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virtualchoirboy t1_iybap81 wrote

My dad was a senior corporate executive for most of his career. His advice was to never accept a counter offer. Ever. For him, a counter offer was just a way for the company to buy time to replace you.

If it were me, I'd thank the current job for the offer, point out that if you were that valuable to them they should have been paying you that already, and then take the new job.

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JonathanKuminga t1_iybdami wrote

Except don’t point that out, don’t burn the bridge. Leave on good terms. They’ll already know.

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Dandan0005 t1_iybqz07 wrote

Yep. If they really need you they’ll offer more later.

It’s better to leave and boomerang back eventually than to accept a counteroffer.

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Remarkable_Night2373 t1_iycrod4 wrote

The only time I ever went back it was after being gone for 6 months. We started talking after I was gone 3 months and I told them what would be perfect for me. They I guess kept looking for my replacement and then gave me what I wanted. I was with that for about a year before new ownership came in and wanted a different deal. I was given a severance and had an even better job within a week! It worked out for me but the only reason I went back is because I wanted hourly and the ability to work contract gigs on top of having their insurance and a reliable pay.

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Andrew5329 t1_iydzwdk wrote

Seriously, I can't believe that's the top comment.

Accepting the counter offer can sometimes make sense though. A friend of mine got a call from his previous employer offering him enough of a jump that it would be hard to turn down, but likes his new job better so he took the offer to them and they matched it. That was most of a year ago and they've been very good to him so far.

The degree to which different Employers/Roles actually care about retention varies, but those who do will go out of their way to placate people they think might be flight risks. The cost of awarding a small "market adjust" is smaller than letting the position go vacant.

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CBus-Eagle t1_iybed5e wrote

100% this. Accepting counter offers could easily breed contention with your current employer. Take the new role, but don’t burn any bridges at your current place. You never know when you may want to return.

On a side note, I’ve seen it from the other side too. One of my colleagues received a counter-offer to stay at the company we worked at. Needless to say, he told a couple of us and we were pissed that he got such a big pay raise by interviewing elsewhere. So three us went to our bosses and told them that if it takes an offer elsewhere, then that’s what we’ll do. They asked us to wait for a couple days before doing anything and ended up giving us all raises. Between that raise and my standard merit increase 4 months later, I got a 26% increase that year.

IMO, counter offers are usually bad for everyone involved. Pay the people what they are worth and if they decide to chase money elsewhere, wish them the best of luck.

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OneAdvertising9821 t1_iybf21c wrote

> 100% this. Accepting counter offers could easily breed contention with your current employer.

There are circumstances when it can make sense. If you're truely leaving for money only, and you have a good relationship with your org then it may make sense to entertain a counter offer.

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CBus-Eagle t1_iybg3xm wrote

I don’t doubt what you’re saying and it may work out sometimes. But I’ve also seen someone accept an offer and his boss (my equal) give him lower than normal raises the next 3 years. The bosses comments during our annual performance calibration and merit increase discussions was that this associate already makes more than others in his pay grade so he taking some of his merit increase and giving it to others on his team to help “level” pay.

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OneAdvertising9821 t1_iyd6fh7 wrote

My F500 company does that as a matter of policy. Your pay within the grade dictates your target merit percentage.

If you're on the high end of the range, your merit target might be 3%. If you're on the low end of the range, your merit target might be 4%.

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CBus-Eagle t1_iyd8dam wrote

Where I work, we get a bucket of money (say 3% of current salaries for your team) and the leader divides it up as they see fit. Yes, our HR system provides guidelines given each associates salary grade and performance score, but each leader has the final decision. I work for a F100 company by the way.

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OneAdvertising9821 t1_iyd913r wrote

Ours is similar, but the size of your "bucket" is in $USD and is the sumproduct of the base salary and target merit increase for each employee.

Where this gets interesting is multi-national teams. My employees in Chicago get paid a heck of a lot more than my employees in India, but it's all one bucket of funds to allocate. This creates an environment where it is much easier for low-COL employees to get large merit increases than for high-COL employees to get large merit increases.

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Penguinis t1_iyci0gb wrote

>There are circumstances when it can make sense.

Except...there isn't really. If you're unhappy enough to entertain accepting another offer, be that for money or other reasons, you'll be unhappy again in that same role eventually. Accepting a counter-offer at best simply notifies the current employer you're willing to leave when something better comes along (and why would they bother investing more company resources on an employee who is now known to be looking to leave) and at worst gives them time to find your replacement on their terms.

I've seen this scenario play out many times, all roughly the same outcome, many times in my career.

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OneAdvertising9821 t1_iycu62p wrote

Eh. I work for a F500 company. Why wouldn't someone leave if F500 Company B calls them up and offers +25% to do the same job somewhere else? That conversation is incredibly easy to have with your boss if you have a good relationship with your org.

Will they use this to replace you? I have never seen that happen. Technical roles in F500 companies are expensive to backfill.

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Penguinis t1_iyd6vnd wrote

>I work for a F500 company

As have I in the past.

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>Will they use this to replace you? I have never seen that happen.

I have. Repeatedly.

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>That conversation is incredibly easy to have with your boss if you have a good relationship with your org.

Your boss has a boss who also most likely has a boss. These conversations don't stop with your boss. Even if your boss doesn't think it's a big deal, chances are good someone else higher up might have an issue with it. And when the time eventually comes to have those conversations about who to keep/let go...those people with reps are some of the first ones to be brought up in those conversations.

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>Technical roles in F500 companies are expensive to backfill.

No, not really. A lot of people want to work in them and budgets are usually larger and they can be more competitive in attracting talent. Smaller companies with smaller budgets/footprints actually tend to have a harder time attracting people due to the above mentioned issues.

Make no mistake, everyone is replaceable. F500 companies are not immune to bad management and the short comings of having people, and the baggage they come with, complicate the process.

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Puzzleheaded_Wave985 t1_iybkhq4 wrote

How did you start that conversation? I am underpaid, and should negotiate for more money, but I don’t even know how to bring that up to my boss. Do I just put a meeting on her calendar?

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sf_guest t1_iybrckm wrote

Hi, many time exec here.

The answer is you quit. Underpaid people don’t get fixed, basically ever. Out of band raises are politically costly, and in situations where you’re significantly underpaid you will never get trued up vs market.

You go to the market and get the best offer you can and then you just quit.

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likkle_supm_supm t1_iycr323 wrote

To add to that: sometimes it's not that the manager or.company is bad. I've been in situations where the company's business model is not set up to extract as much value from you as you're able to offer. Basically you're overqualified, but slightly different in the sense where the company is under-qualified in the market to keep you. Other companies can make much better use of your time.

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CBus-Eagle t1_iybptla wrote

I knew what my friend/colleague was offered in the counter offer. I walked in to my bosses office on Monday morning (counter offer was made on Friday late afternoon) and told my boss “so I guess the only way to get a decent raise around here is to start interviewing elsewhere?” He knew exactly what I was referring to and asked to me give him until Wednesday to make a decision. Wednesday morning, me and two others received pay raises consistent with the guy who got the first counter offer. The one counter offer ended costing them 4 times more.

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tossme68 t1_iybtfv7 wrote

> walked in to my bosses office on Monday morning (counter offer was made on Friday late afternoon) and told my boss “so I guess the only way to get a decent raise around here is to start interviewing elsewhere?”

And my boss said yep, if you want a decent raise.

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kelllymac t1_iyc4c9t wrote

Yes, in my experience, exactly this. I have done this a couple times. The first time, I scheduled a meeting with my boss about a month before I knew they would be having annual raise discussions and told her I loved my job and needed to make more money. Also came prepared with examples of ways I've gone above and beyond. Did the same a year later with a new boss at my annual review (our performance reviews are at the end of the year and they don't make new budget decisions until after the first of the year, so it was strategic), gave examples of my great performance and directly asked to be considered for a larger pay increase. YMMV, obviously, but second boss told me over drinks that I was like a case study in asking for raises. Got around 12% + okay bonus each time. I work in admin/operations for a large law firm.

Edit to add: beforehand, my therapist recommended I look at it as a request, not a demand. It made a world of difference in how I approached the conversation.

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sabanspank t1_iyds616 wrote

I would suggest asking for a meeting to discuss your career path and growth at the company. In the meeting you should state that you feel that you're offering a lot of value to the team, with examples and are happy with your role and the company but want to make sure that your career and compensation continues to advance. They should be able to give a definitive timeline for pay evaluations or promotion decisions. If they're not willing to do that, then you're probably not going to have much luck.

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If you want to outright ask for more money immediately, you are putting yourself out there a bit and might want to be prepared to look elsewhere. If you just take the advancement approach, it's a more subtle way to state you're not satisfied with current pay.

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ararejul t1_iybp3pu wrote

As someone that has offered employees a counteroffer we genuinely wanted that person to stay. There was no plan to start looking for a replacement.

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sabanspank t1_iydt4qn wrote

My experience as well is that most managers are not calculating/forward looking enough to do that (start looking for a replacement). Most are plugging holes in the boat as they go along. If they want someone to stay, they just avoided a headache of replacing them and are not giving it that much thought.

Also, at any decent size company. Firing someone outside of large scale layoffs is also a huge process. They won't just out of the blue fire you without a series of programmatic steps.

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Minnow125 t1_iybfzfm wrote

That was definitely how things used to work for many years, but not anymore. Employees have alot of leverage now in many industries and company’s are struggling to find good talent.
People routinely give notice where i work, get significant counter offers to stay, and remain on as employees for a long time. They are good employees often with good client contacts and customer relations so letting them leave for $5-10K a year would be a major mistake for the company. If they are below average or average employees, counters are usually not considered.

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Penguinis t1_iycjgg1 wrote

>People routinely give notice where i work, get significant counter offers to stay, and remain on as employees for a long time.

If this is true, then there are other issues at play here. Sounds like the company is paying well below market and getting away with it. 1/2 here or there ok, but if it's routine then it is a pattern that should be a sign to all the employees that the company is clearly taking advantage of their talent. Personally not somewhere I'd be interested in working.

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tossme68 t1_iydesn0 wrote

When times are good, times are good. Sure right now unemployment is a 3% but right now the fed is actively trying to change that. Good times don't last forever and companies hate paying market value, so flex while you can but what you are seeing now is not the norm.

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nakfoor t1_iyd1owl wrote

Don't burn bridges, though. Crazy shit happens. You never know if you'll need your old job, someone's recommendation from your old job, or meet someone from your old job in a different setting.

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colinmhayes2 t1_iybo6a8 wrote

This could be true, but it could also be the case that op was underpaid and their current company knows they can’t replace them for less than the new salary. I would lean toward leaving just in case but definitely don’t know what the current company is thinking. The companies goal is always to pay the least they can to fill the role, not giving out raises is how they do that, but when push comes to shove why not pay the person who’s about to leave the same you would a new person?

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peptalks93 OP t1_iybotk6 wrote

I'm actually set to be make more than most other supervisors to my understanding at my current employer and have more seniority over most as well.

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ShadowDV t1_iycttqh wrote

being in the beginning position at the new company gives you more room to grow than being a senior supervisor at the current one. Sounds like at the current job you will likely be red-lined against future salary increases due to the bump now.

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colinmhayes2 t1_iybozfo wrote

If you think they would be able to replace you at a lower wage I would recommend you leave. If you don’t then it’s a bit more complicated

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peptalks93 OP t1_iybq1a5 wrote

I don't think they can because they have used up the pool recently on other positions.

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terpischore761 t1_iybtf30 wrote

If they fire you in 3-6 months. They now have your salary to give to someone else.

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kevmimcc t1_iyc5dhq wrote

This is not always true btw. Maybe it is most of the time but really should be case by case. I went through a situation where none of this traditional advice was correct. Sometimes in corp jobs with budgets outside of managers control etc an outside offer opens doors for counter offers that otherwise don’t exist. And if you like your team etc and know you aren’t being replaced, I don’t see the harm in staying in specific situations. But if you don’t know or are unsure then probably in general good to not take the counter

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Herefortheshow22 t1_iycmi0q wrote

My company countered generously on an offer I received a few years ago. It honestly made me fiercely loyal to them. I’m a recruiter and it happened the week of the 2020 hiring freezes. It was a show of faith in me, and it strengthened our relationship.

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