i like my job for the most part. like most of the people I work with, like my direct leads. what I can't fucking stand is upper management. A new CEO came in a little over a year ago and you can feel it everywhere. my first year of work, I got three raises. I ended up $4 ahead of what I was started at. one of those they gave every single person in the company a decent raise, even the temps got a dollar raise. I took a .50 cent payout when I started working from home, but it was work it because it saved me gas and my mental health as a whole (was also partially my fault, I hadn't checked my last pay stub before I'd applied and hadn't been told I'd gotten a raise, so I put my last pay on it, so I thought I was getting a raise at first, but I dealt with it, it was worth it). when interviewing they also told me so matter of factly what the rate of pay was, I didn't even think to try to negotiate, so again, on me, I know better now. new department is in the same company. I'm just thrilled to not be where I was.
FAST FORWARD TO YEARLY REVIEW TIME. when we're supposed to be doing our review that determine our “merit increase”. I left my last department because there was no growth, I was doing most of the work, they wouldn't even promote me to a second tier, I'm burnt out to high hell, and I'm still carrying that entire department on my back, only been there just over a year. I get absolutely glowing reviews from my previous supervisors on my year end review and current lead, I get multiple four stars (because this is a company where doing your job well is three stars, you have to work your ass off for four, five is basically unheard of, no one gets a five ever, which I think is a whole other load of horseshit but whatever, it's like professors who prided themselves on never giving an A), and I'd only been in the current position about three months. three months later, everyone finally finds out about their raises.
please keep in mind, every raise I'd had in the past had been at least a dollar.
you know it isn't good when your lead starts out with, “it's less than what everyone had been hoping for”. I'm already bracing myself for the worst, figuring it's because I'm new or maybe not good at my job yet, but my lead takes the time to tell me that no, I was doing a phenomenal job, this is just what the raise was across the board for our department.
2%. Which equaled a whopping 32 cents for me. found out later it was much the same across a big portion of the company, at least for anyone working hourly. after all their talk of how we were smashing all of our goals, doing great, this is the thanks we get. but I put up with it, because I'd been going through some shit around them and was too emotionally dumb to deal with it.
I find out some other stuff over the next few months, a huge amount of my department leaves (can't blame them), they change the bonus structure they've had for 20 years where everyone was guaranteed a bonus to 'ehh maybe you will' and the CEO can allocate percentages from one department to another at her discretion. then a couple weeks ago we have a “town hall” and that's really what. killed this company for me.
it was q&a time and someone had the balls to ask about if they were ever going to do a cost of living increase with pay since they'd also talked about how we were all center of the company, we were the ones making things happen, blah blah blah.
the answer given boiled down to “no fuck you.” a slightly longer version includes something about how they do an annual merit increase in the spring, and stick around and see what you might get. which. let me tell you. the amount of people that pissed off was huge. hell I'm still pissed.
I'm also a project coordinator in clinical trials and finding out that I'm hella underpaid compared to virtually every other company in the industry. I've been looking on the DL for something else, but again, I really do enjoy my job. just today I got assigned two very heavy bandwidth studies, on top of several other heavier bandwidth ones. and I don't mind doing the work, I wouldn't say I enjoy it, but it's easy and I feel like I'm doing something, but it's going to be a LOT of work with these new studies. next month I hit a year in this position. and I want to ask for a raise but I don't know how. I'm thinking about reaching out to a friend I have in the company (friends since we were kids, just didn't find out until later that we were at the same company) or old supervisor for advice on going about it, because my leads are huge advocates of doing what's best for you (hell, old supervisor was the biggest cheerleader when someone would leave for a better position or job outside the company) but since I've never done it before, I'm nervous about it, and hope if I make it a whole year then maybe I'll have a better shot? idk
this is mostly just a rant but I didn't know where to put it, so I'm sorry if this isn't the right place