Your employer is ALWAYS looking for a way to either get more work out of you for the same compensation, or replace you with some one or some process that produces the equivalent output for less cost. The entire idea that employees should be loyal to their employers is one of the most successful propaganda campaigns ever spawned by capitalism.
There was a time where more companies held on to people and you could start and retire in the same company. That’s now decades ago. That era ended with the oil crisis and never came back, despite bosses pretending it’s still there.
Oh, how they hate the new generations doing exactly the same as they do, and only being interested in what’s in it for them in the short term and not trusting any promises.
If any new hires want to test this, simply ask your interviewer about the opportunities for advancement for the role you’re interviewing for, as well as the ways the company rewards good performers, initiative, and efficiency. They will 100% give you an excited, optimistic view of how there’s plenty of opportunity at this company and how effort and initiative are rewarded with bonuses, raises, promotions, etc.
…ask about any of those opportunities again in 2 years.
“Your work was perfect and thanks to your continued efforts going above and beyond we achieved record profits. Unfortunately the budget doesn’t allow any raise this year.”
In what will probably be the best career coincidence of my life, I had searched, applied, background checked, interviewed, been offered, accepted, and set a start date for a new job while working at my current job…and the date I was to submit my 2 week notice ended up, after being delayed 3 times, being the date of my annual review.
Thus, I sat through my excellent review and was told pretty much exactly what you just said, with the bonus of “since you’re doing so well, we’re going to let you do the extra work of another employee who just quit due to over working after we laid off the other person who was with them…but also you’re still not going to get paid any more”.
I sat through the whole review and at the end of it, got the reward of getting asked if I had any feedback for them, and being able to say, “So… you’re telling me I’m doing everything right, and as a reward for that I’m getting no raise and double the responsibilities? I’m sorry but that doesn’t sound reasonable to me.”
And just as my boss started launching into the routine about being a team player and these are difficult times, I cut him off and said, “Sorry, but that doesn’t make it okay. In fact, this is my 2 week notice. I wanted to hear what my review and outlook for the next year would be before I said anything, but the company, through the review, has confirmed to me that I’m making the right choice. This isn’t anything personal against you…but it’s just clear the company doesn’t value me as anything other than an exploitable labor source and has no plans for me to advance in rank or pay…only in workload.”
I’m looking forward to enjoying this same experience in the next month or two. I’m about to interview for a new position that will more than triple my salary and half my workload. My current company loves to dangle the carrot ,“Do the work of a position two levels above yours for a year, and then maybe we’ll consider changing your title and compensation to match.” But of course they never do.
,“Do the work of a position two levels above yours for a year, and then maybe we’ll consider changing your title and compensation to match.” But of course they never do.
Yup.
At the job before the two I talked about, I got hired with a raise at 6 months built into my offer. After that, I was there 2.5 years with not one more raise, not even cost of living, let alone anything remotely keeping up with inflation or any sort of merit based increase.
The one time I asked about a raise, 2 full years in, I got the same response as you did. Work an extra job role on top of my main role for a year then we’ll think about it.
I asked in response what they’d say if I had walked in suggesting I should get a 50% raise for no extra work performance for a year, and then I’d decide whether or not I want to take on the extra work after a year of the extra pay. My boss kinda laughed and said that’s not how it works.
So I said exactly, it doesn’t work the other way either, and that was the end of that meeting.
…then it was total surprised Pikachu less than 6 months later when I gave my notice.
In one of my several “exit interviews” in which they tried to convince me to stick around (but offered only the “incentive” of letting me make more money…by working 5 hours of OT every week…when OT had been always available in unlimited amounts anyway), my boss asked me what was so bad about my current situation or what was so great about my new offer that I wanted to “hang him and the company out to dry” (they’d asked me to stay on indefinitely…at no raise…until they could recruit my replacement and I could train them…naturally I refused).
My answer was basically: “You remember how you laughed me out of the room when I suggested that instead of me working a year of double work for the same pay before you gave me a raise, and instead you give me the raise for a year and I’d decide if I wanted to do the work? Well this new role gives me a 40% raise and less than half the workload of my current role. Also it is strictly focused on my area of expertise and technical work instead of being 90% customer service like it is here, which I specifically asked about in my interview and was assured it’d be less than 25% public facing. So in effect, they’re actually beating the offer I proposed that you laughed at. Honestly, you wouldn’t even have to match their offer to get me to stay. Had you given me a 10 or 15% raise, I’d have never even gone looking. But now I’ve been offered 3 things I wanted, and you’ve made it clear that you never have any intention of ever even coming close to that offer, on any of the 3 fronts of pay, workload, and focus on technical work and getting away from customer relations.”
They said basically they were a small business and couldn’t afford to do any of that, and that was basically the end of the discussion.
To add some positivity… Art is absolutely something you can make money with. It’s a struggle and you’re going to be poor for most of your early career, but that goes for most jobs. Make art.
What is your discipline? I personally am a graphic designer, but I also shoot and edit video, learned to produce shoots, and shoot and edit edit photo when needed, though I’m definitely nothing specia with photo. I love animating my designs in after effects and I have made myself pretty damn good with html, css, JavaScript and web flow. You gotta be open to things. Creativity is all connected. Any boring PowerPoint deck can be a creative challenge.
But remember that you’re working is worth real money. Everyone else thinka you do nothing and you’ll have to earn all of your respect. Be kind and humble. It is possible.
I will never forget when my tourist ass was bumbling through O’Hare on my way to my gate and this dark haired woman who I have dubbed the Executive Raven went blasting past me in a pencil skirt and 3-inch heels with her little rolly suitcase clacking behind her and I thought, “damn.”
Then I got to my gate and she was already there waiting for her own flight, she’d whipped out a laptop and an earpiece and appeared to be running the entire world so that it wouldn’t collapse in the three hours that she would be on the plane.
You meet a lot of these people in airports. I think me and the OOP don’t meet a lot of them, otherwise.
My biggest lesson was that decades of work means nothing if you become disabled (in the US).
You can end up with literally nothing and lose literally everything if you become disabled. Even if you still have skills, even though you worked hard to contribute to society for decades, it can all go away overnight and you can suddenly not afford food anymore. There’s no safety net, and you won’t learn that until you need it.
I don’t know if they stopped, but American kids at least used to be taught both Celsius and Fahrenheit. At least in some parts anyway. I was taught both as a kid, with my school largely banning the use of Fahrenheit by staff on campus even, for instance.
Oh I work for the government my friend. I actively disrupt those meetiings, I complain out loud that they could have been an email, I take great joy in pointing out that none of our “feedback” is ever implemented and that the meetings are an ego massaging exercise.
Consequently, 75% of the regular attendees like me and 25% want to stab me really bad, but we do now have fewer meetings.
I sometimes send emails that probably should have been meetings. Here’s a couple pages of dense text and bullet points, I’ll need your feedback on most of it, so please get back to me ASAP with an equally long email, thanks.
Yeah but doing it through email still has so many benefits. You can refer back to it years later if needed, you can think out and rewrite your points, include someone else later without restating everything…
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