How long does it take to max out on your payscale?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Many jobs (including my own) have a pay scale that works in ‘steps’. Each ‘step’ being a % of the ‘top pay’ you would earn in that position. (ie Step 1:65% Step 2 75%, all the way to 100%) Where I work, regardless of position, it takes 3 years from the time of hire to get to top pay. Many people have mentioned this in the context of being able to get to top pay quickly, but not being familiar with this type of pay system, three years seems like a while to me. Of course, many of my coworkers have been here for decades, so I guess in the context of working a job for 20+ years, 36 months is a drop in the bucket. Another thing I thought was neat is that if I switch positions within the job, I retain my step, so if I’m a step 3 bus driver and switch to dispatcher, I’m a step 3 dispatcher (which is great when the position pays more than the current one :smiley: )

Does your job do something similar to this? For me, its a big improvement from my previous job, where raises were merit-based (which seems fair but in practice ended up being incredibly subjective depending on the manager, also you couldn’t actually get the raise until the manager approved it which could (and often was) postponed for months on end, with no back pay to make up the difference :mad:

2

I work for a small company, in IT, in a management position.

There’s no way in hell my employer would ever even entertain the notion of something like a seniority system, even for non-managers.

Raises are purely merit-based, and in our case, even more subjective than the typical corporate merit system, since we don’t even have a formal review process in place. Every six months, each employee gets a ten minute salary review. It usually goes something like this:

Manager: “We think you’ve been doing a good job.”

Employee: “Great. Thanks.”

Manager: “Any issues you want to bring up with me?”

Employee: “Nope.”

Manager: “OK. How about we bump your salary by $X,000?”

Employee: “Sweet.”

In theory, there’s no upper limit, but in practice, junior technical types tend to top out at $60k, and senior techs and managers at about $100k. Then we start talking extended vacation and/or ownership shares for the managers and technical leads. Depending on performance, that can take anywhere from 5 to 10 years.

For the junior types, well, if they haven’t become a technical lead after five years, then they’re probably don’t have much time left with the company. Why pay somebody $60k when you can get somebody to do the same work for $30k?

Anyway, in theory, the informality of the process is great for everybody, but in practice, it’s a major management headache. One of my ongoing projects is to incorporate a few ideas from traditional performance review processes into my group, just so everybody’s more clear on expectations.

There’s still no way I’d go for straight seniority. We’re far too small to be able to afford maxing somebody out after X number of years who isn’t doing the job.

3

I work for state government. If you get hired tomorrow at my pay grade, you make about what I make, minus a couple of longevity bumps.

The only way I get a raise is if the state legislature gives all employees a raise.

There is a little bit of funding by agency/division that can be used to give an employee a raise. My previous manager did it by who he liked the most, not who did the most work. That was usually a new hire who impressed him or the assistant manager.

My upside is that I control about 95% of my scheduling, can build as much comp time as I want and that sometimes working from home is an OK thing in my division. Our office is like a ghost town in July.

4

I had worked for the federal government. I’m not sure if this is standard for all federal jobs, but I started at one grade, then after a year was raised to the next grade, then after another year was bumped two grades. After that, assuming I wasn’t totally screwing up, there were automatic step increases; IIRC it was one step a year for three years, then one step every two years for six years, then one step every three years for nine years, which put you at the highest pay level for your job. However, you could also receive performance awards of step increases instead of cash amounts, which would of course accelerate your approach to the top salary.

I had started in 1976 and was at the top of my pay scale in 1993. In 1997 I was promoted to a new position at a step five (the lowest step I could be given without taking a pay cut) and was at the top step of my pay scale at the new job when I retired in 2006.

This, of course, does not take into account cost-of-living increases, which we got every January.

5

Our current contract is for a 2% pay increase plus cost of living increases annually for 10 years. So technically you’d take 10 years to top out. Most people also get to that position from within the company so there’s at least another 12-24 months from starting with the company to ending up on maximum pay. In reality we have been getting frequent additional pay increases and bonuses because of a shortage of skilled workers in the job market. When 60% of the employees resign in a year it’s amazing how the company starts throwing the dough around.

6

We don’t have a formal system here. I got a few bigger raises in the first 2 years of my job, as I took on more responsibility and added work. Now I get a standard 3% every year and that’s about all I’m going to get unless my job responsibilities change again. After a few years I plan to put more effort into advancing and ask for more responsibility again and maybe a position change.

My husband’s company hasn’t given out any raises at all, even for cost of living, for about 3 years. Their motto, and the industry as a whole right now, seems to be “you’re lucky to have a job at all.” (He is a diemaker, in Michigan.) So essentially he takes home a little less each year as things like health care premiums increase. Woo-hoo. He is going back to school, because this is obviously a situation that will screw us entirely if things stay the way they are. Too bad…it used to be a good profession.

7

I work for a state government. Assuming that I start at the bottom of a pay grade, it takes 7 years in some positions and 6 in others to get to the top of the grade. The top of the grade is not really the top pay, though, because after I’m at the top of grade for 5 years, I will get a longevity payment, and after 10 years, the longevity payment increases. If I’m promoted, the raise is the higher of the starting pay in the new grade or a percentage increase based on the difference in grade between the two positions.

8

You just described my situation. I assume there are others in the company who have less pleasant talks, as the total sum of all raises is public knowledge and I consistently get more than the average. Which I guess means that they really like me.