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Salary Re-Negotiation Strategy

6 points by alerolp ↗ HN
Hi HN. I'm a 49 yo in an emergent economy country. I've been working for 26 years in the same company, a ~200 emp. regional leader in it's core business.

Since 2011 I've got a remuneration which is tied to the price of the base main service the company provides, so my salary has been the same but my income has increased as the price of this particular service varied with the years. I've got no other benefits beyond the granted by working law in this country (vacations, etc.). My salary is roughly 10-12x the base salary of a non-professional employee, and 3x the median IT & Telco salary in the country, although I live and work on a second tier city of ~1M people, so perhaps 3.5-4x the median here.

The company has grown and expanded it's businesses since I've entered at an early stage and I was instrumental in every aspect of the company development (modulo finances) implementing most of the processes and operations that are running the company to this day; for example, but not limited to: implementation of core technical procedures, develop of administrative and CRM software, main mission critical service software, security, communication networks deployment and integration (from analog RF to mesh network), fleet tracking and location (AVL) with driver registration, maps and dispatch, several mobile apps for internal use (tech/support staff, sales team, etc.), main app for customers, networking, communications and IT installations in several buildings, sysadmin, DB admin, a myriad of other tasks from key strategy and technology selection and deployment for multi million dollar projects to problem resolution in every technical concern, while also providing support in a very demanding 24/7 environment. Much of this was made by myself up to 2013, since then I've lead a small team of developers and technical staff. I'm generally responsible for the whole operation running smoothly 24/7 (main business is 24/7 service).

I think I'm not being payed adequately for my work and the value I've made for the company through the years. I have a very good and friendly relation with one of the owners (nominally my boss), and I'm about to open a negotiation with him about this.

I think the company will offer me some money (not more than 10% increase over my base salary) and some promise for the future tied to some diffuse and subjective metric of their own, which I will reject as a matter of course.

What do you think will be my best strategy from that point on? It's possible that my strongest point is that there are no one person that can take over if I left, so they would need to get two to three people. There are key security implications on this scenario too.

I need the work to support my family, and with my savings and my spouse income I could live perhaps for one to two years educing our expenditure; there are some difficult decisions to be made in this regard too, like firing our domestic employee of 12 years, not going on vacations with the kids, no upgrading our cars or selling some property, etc.

I have a little side project but it's not enough money and I'm not sure if it can success. Thanks a lot.

6 comments

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bitxbitxbitcoin
The alternative if they won’t raise your salary to a desired level is to lower your output proportionally.

I’ve always wondered how this would work as a negotiation tactic. Company gets to max salary offered, you then tell them you’ll take it but with a 4 day work week instead of a 5 day one.

speedgoose
The common strategy is to find a job somewhere else, to present the situation to your current employer fishing for a counter offer, and be ready to go to the other job. If you are not willing to go, you cannot negotiate in good conditions.
notahacker
I'm not entirely sure I understand the salary link to service base price? Is it essentially a [small] revenue share on top of a fixed salary? Or more like your salary gets a 5% increase when the service price gets a 5% increase, which is probably only a little bit above inflation. The second option sounds very unusual in a company with lots of customers and employees (and likely to significantly undervalue you if your skillset and responsibilities and the customer base have all grown).

Either way, it sounds like you should be considering your likely earning power in other roles with an equivalent level of seniority (even if it's just looking at this stage) as your skillset sounds likely to be considerably more advanced than the median IT/Telco employee in your city. That should be your fallback plan if you're not able to secure more than a token raise, not cutting your cost of living. This will of course also give you some basis for figuring out the bare minimum you can accept, so that you can pitch a counter offer (no point in flatly refusing) some way above that. If you expect promises tied to subjective metrics, tie them to objective metrics you know and they care about, or ask why not now?. It sounds like you've already figured the ways in which it's really in their interests to put some effort into satisfying you even if their natural instinct is to make a low first offer.

alerolp
Thank you. The salary link is like that, I get 5% if the service price increase 5%. Salaries here rarely make above inflation, so it was better than the previous fixed salary with periodic adjustments. This arrangement is shared by other 4 people, with inferior remuneration, rest of the company (minus the owners above my level) earns fixed salary that is periodically adjusted.
notahacker
Some of the detail is going to be specific to your country/city's job market, but I would have thought even if the average worker makes inflation (or less) it would be normal for high performing white collar workers to receive some promotions or similar rises over the course of 10 years. I imagine some of the company's junior staff have had actual promotions with significant raises in addition to low periodic raises; even if you started at the top level, perhaps your own increased amount of job responsibility and improvements to company performance in 10 years is comparable. At least the arrangement appears to have been beneficial to enter at the time.