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Engineer Salary Review

  • Transparency in Companies: Salary and Performance Review is one of the most important processes for the Company, so people responsible for this must constantly work to improve this process, create competency matrices, involve HR specialists and management in this process, etc. In some companies, like GitLab, salaries and the processes for salary review are transparent. The company itself initiates salary increases, monitoring the market, inflation, and the professional growth of employees.
  • Impact of Employee Departure: When an employee moves to another company (with or without a salary increase), it is a significant blow to the original company. This impact is much greater than simply raising their salary. The employee possesses project details, process insights, retrospectives, the codebase, and team relationships. The company will need to find and hire a new person, onboard them, and allocate time for the new specialist to master all the details—this can cost the company up to six months of salary for one employee. Additionally, the company might lose part of its reputation if the departing employee was a highly skilled specialist with many anticipated contributions from the team, management, and business.
  • What Engineers Get Paid For: People pay for quality courses not for the information itself, but for the opportunity to speak with an experienced and professional individual. Similarly, companies pay not for code, but for the opportunity to communicate with you, get answers to questions, and receive your opinion on problem-solving. It doesn't matter how perfect your code is if you write it in isolation—no one will know about it. What truly matters is the ability to implement this code to meet business needs, which is only possible through communication with you. The specialist who is active in meetings, can properly present the essence of their initiative or idea, raise important questions, and correctly express their opinion on others' decisions, and will always earn more money. It will simply be very difficult to notice and assess the value of your contribution if you silently write a lot of perfect code.
  • Why Salaries Aren’t Raised: Salaries aren't increased simply because you are performing the duties assigned to you when you were hired. Salaries should be raised when you do more than what is expected of you. Inflation is an exception.
  • What to Do If Your Arguments for a Raise Didn’t Work: You need to sit down at an open negotiation table with your immediate supervisor and the specialists involved in the process of reviewing your salary and ask the following questions:
    • What are your expectations regarding my duties and work?
    • What do I need to achieve, and in what timeframe, to successfully get a salary review now?
    • What would you expect from my work in the future so that I can get another salary review in a year?
  • What Your Salary Increase Request Letter Should Include:
    • Provide the list of your achievements from the Business side starting with the last salary/performance review. Include specific examples and metrics that demonstrate your impact.
    • Provide the list of your achievements from the Tech side starting with the last salary/performance review. Include specific examples and metrics that demonstrate your impact.
    • Provide the list of your achievements from the Soft Skills side starting with the last salary/performance review. Include specific examples that demonstrate your growth.
    • Collect and provide proofed feedback from your colleagues and managers about your work.
    • Provide a list of tasks you completed that were not your responsibility. ⚠️ Be careful with this paragraph, as it may indicate problems in the team's processes or be perceived as a complaint.
    • Provide a list of suggestions regarding your future work that convey the following essence: "What can I do to bring more benefits to the business, the company, and the team?"