay Area, too. Has anyone put up with anything similar? Were you able to break out of it? What would you do in a similar situation?
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13 comments:
Whoops, didn't expect the whole thing to show up like that.. I keep forgetting that this thing is a blogging engine first.
Some more action items for you:
41) Always, always be looking for other jobs. Learn to love the job search. Treat it as a hobby. Do it, it's good for you.
42) Copy and paste the non-editorializing parts of what you posted into an email to your boss. They should know what you do and you have to keep them up to date as your role expands. When I wasn't a lazy bum (aka grad student), I'd have a least one meeting a week with my boss to let him/her know what I'm up to and each quarter I'd list my accomplishments (along with goals for the coming 3 months... bosses love that shit). The fact that your role is expanding is a reflection of the value you provide the company. That said, it's hard to put a price-tag on value. Obviously, the company will have a low figure and you'll have a high figure. Your salary is a reflection of your ability to negotiate... It's not, NOT a reflection of your value-add (although, there's obviously a positive causal relationship). Nevertheless, they should be able to list off the things that you listed off as easily as you do, so tell 'em 'bout it.
43) Determine your price point and share it with boss (+10% if you wanna play hardball). There are websites that list job descriptions and average salaries. Do research and share your findings with your boss.
44) Worse case, the company can't offer you want you need and you leave. See action item 41.
Points well taken.
#41 - has always been difficult for me; it's only slightly easier than trying to pick up women. Something to continue working on.
#42 - I actually tried this a few weeks ago. I strongly suspect that both of the company owners have ADD. Putting it all in writing does seem to be a good idea, and now seems to be the best time to do it.
#43 - I think this is my new homework assignment. I had a minimum number in my head, one I thought that even I was lowballing; their offer was even lower.
#44 - The most insidious thing I can do is hand them my logs and passwords as I walk out the door. Being a cold hearted mercenary bastard doesn't come naturally to me, but I am a quick learner (hell of a way to give yourself a pep talk, no?)
Sounds good. Regarding #44, remember to not burn bridges. Be a mercenary, but be one with a big smile on his face and with an unnervingly engaged and friendly tone of voice.
That is, if smiling and being friendly are your bag.
True. The company is 20 years old, and they seem to have been in survival mode that whole time.
Re: mercantilism - of course I'm not going to threaten to stomp out. It's just that I have an innate tendency to try to help people out (especially with computer stuff), and I'm finding that managers will cheerfully exploit that.
The most insidious thing I could do is hand them my logs and root passwords with two weeks notice. It wouldn't kill the company by any stretch, but they would be reduced to limping along for a few months.
I also know that, in a company this small, cash flow is a big factor. That said, they should at least be able to offer what my predecessor was getting. I suspect that Jay might have nailed it - the $18 figure looks like a fabrication.
I had the same struggle last july when they made me full time. i hadn't negotiated for my salary before then so i came out a little short of my goal. one thing i wish i did was to have them put in writing the thing they promised me as compensation for lower pay, such as leaving at 4:30pm, and performance review every 6 months.
if you can negotiate for thing not directly monetary, remember to have them put it in writing.
i wouldn't feel guilty about wanting more, but neither should you feel pissed at your boss for offering little. bosses generally penny pinch when they can.
Worst negotiating mistake I ever made was being offered an amount and not asking for more right away. I was coming from an hourly to a salary environment. The anual ammount *sounded* good, but I wanted to do the math and see how it compared to the hourly rate I was already making. I left w/o saying yes or now, assuming that they would wait. I returned to ask for more and was given a blank look and a "err, we already told HR you accepted."
The moral: Be prepared to respond immediately and concretely.
now = no
Welp, that got shot down. I went in with lists of my completed and
pending projects, rate quotes from dice.com and a few other job boards, and even department of labor statistics. They explained that business was still down due to 9/11 at least 3 times during the meeting. Yes, 9/11. For the record, the company is a California-based apparel importer and manufacturer. They also explained that they felt that their offer was perfectly reasonable, given the going rate on Craigslist* (heh).
In the long run, I'm trying very hard to get out of tech support. I have
no specific certifications, though I do have the Master's degree in a
tangentially related field. I'd kind of like to start putting it to use,
actually - while I don't really know what I want to be doing in 10
years, I know I don't want to be mucking out laptops.
One alternative they proposed is for me to work reduced hours at a rate
that would work out to the same weekly pay. Im actually finding this
very tempting - 4 days a week at this place, and 1 day a week for
personal career development and job hunting. As an added bonus, at a
higher hourly rate, they may be less inclined to have me doing quite so
much grunt work. Anyway, at this point, I'm resolved to get the hell out of Dodge.
Thanks for the advice, anyway; it's about time I started sticking up for myself.
*Yes, Craigslist. This was -exactly- the wrong thing to say to me at that moment.
What was your number?
I agree that it sounds like a cash flow problem. Why else would they be ok with a pay raise but reduced hours? This would indicate that they're not doing that hot and that you should consider a move anyway.
All that said, salary negotiation is an ongoing process, not a one time deal. ak$@#%da's anecdote is interesting, but it misses the point. If you're continuously in the job search, you'll always have your target salary and you'd be able to respond immediately to offers.
The ongoing process looks something like this: As you learn more and more about your job, your company and your industry, you add more and more value to your company. You're always keeping the powers that be up to date as to the value you're providing them. As such, you need to always be doing research on job descriptions and salaries. This research goes hand in hand with the ongoing job search. The search keeps you in touch with communities that teach you how to add more value (i.e. trade magazines, discussion boards, one-on-one discussions, etc) and the the virtuous cycle continues.
$30'd be ideal. I'd be content with $25. I'd have accepted $21. $18 is bullshit. I even glanced around at Craigslist; the average for freelance web design seems to be around $25 (not a statistical average; that's just me glancing at a few posts).
Your plan sounds perfect. Take the 4 day workweek, and do something constructive w/ the 5th day. WoW comes to mind, but I suppose if you held a gun to my head I'd be forced to admit there *may* be one or two even more constructive things to be doing with your life. Job hunting might be one. Teaching yourself something might be another.
Central California? Make sure you calculate your salary in terms of cost of living. My understanding is that it's cheap to live in Central California. Actually if you leave the bay area, its bound to be cheaper to live (except Tokyo, London or NYC). Tat just told me that you can buy a house and a couple acres for less than $200k in parts of Texas. This implies that rents would be 1/3 of what they're here. That several hundred (thousand?) dollars well makes up for a couple bucks per hour in lost wages.
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