Ask HN: Software engineers who have been promoted with a large salary increase?

I've been a dev for almost 25 years, and the biggest raise I've ever had in a job was ~10%. There might be companies that give more substantial increases with promotions but I've certainly never heard of it happening. For comparison, the biggest raise I've had by moving company was 51%.

I'm almost 50, and have never gotten a substantial raise without moving to a new company. On the contrary, once you are in, there is a lock on your position, especially in larger companies, where you have a specific salary range your role falls in. Raises not only try to stay within the range, they are smaller as you get closer to the top of the range. A promotion bumps you up to the next range, but that is incremental improvement. You have to leave to throw that all out and reset the numbers.

Also, 3% is a mediocre raise just for year-over-year cost of living increases. Getting a raise that small with a promotion is a slap in the face.

10 years experience, I've received two 20% raises. If you're a high performer and have a boss willing to go to bat, it's not impossible. But it's much easier to get larger raises when moving jobs, yes.

Almost 10 years in. One 10% promotion. The new policy at my company is set at 7% raise for promotions.

The funny thing is, they unofficially expect a 13% increase in working hours for that 7% raise, which actually turns out to be a rate cut to fill a role with more responsibilities and expectations.

Had a two 20% increase over a 6 month period at the same company by just asking to "be at the same rate as other positions in the market".

10 years of experience.

In my first job had multiple promotions varying from 5% to 50%. The lower ones (5% ~ 10%) were given proactively by my employer and for the bigger one (50%) I've ended up changing position inside the company, after asking for a bigger raise.

I agree with others that it's way more easy to have a substantial increase moving jobs.

Most of my actual title promotions came with a 9-15% raise. Cost of living increases have been the same 1.5% or so.

Yes, these things happen... sometimes, as anything in the universe.

I've been promoted to a leading position after renegotiating my contract and it came with a 120% raise. You probably guessed it right - I was heavily underpaid at first. A teammate of mine earned around 60% more than me and our lead over 100%. When I finally found it out I was devastated. It happend for a couple of years. Sounds stupid? Yeah, it was. I was totally unaware of how much I should be asking for in the first place and never cared to talk about the compensation with the other guys. The team being 100% remote and spread across different countries didn't help too.

What would you do in my place? I wanted to quit, but I decided to negotiate an "impossible" raise first as I had nothing to lose anyway. It worked out and I stayed until now.

I am in a similar position to you, 24 years old, and am in my first role after the completion of my bachelor's in computer science. I was just promoted this week for a 28% raise within the same company.

It's not anything nefarious, just the natural blind spots of human reasoning.

Titles are cheap. Your existing employer will always want to hand you more work, but not more money. If you are handling the work well, then the pain of not having that role filled is only a memory. Your future employer has an acute problem to solve and is already primed to spend money to solve it. The net result is that (current employer) is much more likely to increase your responsibilities/scope/title. While (future employer) will pay you.

There are absolutely employers who will give significant raises to existing employees, but they are rare.

I've been at this for 15 years and most of my large jumps in salary have been either from job changes or counter offers when I was about to switch jobs. A couple things to keep in mind though:

1. It depends on the company but there is more to compensation than just the salary number. Often promotions will also include changes to bonus amounts (so different levels will have different target bonus %) and equity grants. From the business side it is all "comp" so they can have a different view of total compensation than you do if you are just looking at the salary.

2. If you like your job but feel you are underpaid there is nothing wrong with just asking for a raise. If they want to keep you around then they will usually accommodate you and if they don't want to keep you around then you should start looking for a new job anyway. But you have to ask. For obvious reasons companies want you to think that salary is non-negotiable, but EVERYTHING is negotiable and if they can make it happen IF they want to (or need to).

I've found that being a bastard in salary negotiations (pushing, not backing down, willing to walk) is the very best way to get promoted, and it should almost always be with a new company. Your existing company knows what you're being paid, and that's hobbling. You need asymmetric leverage. No one needs to know your salary. They should see how you value yourself in the salary negotiation. Take risks. Pays off. You do have to perform, so don't push so hard that you can't do the work. I suppose that goes without saying, but some people forget. I forgot once. Ended up surrounded by PhD statisticians that ate my lunch. Fired 3 months later. Was still paid ridiculously, but was also ego-bruising.

You can practice this with headhunters. Push the numbers. Try double your current number. You'd be surprised some of the numbers you can pull out of them in certain "must have now" situations.

~10% is more what I've seen. The biggest gain came from actually putting effort into getting lots of offers and negotiating well. This lead to an offer that was 2.75x my pay at the time. I ended up taking one that was lower (a mere 2.25x), but after stock growth, refreshers, and a base pay increase (without a promotion) that has gone up to 4x.

A 3% increase for an actual promotion is insulting. You're probably getting hosed already and could get a step function increase if you looked elsewhere and interviewed / negotiated properly. If you decide to do this, let me know, and I can give you some advice.

Finding a new job takes a lot of energy. People give you raises to prevent you from being bitter enough to spend that energy.

They also know that regardless of what they pay you, you will eventually quit anyways (unless they start paying you in the top 10% of the field, but then, what's in it for them at that point).

So no, 30-40% salary raises do not exist. At the executive level they sorta do, in the form of options and bonuses.

I was working at a small company, I was elevated from a developer to a manger of the development team (there were 4 of us). For this I was raised from $80k to $85k, so a 5k higher salary per year. Still, the real big raises have all come by grinding on skill development and finding new jobs.

As a young guy, the best and fastest way to get raise is to jump between companies.

Sticking within the single company will get you into the hamster wheel of promises, policies, processes and procedures with not much of a monetary outcome.

Once you get the offer from next company - put it on your boss desk to beat.

Rinse and repeat.

I couldn't find it. But there was an article or study not too long ago. That said over the course of a career. That you'll do so much better if you keep switching jobs. A really big difference in total earnings.