I'm in IT and I joined this company about half a year ago. Apologies if this won't be relevant to everyone but it helps understand the amount of bullsh* that goes on at corporate level.
My current boss doesn't care about the company, approves our time offs without even looking over it and always is honest to the point of putting himself in danger. He is quite high in the hierarchy so it's not easy to fire someone like him which is why he can do all sorts of stuff without repercusions.
What I learned:
– He would easily have paid me 10K/year more if I had asked for it but he was incentivized to get people cheap. ( They gave me what I asked for ) -> So ask for more than you think you are worth.
– He says that now that he knows my capabilities, I am worth 30K more on the marketplace at the right
company. Which for me sounds crazy and triggers impostor syndrome. But all in all, you're worth way more than the company will let you know. You just gotta have leverage in negociations and act like you're better than you really are.
– The company is doing way worse than they wanna let us know. So always update your resume and be chatty with recruiters and other companies, just to see what's out there.
– Never be loyal to a company. The more loyal you are, the less money you make. If you act like a mercenary for hire, people not only will pay you more, but will think you are better at the job and respect you more.
– Lie. Last time he switched jobs, he told the new company that he was making 40k more than he was actually making – thus the new position gave him 10k extra on top of that. And that's how he got 50K rise in 1 job hop.
– The higher management are incompement, they are taking the worst business decisions and they got there because of experience and political games. Also, they work on average way less than the actual productive employees. For example our new CTO is a complete failure with no idea of what's going on and we really don't need him but he's paid around 200k a year here in UK.
– He makes way more money by playing political games in corporate than he made by coding. And most of the day he's doing nothing at all nowadays.
– The budget the company has for keeping people is smaller than the budget for hiring new people. So it's easier to get a raise by switching jobs than by asking for a raise. -> And if you want to get a decent raise at the same company, the best way is to come to them with a offer from another company. They will only pay you significantly more when they think you are 100% going to leave. You gotta force their hands.
– Since he doesn't care if we are being efficient with our work or not and our CTO is an idiot, we can lie to him and tell him we're working on stuff we're not actually working on, and use that time to learn, do some courses, apply to other jobs etc. As apparently, a lot of people do stuff like that.
I'll add more stuff to this if I remember.
Let me know if this is interesting/useful at all.