As a middle-manager, one lesson that had to be taught to me by my boss is that if you have a 5% raise pool to work with, the junior team members should be getting 7-10% raises and the senior members should be getting 3-4%. Otherwise, compound interest will cause the senior’s salaries to take off and the junior folks will never catch up. It may be ok for folks who have worked for 4 years to get half the salary as those that have 8 years of experience. But the numbers should be getting closer together when the experience moves to 8 and 12 years, respectively, not getting farther apart.

The corollary is that once you’re at the high end of the pay scale, don’t bitch about getting smaller raises percentage-wise. Unless you really want to have to keep training new junior members. Cash-wise, you’re still going to be fine.

I also think that you’re dead on about how women are just not taught to reach and aspire to the big career. A friend once posted a sticky on her bulletin board at work that said:

“If you don’t make plans for yourself, someone else will make them for you. And guess what they have planned for you? NOT MUCH.”

It’s so true.

Also, “Getting To Yes” is an excellent recommendation. It was required reading in the “negotiating boot camp” my employer sent me to a couple years back.

I’m Plum Pie’s sister, hence the moniker. I’ve been really lucky and really unlucky. I had an awful first boss (male) and was harassed out of my workplace by a racist misogynist. It was a job I’d only taken because in spite of being ambitious and intelligent I couldn’t envisage myself in any of the entry level roles that would have actually led me somewhere so I took a ‘safe’ admin job where I knew I had the skills and kidded myself it would lead somewhere. It did, mental breakdown.

I was grateful for the job which I’d really needed when I applied for it and more grateful for any additional responsibility that relieved the tedium of the work, as such they got me doing lots of managerial stuff for a secretarial salary while I had to be deferential to the bozos in charge. What’s more I was told I wasn’t senior enough to attend any of the meetings at which the information was given that I needed to complete the tasks they were relying on me to do. Ugh! Eventually after months of this plus various sorts of nasty bullying I left.

After a season or two in temp-hell I was lucky enough to have a wonderful (again male) boss who treated me with respect, mentored me and got me a foot in the door doing something that wasn’t admin.

Women of the world, DON’T DO ADMIN! It’s a trap. Please! I know you can do it, I know it’s easy, I know it’s socially acceptable and pays the bills but please take a chance and specialise! If you must take a role with admin tasks, have it be a project assistant on a specific project where you also do work towards the project. Have admin be a small part of the role.

Don’t look for an admin role, look for a role doing something that you want to do and if you haven’t got all the skills yet but can use your admin ability as a bridge do that. Put the admin down, step away from the admin. It labels you and keeps you poor, de-skilled and bored.
After one good boss I knew what to look for and I’ve been really careful to do so. I’ve seen it in men and women and feel especially privileged to have worked for one wonderful woman at my last organisation who has become my friend.

This wonderful woman said this to me which has really stuck “Women too often move sideways instead of upwards when they change jobs. They go for what they know they can do. They’re not willing enough to put out a punt application and see if they get it.”

We all need to give it more of a go sometimes. After all you never know.

QT

PS. I wholeheartedly agree about researching salaries, jobs etc. ‘Getting to Yes’ by Fisher, Ury and Patton is an excellent and well known book on negotiation which many women would benefit by. The technique they talk about is effective, assertive and fair and doesn’t have many of the qualities of traditional negotiation that puts many women off (Game playing, grandstanding, doing down the other party etc). We have to negotiate so much in life it pays to learn how to do it well.

I recently got a promotion and a raise, to give me the title and salary for the work I’d been doing for a year. My (male) partner kept urging me to talk to my boss about it, but I kept putting it off. I said, “You know, no one’s getting a raise this year due to budget.” Which is true, but they have been giving pay increases with promotions. In the end they gave it to me anyway, and I’m happy to be making more, but I feel like a sucker for not having spoken up before. It’s been a mixed experience.

Thanks, Becky et al! I feel like this is the sort of knowledge that normally gets passed on in old boys’ clubs and the fact that it’s being passed on to young women through feminist websites is amazingly awesome.

(Says the academic who’s never held a real job. But I’ve read about them!)

*This was 2006-early 2007, I think. I’m pretty out of the loop on that stuff now.

So, know your company’s policies, know the value of your work to your company, and know your market value. Also, in this economy, know how healthy the market is for your skills and experience. It may be true that being hired from the outside by a new company will boost your salary, and this can be useful leverage if you choose to negotiate with your current employer. But the degree of leverage obviously decreases if everyone knows that employers in your field just aren’t hiring right now. That doesn’t mean that you should just shut up and be grateful that you have a job; you can still push for being paid appropriately, and keep your eye out for new opportunities. Just be smart about it

In other jobby news, if anyone in the NYC area would be interested in an executive assistant position (and has some experience) related to feminist interests, I just got word of an opening at the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. Email me if you want the job description.