I’m in graduate school and I received an offer for full-time employment from the employer I worked for this summer, which I will refer to as “AP.” The main issue is that the full time salary I am being offered by AP is lower than the estimate initially given to me before I agreed to an internship there.
Starting from the beginning, last fall I received two offers for a summer internship. The other offer paid a much higher summer salary than AP. I asked AP if they could “make up any ground” on the other offer. AP matched the other offer (this was a high salary for a summer job). Before accepting, I asked AP (specifically, the supervisor who would “negotiate” my full time offer currently pending) what the full time salary would be out of grad school if I continued to work there. She told me, though with uncertainty, that it would be around $130,000. I accepted AP’s offer for summer employment. I also withdrew from other open applications that would have paid more.
Flash forward to the present. AP gave me a full time offer for after grad school. However, before bonuses, the offer is only for $110,000 – not $130,000. At no time during my employment did anyone at AP ever express to me that the full-time salary would be lower than what I was initially told. Additionally, the salary offered now is actually lower than my current hourly rate. The bonuses reasonably would only amount to about $2,500-$10,000.
I sent a polite email asking for a base salary of $118,000, which would have represented my summer pay rate over the course of the year. They rejected, stating that they agreed to my summer salary in exchange for 12 weeks of work (I worked 11), and that $110,000 represented my summer salary over 12 weeks. I politely referenced my offer letter for the summer, which specifically stated the offer was for only 10-11 weeks of work. I also explained that I was told the full-time salary would be higher prior to accepting the summer position and that the salary I was asking for was still less than what they told me.
AP sent me a blunt response back stating that the offer would not change.
While $8k is a relatively small amount of money in the grand scheme of things, I feel disrespected. I fought like hell to get where I am, and I want to finally be respected professionally.