“Congrats on your 1 year anniversary! Just to be straight, i know you may be expecting raise or stock options or something, but its not happening. I dont want you to feel this reflects on your performance at all, you've done an amazing job, and the company is very pleased. Times are just tough for tech companies right now.”. “But I took more than 1/3 pay cut to take this job, a step backwards to take a step forward and inflation is crazy”. “Sorry I understand but there is nothing i can do”.
Giving absolutely NOTHING and yet saying did an amazing job is really wearing on my motivation even though salary is nor normally my motivation. Even won some company-wide awards and coworkers were all “so cool!! how much was the bonus for that?!?”. Me: nothing but an “atta boy”.