Be Excellent To Each Other

I have had a recent pay rise 10%. Which I was chuffed at until I found out new members of the team I manage, earn 13k more than me starting.

I am not sure I will get another pay rise soon and it will take 3 years to even get close.

I enjoy my job I am under paid. I have the chance of moving up position.

I have a job interview with a rival coming up for nearly double my wage.

So the dilemma is stop where I am under paid but having training thrown at me to make myself more marketable, or jump to a lesser role for more money.

Do you need the money? If not, you've got to work out how much a job you enjoy is worth.

Are you happy there? Would the extra money make a huge difference?

Up to you mate, do what makes you happy I guess.

Are those figures correct? I'm reading that as someone you manage earning £13,000 more than you. Is management aware of this?

Oh yes they are aware.

It has lead to some interesting conversations

I am under an IVA till Jan, so anthing extra gets taken off me. Come Jan yes it will make a difference.

That’s not a dilemma. If this was Deal or No Deal everyone would be screaming take the money.

I would sit down and tell my employer. Not threaten to leave or be all cut throat, just make them aware you are aware.

If they do nothing and you leave? At least you did the right thing man.

This isn't as rare as you might think, especially if the manager isn't just the best-performing team-member, which I think is a big mistake.

Concur. Management shouldn't be a case of promoting the best (or longest serving) techie.

Get the job offer at double your current wage, then use that to negotiate a big pay rise in the job you enjoy?

Management isn't a step up the ladder. It's a different ladder. I am astounded how many places get that wrong.

The first failure is usually lacking the imagination to offer any career path past "senior developer" without managing people , to be fair.

My last place always promoted everyone into management (as in that was the only way to progress) and couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to move up that ladder (sic).

I would go for the money too... Double what you're on now is pretty sizeable (unless you're on nothing...)

Won’t work. Ask me how I know

We still have that at our place, and I don't know why because on the clinical side it's absolutely not the case. It would obviously be ridiculous to suggest that once surgeons become very highly skilled that they should spend all their time running the department instead of fixing patients. It's just taken for granted in that culture.

This Is a very interesting point, and isn't something that I had ever considered before. I wonder how many places have such an ingrained structure (like where I am) that even if there was some imagination the culture or, for want of a better way to describe it, 'inertia' of an organisation makes it incredibly hard to justify trying. I'm thinking of my work here, completely different field to IT though.

True, this won't always work. My boss is lovely but she is also one that would simply say 'goodbye' rather than dramatically increase pay. I'm not sure if it's because she wouldn't want to, or isn't able to, but if a big offer came along I'm quite certain it wouldn't/couldn't be matched. I am underpaid compared to other roles at similar workplaces; everyone here is in general underpaid by comparison.

That being said, Kovacs, I love the work I do and it's in a great location, it's comfortable, I feel like I'm part of something. For me personally, those would be big things to give up on to chase mo' dollars so I choose to hang in there for now.