First, I’ll say this thread won’t apply to all careers. Firefighters, teachers, etc., can probably disregard. The theme of this is that for most of us, our employer feels that we should feel grateful for a 3-6% annual pay raise. However, most people earn 10-20% or more when they leave their job for a similar job somewhere else, especially after they’ve stayed at their job a couple years.

I’ll pose an example. Let’s say you’re a marketing manager for company ABC in Atlanta. You’ve been there for 3 years making $60,000 when you started, $62,500 after a year, $65,500 after 2 and you’ll make $68k or so after your third. There are plenty of marketing manager jobs in Atlanta. Many of which pay $80k or more. You now have more years of experience that would warrant $80k-90k. So why stay? Common reasons are - you have a family and don’t want to bring about any risk, you like your job, you like your coworkers, you have a good boss, maybe you’re due for a potential promo, etc.

If you could make $80k+ elsewhere then they don’t value you, your boss doesn’t have your back (or no authority to do so), you could get a promo eventually but you could just make more now elsewhere, etc.

I find this phenomenon odd and I’m hoping to learn insight from my peers by posting this. I’ve worked at 6 different companies in my 10 year career thus far. Each time I left it resulted in a 10%+ raise. I do very much enjoy what I do currently and I would love to stay, but what always seems to happen when I have the career talk in past history is “the maximum raise anyone received on the team is x% so we thought you’d be pleased” and I assume that’ll happen again because in my experience, that’s just how companies operate. Gotta leave to truly get paid.

Iso commentary, rebuttal, prove me wrong, etc.

This post was edited by AspenSniper on Mar 8 2020 08:43pm

As someone in software, I've gotten some substantial pay increases when I jumped ship. I make it a priority to start looking every 2 years to see if I can do significantly better. I wish the world wasn't like that but that's the way it is.

Honestly it just depends what you value.

Sometimes you really enjoy the relationships at your job, and it's stable, and you make enough to live comfortably. Jumping jobs can be hectic, and there's people out there who just genuinely value stability over substantially higher income. Sometimes it's location. I know plenty of people who work in small towns because they hate cities and hate to travel, and there's just not many jobs out in the country. Even though they could be potentially doubling their income even after CoL increase, they want to stay because they like living where they are currently living.

Sometimes though, it's just because the person is a pussy and not willing to look for better opportunities.

You already listed common reasons, which I think make sense. People with a family can definitely prioritize personal/family time more than career ambition, location is another factor.

Its a good argument, but you're probably in the top 10% of workers so what works for you probably doesn’t work for everyone.

I don’t know if that’s true. Even my 2nd career job only paid 35k a year. It was equally effective then.

depends on your industry. for these certain disciplines, a general rule is that at any shop you find yourself at, if you’ve been there for ~3 years and you haven’t moved up (promoted or took a diff job in the same company that progresses your career track) then it’s time to move out

it’s been this way for over a decade now.

yeah my field is the same

My partner works for the highest paying company in her industry and has 15 years with them, i jumped ship a few times for pay rises but i have found working with people i enjoyed being around outweighed a few dollars.

There is risk in leaving your current job where you are comfortable, have the mutual respect of your coworkers, and have many avenues to develop your skills.

Yes often times the best way to get a significant bump (10-20%) is by leaving your current job. As a manager there are limited options available for us to meet this kind of raise - there are "market adjustments" or "retention adjustments" that can be done for essential people but it's really hard to get these.

I would say it is definitely a balance between comfort in your current role, what you could reasonably get by leaving your current job, and what skills and experience you can continue to gain in your current role. For example for a reasonably sized company, even if you work in say the IT group there is still much you can learn in project management, finance, supply chain, sales, operations, and most other functional groups that will add value to your resume and keep your job interesting and fresh.

Now more than ever the expectation is that most employees will stay for 2-3 years and either transition to a new role in the company or move on.

The best advise I have received on this is that its not always about the money, but if you feel like it's time to move on you should trust your intuition. Even if you make a mistake you are still moving forward in your career.

Good luck