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Lowballed in appraisals, how to renegotiate CTC?

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Senior Software Engineer at Taro Community4 months ago

About Company: growing mid-size startup, great tech culture, talented people to work with, pays well

Promoted in recent appraisal cycle (2 levels above entry level, similar to L6 at Amazon) but the increment is not attractive compared to what is normally paid at that level (within company). Performance review was great but manager does not have much say in deciding increment percentage. I do see learning opportunities here in future but demotivated by this bias.

How do I renegotiate salary? How to have this discussion with skip manager?

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(3 comments)
  • 2
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    Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
    4 months ago

    If you don't have an external offer, negotiating your current pay is tricky as your main leverage is to insinuate that you might leave. This makes everything awkward as if the negotiation fails and you stay at the company, you'll be labeled as a flight risk. This is why a lot of people just change jobs when faced with this scenario.

    If you feel like you have a very good relationship with your manager (at least a 9/10 if I were to put a number on it), and you can try and hope they'll fight for you. Pitch it from the side of mutual benefit (I'm a high-performer and I want to stay here long-term to land more impact).

    Here's the video from the negotiation course covering this topic further: https://www.jointaro.com/course/the-insiders-guide-to-negotiating-your-tech-salary-and-compensation/negotiating-your-current-salary/

  • 1
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    Tech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
    4 months ago

    It's harder to negotiate salary at your current company. Do you know others at the company who have successfully negotiated? Two options:

    • Just ask for a raise and provide data based on your impact/perf review
    • Get another offer (or look at market data) that suggests you should get paid more. However, the risk here is that the company doesn't want to actually increase your pay, and they give you less responsibility if they think you're a flight risk.

    As Alex mentioned, I talk about this here: https://www.jointaro.com/course/the-insiders-guide-to-negotiating-your-tech-salary-and-compensation/negotiating-your-current-salary/

  • 1
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    Senior Software Engineer [OP]
    Taro Community
    3 months ago

    Had a discussion with my skip manager and it turns out that the company doesn't want to make any amends to the already communicated increment.

    Do you know others at the company who have successfully negotiated?

    1. Yes but not without offers
    2. In some cases, by stating expectations before appraisals

    Thanks Alex and Rahul for timely and actionable response, for sharing the potential risk and helping out with points I could use to strengthen my case. I would also like to thank you guys for creating this platform, having access to such mentorship is a privilege.