Decided that once things settle down a little bit with my home life, I'll start fishing around. Ideally find a good offer somewhere else and see if my current job will match it.

The threat of economic instability makes me appreciate my current employer a bit more, they're a very cautious medium sized bank. Plus I have quite a bit of job security internally as well as I'm the only one who knows how two critical, heavily customized, and almost entirely undocumented systems work.

Raised mine by ~20% earlier this year.
Only one squawking (and subsequently fired) customer so far.

I just took a new job making 30k more a year, with 10% option grant and a 25% cash bonus yearly. Hadn't had a raise at last job in 5 years as well as no increase in options and no yearly bonus.  My incoming options were fully vested so no reason to stay. Gave previous job option to meet offer and they declined. New job is great.

Sheeeeeet... You are just now seeing that? Its been this way for over a year. We pay pretty much average for the industry and our folks are leaving for 50% pay increases. We are losing them because we simply cant compete with the salaries. Granted, these folks are also getting AWS certifications and have hands on experience but still... Makes me wander if I can go get more money every day...

I’m a VP where I work.

I hired a director onto my team making the same base salary as me.

I hired another VP onto my team and HR initially was going to offer him 35k more than my base.  The ultimately reduced it to 15k over my base.  I asked if he could take my role and salary and I take his role and salary and work foe him and they said no :-(

My company is run by slackjawed morons that are getting completely blindsided by this.

Beginning of the year I told my boss I wanted at least a 25% salary increase.  In April they gave me 15%.  A dozen resumes sent and two months later I had two offers in hand, each for 50% over my newly increased salary (so almost a 75% combined gain).

And they still wonder why they can't retain good employees.

Eta: the video wasn't showing up so I tried to fix it for you but it looks like it's working now in your original post

That's bullshit.   Similar thing happened to me last year... they hired a new director in and paid significantly more for fewer years of experience.   Fortunately, I'm covered by pension and can retire in a year.   Consulting is looking better by the day.

WSJ article this morning said lower paid jobs are doing proportionately better with wage increases than others right now.

We got lucky at my new company. They’ve been paying everybody an additional 15% since COVID hit as a “thank you” to everybody who kept working. It was supposed to end June 30.

They just told us they’re making it permanent.

God forbid the trades get more then the dirt wages that have been stagnant for 20 years.

Just like in the thread where dude was complaining about his rent going up, and all the cocksure smug GDers told him he was lucky that it hadn't doubled sooner, and that he had been getting a deal for 8 years and should have saved up all those bucks he was saving. Well what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

You got lucky that people were stuck making peanuts for the past 20 years, and now it's time to pay the piper. Your company should have saved some money, from those wages you were saving so you could afford to stay in business.

Its amazing how out of touch some of you on here are. It's no wonder the bread and butter of the Republican party (blue collar workers) are apathetic and staying home on election night. Hell I swear 99% of the "employers" complaining on here would hire illegals in a heartbeat if it meant they could keep paying 8 bucks an hour for trade work.

Was making $75k pre Covid-19 at fab shop.
COVID-19 they cut me to $56k at fab shop.
In January get call out of the blue to work remotely for $110k in construction

Times are crazy, work these employers they will pay more for people now as things are starting to get back to normal.

I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just genuinely curious what trade you work in that’s under paid?  Every tradesmen I know, mostly electricians, make damn good money for the area.

Congrats on the pay raise.

It's a good thing we have professors with desk jobs who can tell us that inflation is relatively low, otherwise we would be in big trouble.

good post lots of company cock gobblers in GD , yea it's time to start paying people companies have gotten away with it for far to long
Trump gave all of them a tax break and he said they'd share the wealth guess what they didn't share shit kept it all for themselves .

Reddit.com

Yea we make good money but haven't seen a decent pay raise in at least five years carpenter by trade and union
it's going to be very hard for union reps to tell membership not to expect a pay raise next contract shits not going to fly
with the members when the price of everything is skyrocketing .

Leave it.

I was offered a job tonight while walking through the grocery store. My old supervisor is a supervisor at a different place and loves it there. No bullshit, no favorites, no bankruptcy and having to wait a week to order parts. Tempting but it’s a 50 minute drive one way compared to my 15 currently. Their raises are definitely better than ours. Was told if I changed my mind to call him.

Yeah it’s time for me to have a chat with my management. Haven’t had a raise of any type in 3 years. They informed us that raise will happen this year but I could see a 3-4% insult.

I work for a large oil and gas company and they didn't cut anything last year but we really went into a lull. A large portion of my pay is bonus/commission and since everything was pretty much stagnant last year I took a $30k pay cut. That coupled with the stagnation in raises is tough. We are doing ok as a family and thankfully we are both professionals(attorney and engineer) and are making it work. I know there's a lot of people out there that are struggling.

When they ask you to fix the problems caused by the outsourcing, that is when you negotiate a big raise, or become an independent contractor.

@jollyg83

Welding. I have shared this before but I'll share it again because I don't think people here understand there are guy's like me who are hungry, wanting the middle class life we were told was achiavble with Trade work who will either learn something else in the next 5 years or keep bouncing job to job until we find somewhere that values our skills.

After 15 years in land surveying I switched trades, and I finished trade school and started in the new field a month and a half ago. 15 an hour. In that month they decided that because of the increased workload and deadline from it being "the most profitable year ever" they are canceling our 3 Saturday's off a month schedule that they had just started when I joined. Now not only do we work 10's but we now will work Saturday's until next year.. And the week after they told us that we were "not being productive enough" both the 1st and 2nd shift department heads took a week of vacation (not that they work Saturday's anyways).

I paid my own way through school, got AWS D1.1 certified in all uphill for 3 processes, including fluxcore and graduated with a 4.0

I agreed to 15 because the schedule was manageable with the 3 weekends off, and a healthcare plan that is covered by the employer. AFTER I hired in I find out the health plan sucks (2k deductible), AND a kid I went to school with, who had 3 months of experience at a different company (that he was fired from) started at 17 and also started with a week of vacation (I have to wait 6 months) because his mom is best friends with the HR lady and his uncle golfs with the president of the company. Not to mention finding out that most of the guys working there, were paid 17-18 and had been there for upwards of 3 years. AND they apparently canceled the Christmas bonus last year after not closing at all for Covid, and for the past year they had been working 10's and Saturdays.

I'll likely use it as a way to gain experience for the next place. I just got certified on a forklift and at the end of the year I'll be moving on to greener pastures. There's no way they will ever pay what we're worth, and when the new 15 buck minimum wage kicks in I suspect I'll be making 2 bucks more then a burger flipper at Wendy's. Not worth it.

The trades have been raped by low wages for years. If you do the math and factor inflation, I'm making the equivalent of 12.75 in 2016.

Had a competitor try to poach me a week ago.

They about had a stroke when I said I was making double what they're offering already. Lord knows I provide way more value than I get paid.

If you want experience you have to pay.

It started about a year ago in software, no sign of letting up.  More turnover in the last year than in the previous 3 combined at my current place.

That really sucks man and that sounds like a shitty company to work for.  I just did some quick internet searching and it looks like the average salary for a welder in VA is $18.21.  Those are some good looking welds, so obviously you got some skill.  I’d move on to greener pastures.  

And there in lies the rub. 18.21 is still an absurdly low average salary for this trade.

Its going to come to a head sooner then later. You have major gas station chains like Sheetz offering 14.75 starting to stand at a cash register, and you have to wonder why anyone is going to bother going into what used to be a good paying profession, and killing themselves to make little more then the guy working at 7-11.

But for some reason the sentiment that a lot of boomers on GD and in the Republican party feel is "hard work is it's own reward". But what the fuck are you working hard for? How am I ever going to be able to afford a house and new car on 34k a year? (That's what I will make after taxes).

Then you have people like my wife, who does medical coding for 13 bucks an hour. She took a 6 hour written test on the coding, passed to get her license and was told "oops sorry no raises this year because of Covid" all while claiming over 1million in PPE funds (my company took 5 and a half and canceled bonuses on top of a raise freeze). Both her and my company made record profits this past year. She's now doing two people's jobs and making 22k a year after taxes. Her last job for a newspaper company owned by the Berkshire Hathaway group, literally had a woman retire, giving my wife her entire workload on top of doing the job she was hired to do, AND she had to work one hour a day covering reception while the receptionist went to lunch. They offered her a nickel an hour more to stay.. (She was making 11.50 there)

That's with a college degree that's apparently worth little more then a GED to employers now.

So personally I have a really hard time feeling bad for companies that paid starvation wages for a decade or longer, crying now that the government that forced them to go on unemployment in the first place is giving them enough money to pay all their bills AND afford to eat at an applebee's. Who would want to go back to being spit at for not including enough bbq packets, or being called a loser by some welfare queen when it takes longer then 5 minutes to make 16 happy meals.

$15/hr for a welder seems a bit of a joke.  I'm assuming that goes up fairly quickly with experience.

I'm not telling you what to do, but you could get some experience and open your own shop, or mobile welding service.  Take anything into welding shop around here and you are instantly spending big bucks, as in $100+ per hour.  But if you're good, it's worth it.

Owning a business is a leap that imo more people need to try.  You can work hard to make someone else rich, or work (even harder) to make yourself rich.

And if you owned the business, you could have received the PPP money.  You get the tax deduction on the welders, pickups, and the cell phone you buy.  You can learn to play the game, or you can get played.  Mostly, it's a mental leap that most people have trouble making and a willingness to take a risk.  

U no get Yellow contract?

Besides taking the good old dollar off the gold system then they went later and made the cost of living based off cheap china made goods like TV's and furniture....not stuff like food and gas that people need to survive.....

$15 an hour, that's it?  That's fucking ridiculous.  Does it pay higher in other areas?  Fast food jobs pay that much in Utah.  I see adds for truck drivers - $27 an hour starting.  Home every night and all the hours you'd want.

At least around here, shop welders have generally not been paid great.

Field work and DOT work though, those guys make bank.

Specialty work seems to pay okay too. I know a guy that TIG welded water filtration systems and at the time was making over $20/hr, easy work environment, set up inside, at a TIG station all day.

When they ran the gas lines through PA awhile ago 1099 welders with their own rig were making $100/hr, as many hours as you wanted.

I have another friend who is certified too and we talked about going halves on a truck and a welder and just blasting out hours for a year, then selling the rig. Should have done it, but we both already had good jobs and were home every night.

As far as the self employment thing....I think more people should try it too, then when they realize all the bullshit that employers have to put up with they might be a little more understanding about why things are done the way they are.

$20 bucks an hour is supposed to be ''good'' pay? And right there is the problem. No welders, no product, no management bonuses, no business at some point.

Personally, at $20 an hour, I'm not even getting my A/C gauges and hoses out of the vehicle.

Yep, seeing a lot of complaining and some job hopping in commercial construction

Spot on. I could have wrote this myself.

We had a 7% cut in pay last year and 2.5% cut in benefits.  They gave us a one time 3.5% back this year.  The reality is my employer doesn't have the money.  I like the job. Love the people and love the area I live (very rural) but it is getting to the point where I can't keep going backwards.  I was hoping to make it here the 6-8 years until retirement but right now it doesn't look good.

We pay so poorly that every time someone leaves we can't find replacements.

I suspect this place will likely be shut down or look very very different in the next 5 years.

I am starting to put out feelers again. Time to start commuting again or see if I can find something remote.

Wage increases are late in the cycle of inflation.  Current situation will settle itself as the free money runs out.  Many people harmed their lifetime income curve by not advancing though this time.  

It seems to be a more recent thing that working at Subway at age 26 is OK, and should be paying well enough for an adult to support themselves.  when I was that age only losers were in fast food beyond age 20.

Get certified in pressure piping or section 8 and you will start between 60 and 70K, get your pipe certs and become a CWI and you are easily into 6 figures in a name your salary game with multiple prospective employers.  

In fact if you do get pipe certs drop me  a line...

Attached File

$50K to work at a fast food restaurant, yet professional folks are earning less?



Texas chicken finger chain is paying teenager managers $50,000-a-year as generous COVID benefits trigger worker shortages and force bosses to pay more to retain staff
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9710387/Teens-earning-50K-year-managers-fast-food-chains-massive-staff-shortages-pandemic.html
A Texas fast food restaurant has promoted some teenage workers into managerial positions due to a shortage workers in the labor market
Layne's Chicken Fingers had been losing staff to Walmart and McDonald's
Some of the younger workers in their late teens and early 20s are now earning more than $50,000-a-year
There is an excess of job openings partly due to people claiming unemployment insurance benefits which can often end up paying more than jobs on the market

Sounds like you need to go where the jobs are

Muh professional

Part of the problem is they haven't given base salary raises to VPs for the last 3 years.  They've increased compensation in other ways (for example, the bonus target was raised from 35% to 50% for next year), BUT the new VP benefits from that AND the market rate increases.  I don't work for peanuts and make good money, so I'm not going to get pissy about $15k yet, but I'm worried that this is the start of generalized inflation of around 10% and that I'm falling behind the curve with base salary.

Preach.  I'll accept some salary compression in return for being at a job long enough to get very effective and if I'm learning and developing myself.  There's a reason job hopping used to be looked down on - it stunts the development that would otherwise turn people into the highly capable late 30s/early 40s leaders that really drive the direction of an org.  

But staying somewhere means there's two parties to that transaction.  If companies are taking advantage of the people who stay, then screw them.

all part of the plan to get that "$15 an hour minimum wage"

I will be interested to see in a year or two once the dust settles on this to see just how big of a shift wages take after this

I would need to know what you are calling a "trade" cause my hourly guys ... that are carpenters, pipe fitters, operators, etc... easily make more than me some years (I am a salary PM)

and it doesn't bother me one bit when they do make more than me !!

Perhaps gone are the days of "interns" working for next to nothing for "experience". I say good riddance to those days. I'm glad to see potential/current employees being as mercenary as the employers.

Definitely seeing this in accounting.  We seem to be doing okay staying up with things, but there is definitely a shortage of qualified people to hire.

I agree with all that except the word “fair”.  “Fair” is for children.