A friend of mine recently had his yearly review, and received only a very small raise. He is/was already underpaid, and was already looking for a new job (but not 100% set on leaving his current job yet), and is pretty unhappy. He’s kind of looking at the tiny raise as just another reason to kick up his job hunt. I told him, maybe he should try to ask his boss if there is a possibility or a larger raise, or at least what he should do to get a better one next year (assuming he’s still there).
I’m wondering if anyone here has actually hurt their job standing or even been fired for just asking for a raise? Has anyone brought up money and had it basically be the “beginning of the end”? I’m not talking about freaking out or threatening to quit or anything like that, I just mean reasonably asking for more money. As long as my friend were to be polite, and emphasize not getting the raise won’t affect his job effort, should he be OK? Has anyone here personally screwed themself over just by bringing up money, even in a polite way?
Just make sure to tell him not to say the parenthetical out loud.
Sorry I have nothing to add, I’ve the closest I’ve ever come to asking for a raise was negotiating a higher starting salary when I came back to libraries after getting my master’s degree. I had been doing front-line tech support for a bank for 4-1/2 years and was starting a new job doing basically the same work but with reference desk responsibilities to boot, and thought my experience and MLIS merited more than the base they were offering. They agreed, fortunately for me.
My coworker had this happen. She works like a dog (long hours, lots of duties) and went out and got a job offer in writing at another workplace, with a big raise involved - but her problem was that she wasn’t all that thrilled by the new job. The counteroffer at our workplace was that she would have to do a lot more work, taking over some job duties done by someone else up until now, if she wanted that big of a raise because ‘of course’ her work description had to fit her salary bracket. Well, her fear of the new won out, and she’s still working here, doing a lot more work, and her new salary won’t take effect for a couple months or more, assuming they manage to get the paperwork done any time soon.
Years ago a friend asked for a raise and got fired. It was a small business, he was the manager of about 6 employees. The owners were not willing to give the raise, and feared that his disappointment would become resentment (perhaps subconscious) that would have negative effects. Apparently these particular owners did not feel they could trust someone who had been denied a raise.
