This is a story about my first job after grad school, and the first one I ever had in my field. It wasn’t a huge company, but it was high-profile.
When I started, I was hyper qualified and deeply underpaid. This office even “forgot” to pay me my actual pay – they didn’t include the small raise they did offer to my paycheque until I noticed and asked. They were so cheap, they even had an annual cleanup day, where staff were expected to deep clean and fix the office. Winner got a 10$ Chipotle gift card.
Bring the young, dumb good girl that I was at the time, I started off accepting this. I did accept I was “paid in prestige,” that this would help me in my career later on. I am embarrassed now to say, I even won that stupid Chipotle gift card after I brought a caulk gun in on cleanup day. I used it to seal the leaking window behind my desk that froze me in winter, and that they just couldn’t get around to fixing. I worked on multiple projects other than my own, to fill staffing gaps that were never filled, because, as my boss admitted, they were under strong pressure from the owners to increase revenue, and it’s easier to not hire people than get more customers. I was selected for a management and leadership training program, but never got to actually go it, because I was just too important on those other projects that were never my actual job or focus to begin with.
As if that is not enough, this place was owned by a Bond villain of a man. His actual name is Conrad Moffat Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour. You may have heard of our friend Conrad – he went to jail in the US for stealing millions of dollars from some other businesses he controlled, but Trump pardoned him after dear Conrad wrote a book about Trump full of praise and glowing compliments. Not that any of this was discussed. The owner was “the Black family.” Now doesn’t that sound nice?
Anyway, as far as I knew at the time, all of my troubles were temporary. This job would lead to better things later on, I just needed to get this one promotion first. They would eventually give me the promised promotion. I would eventually make enough money that I could buy myself whatever sandwich I wanted at the nearby deli and not even think about it.
Being on this sub, ya’ll know how it really went. After making me do a massive project as a “test” for the promotion, and then killing the interview, the Powers That Be decided to not promote anyone, and do it all again in six months for “administrative” reasons, aka we want to pay you your current salary and make you do the extra work for free, while also eventually giving the promotion itself to this upper class British guy we just think “fits better.”
So I found a new job. It didn’t take long. The fun lady is, it laid 63% more, and that was when I negotiated for more vacation days instead of more money.
So I told everyone. Remember how I had to fill gaps on different projects? I now knew people on all those teams. I told them how little, junior me found a job so quickly, for so much more. I have a few advice how to do the same. I told even more than that about salaries for comfortable positions elsewhere. I wasn’t hostile or aggressive and I didn’t say anything specifically bad about anything. I was just…informative.
I also told a lot of stories about dear Lord Black – not everyone knew quite how rich or awful their owner is, and how much more he could afford. There I must say I wasn’t quite as discreet. Not that I had to be too loud – the man is easily Googleable.
People were mad. i was one of the more junior, and by leaving I got more than they ever got being loyal. I think my situation was kind of the last straw for a lot of them. Some quit, a lot more had meetings with their own bosses demanding change, who also were unhappy (my new job paid more than my boss too). Morale was not good.
In the end, they had to raise salaries significantly. Lord Black had paid a consulting company a bunch of money to hear that my employer should be more profitable now that he owned it directly, and this was a change in the opposite direction. He wasn’t really owning us for the profits, he was in it himself for the ego, and this pushback caused enough bad feelings that he sold it.
It is now owned by a company that runs it like a company that knows it’s main asset is it’s IP, and for that you need smart people who stay for a while and don’t hate you. It is now more profitable, too.
I really don’t think it was just me that triggered this massive change. I think I was one thing of many. But I did appear at just the right time. If I had been quiet and said nothing, and just gone on privately, then who knows what would have happened, or when? If nothing else, I did directly help those who left after me, or who were able to get better pay and stay.