How do you know what a fair salary is for the area you work?
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@Jimmy9008 said in How do you know what a fair salary is for the area you work?:
Can... "Dave from the pub said..." really be evidence to justify the salary?
"I've spoken with colleagues with similar skill sets and the compensation benchmark I'm seeing is xxx"
It doesn't matter what the person your negotiating with thinks. If the benchmark TRUELY is xxx, you'll find someone else paying it and move on.In the SMB space it's all over the place with similar skills and job titles. I've seen someone functionally useless paid 80K and someone who's an awesome resource paid 40K.
It's worth noting that some of us use the Radford system for establishing bands and trying to standardize salary. This is common as it helps prevent liabilities from inconsistency popping up.
https://radford.aon.com/insights/articles/2015/radford-global-job-leveling
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@jmoore said in How do you know what a fair salary is for the area you work?:
@StorageNinja Really interesting points because I'm looking for a change too. Thanks for the info!
The funniest conversation was one shop that only offered 1 week of vacation max. They also wanted staff working on-call and after late calls still coming in at 8 AM. Had to explain to the VP that either that policy needed to go, or he needed to hand out 30% raises across the board to stop his attrition problem. In places where IT staff engaged in criminal behavior (Deleted data when being fired, running rogue servers at work, planting listneing devices in the board meeting) it was ALWAYS in a place where they were "getting a hell of a deal" on the skills of the staff they had. Discount IT staff are... expensive. Between that and staff who were honest but just wayyy underskilled (and projects took months instead of hours or days). arguing about paying an extra 15 or 20K just isn't worth it in most larger shops to get the right people.
Why should you listen to the Ninja?
I was a hiring manager for an MSP/IT consultancy. Note, because of my role I also was privileged to what a lot of my customer's IT staff were making (They'd either tell me, or it would come up in discussions with management if they were getting good value from their staff). I now work in a global role for a major technology company and fly around and talk to IT admins and archiects all over the world. -
@StorageNinja Attrition is a huge problem where i work, a little north of Waco at a 2 year college. Every department has a high changeover. The IT department has lost 6 people in last 2 years. There are no positions to move into(like a junior admin) and I'm not given opportunities to learn anything beyond my current role.
Btw I followed you on twitter and added your rss feed to my Slack.
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@jmoore said in How do you know what a fair salary is for the area you work?:
Attrition is a huge problem where i work, a little north of Waco at a 2 year college. Every department has a high changeover. The IT department has lost 6 people in last 2 years. There are no positions to move into(like a junior admin) and I'm not given opportunities to learn anything beyond my current role.
Clearly by design. Why the school wants to make working the undesirable is anyone's guess, but clearly it is intentional. They make it pretty much a forced situation and don't seen interested in change. This is common in certain kinds of organizations, typically those with something to hide (often simply that the people at the "top" aren't capable and don't want experienced people sticking around long enough to prove it.)
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@scottalanmiller Yeah for whatever the reason I'm ready to move on. I'm sure your right though. It's really irritating. I heard my VP talking about "operational efficiency" to our president and how she got things done with as little salaries as possible; I admit it disgusted me. I never expected instant rewards or instant salary increases which is why I stayed there for 5 years. I want to learn and move up somewhere and I'm willing to work for it.
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I'll see what they come up with and take it from there.
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@jmoore said in How do you know what a fair salary is for the area you work?:
I heard my VP talking about "operational efficiency" to our president and how she got things done with as little salaries as possible; I admit it disgusted me.
Notice that she didn't say that the department did the most work for the lowest cost, or was the most efficient... because those things can't be done on low salaries. She isolated the salaries to hide likely high departmental cost and inefficiency.
What's worse is that a college president would fall for an obvious business mistake and blatant marketing ploy.
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@scottalanmiller Well thats the way it is here. Most in management positions don't seem to have the qualifications for their positions. I'm friends with the Welding coordinator(position below director here) and he put in for the technical director of Welding and HVAC and hes been here many years. A woman got it who was an english instructor that never had any technical or welding or hvac experience. Never had any management experience either. She's like 28-29 I think. My vp if IT only IT experience was in labs(doing desktop support). This is from her own mouth in a conversation we had a long time ago. Not all, but many of our management positions are similar cases.
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@scottalanmiller said in How do you know what a fair salary is for the area you work?:
@jmoore said in How do you know what a fair salary is for the area you work?:
I heard my VP talking about "operational efficiency" to our president and how she got things done with as little salaries as possible; I admit it disgusted me.
Notice that she didn't say that the department did the most work for the lowest cost, or was the most efficient... because those things can't be done on low salaries. She isolated the salaries to hide likely high departmental cost and inefficiency.
What's worse is that a college president would fall for an obvious business mistake and blatant marketing ploy.
Yes that is why I was insulted. Everyone should try to get as much done efficiently as possible and I understand that. Its why I love using and learning more about automation technologies myself too. However, the way she was phrasing it to the president really got to me.
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if you ask me sometimes nothing is fair, but it is your current of view in life, for example some people would be happier working relative easy job and doesnt pay alot and having good friends in that job better than high paying one, but they doesnt know that untill they its too late
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@jmoore said in How do you know what a fair salary is for the area you work?:
Most in management positions don't seem to have the qualifications for their positions.
In healthy companies they do. But "most" companies are not healthy and are failing. But failing companies don't pay well, or for a long time. The goal is to look for healthy companies where doing a good job gets rewarded.
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@scottalanmiller ehhh, this isn’t a university It’s a trade school (oddly one that certified people in CCNA, helicopter repair etc). It’s a decent trade school but I suspect like a lot of universities an schools in rural areas they count of low job competition for non-remote entry level work. For what it’s worth a large 4 year university on the Brazos was paying only 40K for The head of ResNet department.
Universities priorities are strange. From a compensation plan free student tuition, and free masters often mean they can treat a lot of salary positions line work study jobs from a comp basis.
For what it’s worth I’ll likely be (jetlagged) but back in Waco for the OU game (or any games after it). I’ve made it to only one game this season sadly.
I have friends who still live in Waco but they all work remote. There’s a decent work from home Wordpress community there. The job market isn’t great for IT infrastructure unless you have clearance but even then [Redacted] IT is so frustrating wild horses couldn’t drag me back into one of their offices.
Just move to Houston or Dallas or another market until you can skill up enough to work remote.
