Categories
Antiwork

Got offered a really exciting promotion in role, responsibilities, and influence. Not pay, though :)

TLDR; I got offered a higher position title with a lot more responsibility and influence but was told I wouldn't be getting an increase in salary and shouldn't have expected one in the first place. Using a throwaway here. Early last week, my (27F) manager (we'll call him Brad) told me he was leaving our company to pursue another path. He told me that most likely, his boss (we'll call him Isaac) would be meeting with us both that week to discuss the details of his replacement. To my surprise, Isaac offered me the role. Without going into too much detail of what I do, the promotion was perfectly inline with my career goals and I was really excited for the opportunity. I told Isaac I would be thrilled to take the position and we could schedule a 1 on 1 in the next couple of days to go over…


TLDR; I got offered a higher position title with a lot more responsibility and influence but was told I wouldn't be getting an increase in salary and shouldn't have expected one in the first place.

Using a throwaway here. Early last week, my (27F) manager (we'll call him Brad) told me he was leaving our company to pursue another path. He told me that most likely, his boss (we'll call him Isaac) would be meeting with us both that week to discuss the details of his replacement. To my surprise, Isaac offered me the role. Without going into too much detail of what I do, the promotion was perfectly inline with my career goals and I was really excited for the opportunity. I told Isaac I would be thrilled to take the position and we could schedule a 1 on 1 in the next couple of days to go over the details, (salary, role structure, etc).

So, the day of the meeting comes and I was feeling pretty nervous. I don't have a ton of experience negotiating salary, and based on advice I had gotten from friends in the industry, I was planning on asking for a fairly large, but fair, salary increase. For context, I am currently making ~60k /yr, and I would be asking for 80k /yr. I know that may sound like a lot, but for the new job title and what that job entails, this is the average starting salary for that position. Tbh, it's on the low end of things, but taking into account my years of experience I think it's appropriate. I should also mention; Brad told me that they were paying him 110k for this same role.

When I open up the Google Calendar meeting invite to join the meeting with Isaac, I realized that it was no longer a 1 on 1 as the president of the company (we'll call him Tom) was also going to be in this meeting. Now, I should probably say, Tom sucks. I haven't worked that close with him often, but enough where I know I don't like him. If you looked up 'slimy business douchebag' in the dictionary, Toms picture would be in it. But whatever, it is what it is. So we get into the meeting, and Tom takes up 20 of the 30 minutes scheduled gong off about how “crucial this role is to the company”, how it can “really effect the success of the company” and “how much influence you have on this product in this role”. So, I'm thinking, great. He knows how important the role is, I'm feeling even more confident about my salary increase. Finally Isaac asks me if there's any other details I wanted to go over, and I say yes I'd like to go over salary. Tom tells me: “Because we usually do our salary reviews at the end of the year, I think we should keep you at 60, see how to preform in the role, and revisit your salary in 4 months or so.”

I was legitimately shocked. Not only did he just go on for 20 minutes about how important and critical this role was, but now he wants me to do all this extra work/take higher levels of initiative/make impactful, positive changes to the company essentially for free. Because “it's a great opportunity”. He tried to make it seem like not only was he doing me an incredible favour, but he doesn't really know why I expected a raise at all – after all, I haven't done the job yet and therefore haven't proved my ability in the role. Suck my dick, Tom.

After going back and forth, he just told me to take the weekend and think about it because I'm obviously “more than welcome to stay in my current position and not progress”. So not only will I not be taking the job, but I will be quitting as soon as humanly possible. And when Isaac asks me my reason for leaving, I will be very candid about not wanting to work for the human douche nozzle that is Tom.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.