How I paid for my own raises, twice.
Have you ever believed in an idea so much that you said to your boss “look, if you give me x time frame to build this, I’ll come back with Y revenue or I’ll go back to my old job / fire me?”
I was always willing to put my ass on the line to get what I wanted out of my manager. It served me well. I assumed they had 10 other people asking for raises / promotions / etc who felt that they deserved it as much as I did.
I wanted to show up having already paid for my raise with performance on things they didn’t ask me to do.
Its been so long since I had to pitch hard for dollars, but I do remember at the 2 jobs I had before Seer, in the first (startup, I was employee #1 FT) wanted a raise and never thought to ask for one w/o a pitch, so I told my boss, hey if we are getting paid .10 cents per click, and we get on average X clicks per month, and if I am a high performer according to my reviews if I continue to get that many clicks per client, then I’ll get a regular raise b/c I’m doing my job. But what if I go home and obsess about this and find ways on nights and weekends to can rank higher for more keywords and get our clients more clicks, then for everything over the benchmark can I get .005 per click as a bonus up to X amount, and if I drop below that point you can stop the bonus. It was 23 years ago, so I can’t remember it all, I was maybe 22, but I got my bonus.
My second job, I remember wanting a raise (but it was big corporate, I was employee 25,000) so I wanted to show the company that I built something they didn’t ask me to (that is the key, if they asked me to do it, it would be part of my job, if they never asked for it, I went above and beyond) and I turned it into money, so I presented (coverage4me) — an insurance portal, where I could optimize more aggressively than I could on the corporate site and sent the traffic to our sites, in our fist year it made 300–500k in premium I believe. Then some higher ups got wind of it and shut it down.
Just reflecting on something I always did…try to pay for my own raise, unequivocally. It puts you in a different position at the table, cause of dunning kreuger effect, everyone also hitting up your boss thinks they are above average too, they have their pitch on their contributions too, but you are in a whole different position when you can point to the scoreboard.
Keep in mind, it’s a good idea to know how your company’s financials work too BTW
