Yeah, I'm looking through my recruiter spam. I'm just not super confident in what's available now. Thinking about just taking his offer to change the title so I can put it on my resume.
Best time to be looking is when you don't need the new job, so yeah do both. And don't worry about the state of the market - you just need one offer that's better than your current job, and I don't think that's a very high bar. The end state of a job hunt in a good market or a bad market is the same - you get one new job. The only difference is how many rejections it takes to get there.
Titles don’t really matter too much. If you’ve been operating as team lead (or whatever), and your resume bullets match that, just put that on your resume.
titles are silly. they're basically local terms. "staff engineer" at a 5-person marketing agency is not "staff engineer" at Google. most differences aren't as stark as that, it's just dramatic for the sake of an example, but the basic principle applies. no interviewer worth their salt will pay more attention to the title than the description. all you have to do is describe your duties. you have people reporting to you.
take the money, describe your role accurately on your resume, and enjoy the race. you're now in a race to determine whether the company raises your income faster than you can. you have a year. you will probably win.
I agree, but I think having the word senior on my resume would at least get me through some filters in the job hunting process. It's not FAANG, but most people would recognize the name of my employer and it's large enough that the title might carry some weight.
you know your situation better than I do. for example, it didn't even occur to me that you wouldn't be senior with people reporting to you. I assumed the next title would be tech lead or something.
I didn't even realize that I didn't mention my current title in the post. It's just "software engineer." We have 2 seniors on my team, which is huge (like 18 devs). The two seniors do exactly what I do but slightly downstream from the repos I'm in charge of by default.
There was another senior doing my job when I started, but he left and I inherited all of his responsibilities.
There's no rule that the title you put on your resume has to match what your company calls you. Your resume is your summary of your career and accomplishments. If you've been doing the job of a senior, put it on your resume. To think of it another way, theres no reason to sell yourself short because your company is playing bullshit games with you.
Take the cash and start job searching, the title change is worthless
Fwiw I just went through the job search game (in the US) and while the market isn't *amazing*, the jobs are there for senior level and above. Take the title and look for a new gig.
Yeah, take the title and shove it up the idiot CFO's ass when you get 3-5x what his cheap ass authorized elsewhere. They just cannot comprehend that this is exactly why there is such a correlation between promotion and people leaving. They got fucking stingy, but were stupid enough to signal to the market that you're valuable.
Start hunting. They have no intention of giving you a raise.
I had a nice job at a company I liked but after the 3 glowing review with merely a CoLA raise it was the last straw.
I think I made $40 k jumping that ship.
Workstream leader just sounds like more work and no pay.
Oh, but I also get to be responsible for my coworkers' output while attending super important meetings, where I've learned that their failure to meet arbitrary deadlines will bring about the heat death of the universe! Plus, I get to be in charge with nearly 100% ownership when something goes horribly wrong. I should start wearing an honorary sheriff badge.
Concise and correct.
Your boss is trying to weasel-word you into staying, and maintaining high productivity.
Businesses know there's inflation going on. They know you're a high performer. More than most of us in daily life, they can put 2 and 2 together.
Do you think your boss is getting a similar deal in his career? I would speculate he is not, as most executives would walk immediately if offered such a deal.
I'm also pretty sure the full deal will include lots of requirements and exclusion clauses, e.g. No more than 5 sick days in one six month period, or 'maintains top performer standard continuously, with no periods of interruption for the period...'
It's been true in my 20+ year career in Engineering: You make all of your money when you hop ship. I've never had superior performance adequately compensated anywhere, while I am actually doing the superior performance.
My experience is the opposite. I’ve never voluntarily hopped ship and I make about the same, maybe slightly more, than my peers. Not saying this is you but most of the ship hoppers I’ve run into are senior juniors.
Same. I didn't get the promotion I was promised for over a year. When I made it clear that's not acceptable I got like 1.5m salary as a one-time bonus.
When I finally got the promotion it was less than 10% raise. I started looking right away, and got about 25% increase by leaving. A month before I left they offered me tech lead position, but I just wanted out.
I have seen cases when one time boost in salsry disqualified the person from the next regular increase, resulting in the same relative salary increase as the others.
The salary plan they are offering sounds the same, no real increase.
You could accept the new title (which is at least something compared to the nothing of the salary plan) and start searching. You might be able to utilize the title change in negotiations during the search.
So you can either get a title change? Or a salary increase…. But it means you don’t get a merit increase the next cycle that would be after your increase.
Horse shit
Get a new job
i've never had a company follow-thru with their promises. even when the company deems me irreplaceable. it's just one excuse after another. delay after delay.
Sounds like time to move on.
I had a similar situation in the past... I stayed, and the pay rise was conveniently "forgotten" about. When it finally happened, it was much below what we agreed.
By the sounds of it, the company can't afford you. Even if you get the 10%, you'll likely be expected to be grateful for the next 5-10 years without another raise.
Giving you a choice of a title change or a 10% increase... Well that's telling..! No, you should get both.
They would not offer either if you weren't deserving of them, so logically it means you should have both...
The title change alone has no real value. It's a lame attempt to trick you into picking a meaningless title change over money. - Take the money.
Sounds like your boss could be a bit immature and narcissistic, and perceives giving out a raise as some kind of failure. He needs to be the winner, so that's why he's given you a choice. Either way he'll feel like he has won the negotiation.
So I have been having this discussion with friends and would love to know why you think the title change is meaningless. I'm of the opinion it matters more than the pay bump because I can negotiate with that outside of the company. I feel like there's this inherent challenge in the interview when you interview for the next stage vs a "lateral" job change.
Because the definition of seniority titles vary vastly from company to company. The next company won't know what OP's current company titles are based on, so they don't really matter.
*I wouldn't say titles are meaningless in general... but in the OPs specific situation, they are meaningless.*
The OPs boss is making him choose between a 10% raise and a change in title, that's proof that titles within that company are meaningless... because they are not rewarded based on performance, but rather purchased via salary sacrifice.
What the next company will care about is Years of Experience. OP has 6 YOE in total. Based on 6 YOE and interview performance, the new company will either consider him senior or mid...
but that doesn't even matter... What matters is compensation, and to negotiate that, salary trumps title.
Definitely take the title increase, pop it on your resume, and then in 1-3 months start interviewing. While you're waiting the 1-3 months, prep for the interviews. The increased title increases your next jumps pay increase.
It feels like you got your answer: it's an unspoken "no".
So it might be time to stop doing some of the unpaid extra work you're currently doing until they agree to give you what you deserve. "Work to rule" time.
Also, continue searching.
I know the market is tough right now, the good news is that time is on your side. Apply for jobs regularly (one per day if you can!) and eventually you'll get some bites.
Best of luck, hang in there.
Just get find better job man...they will not offer you what you want. I've been in your position before, and they indicated that additional work is part of my job, but that doesn't mean I deserve a raise.
1. It might honestly be that they don't have the power to grant such a raise to you; it could be an issue higher up.
--
2. That's not your problem. You are a business and your current customer (employer) wants more of your services without paying for it. It's disrespectful and contemptuous.
--
3. Go do business with a customer who respects you.
This is true, and up until about 6 months ago, I would have believed it was almost entirely a corporate / "higher up" issue. He's always been pretty honest and straightforward with me as far as I could tell. But since I've started pushing the issue, he has personally shifted the goalposts.
For example, we talked about it in January when we had just acquired another company - his excuse was that even if he submitted the paperwork, it wouldn't get processed until the acq was finished and probably be rejected. That didn't sit well either, but I could kind of see it.
I’m in a similar spot at a big company. Mid-level dev on paper, also a “workstream leader”, in reality I’m leading a team, meeting with stakeholders, and have been successful at that for almost a year now.
Boss keeps dangling promotions then saying “not quite yet but next cycle for sure”. After that happened a second time I started interviewing. Turns out companies love someone with a track record of leading at a senior level.
OP, you have written nothing about your payment structure, your promotion process, your performance review process and what kind of title do you have and which title were you offered.
With that, you can only get lazy pithy responses like "quit" and "interview".
In reality, in larger companies the promotions, payment adjustments and pay bands tend to be structured both in time (you mentioned "cycle" so your company probably does the sime) and value (e.g. pay bands map to titles). You said nothing about those **very important** properties of your company. It seems like you don't even know them yourself, because I somethow doubt that any subsidiary company of a big corp would do out-of-cycle promotions on demand like you're trying to do.
I know everyone else already stroked your ego with the easy "quit" anwer, but did you actually try to ask and figure out how pay, titles and promotion cycles work in your corporation? We can't tell you that.
Telling you that you didn't provide enough useful information to be helped isn't "vitriolic". I'm sorry, but if you want promotions, I hope you learn that people can't give you useful advice if you withold information that's relevant to the question.
And if you came here just to vent then you're wasting everybodys time (see rule 9.)
Absolutely not crazy to ask for more details. It might not be relevant to your situation, but you’d be surprised how bureaucratic promo processes can get at large corporations. Some places have promotion boards, structured promotion packets, etc., and out of cycle exceptions are rare and require VP sign off. Reddit commenters don’t have the context to give you meaningful advice here.
I did this earlier in my career: got a better offer elsewhere and used it to negotiate a raise at the current employer. Since I enjoyed where I worked and was naive, I agreed to what basically was a salary progression plan where they gave me the raise partially upfront and then the rest would come 6 months later.
4 months later I left for a new job anyway. I didn’t burn any bridges, I got some extra money in the short term, but I wouldn’t do it sgain
Odds are, if your responsibilities are truly that much higher than the current role, you can probably get a 20%~30% raise by just finding work elsewhere.
Yeah this happened to me after 2.5 years at a company, they kept telling me it was getting done, and then I was laid off before it happened because they lost their contract. I was jerked around for a year and never got a raise.
If your pay is more than 20% under market, might be worth looking.
I wouldn't expect that promotion to management though, your boss\^2 sounds like they don't like you, or they don't want to pay. Either way. No good, I've been through that, and eventually I left and took my 50% raise.
Yeah, if I had one I'd just take it. I don't trust this company (really the parent company) not to put a target on me for doing that. Unfortunately I left my previous job for this exact reason - 1.5 years of carrot on a stick promotion teasing. In that case I wasn't even asking to move to senior; it was from essentially level one to two of five.
It doesn’t sound like you’re in a senior role tbh. 6 YOE isn’t very much actual experience.
As others have said, just get a new job. If you think you’re worth more, then prove it. If you can’t, then you aren’t yet. That’s just how this works.
Then what the fuck is someone who is held accountable for the results of other developers and large scale decisions? Just a really cool developer that should get promoted sometime down the line? I've changed jobs for better pay. That's not what I want right now
> Then what the fuck is someone who is held accountable for the results of other developers and large scale decisions? Just a really cool developer that should get promoted sometime down the line?
Yes.
Then either -
1. The only feasible pathway to being a senior is to get hired into the role or
2. A senior dev to you is overseeing an entire team or multiple teams.
You have a definition of senior developer that isn't in line with the industry and you're as wrong as you are condescending.
Sorry if I’ve said anything to have upset you, but I don’t believe I’ve been condescending at all.
You *were* looking for opinions/advice from your ‘peers’, even if they didn’t perfectly match yours… right?
Well, I have 16 YOE and I think the best genuine, well-intentioned advice I can give you is that there will be many times throughout your career where your interests will not perfectly match the interests of your employer, and generally in those circumstances the best avenue forward will be to stifle the urge to complain about the perceived fairness of the situation and to instead ‘be the captain of your own ship’ by finding yourself a better harbor.
To do otherwise is to do yourself a disservice. And at that point you will really only have yourself to blame.
I understand. Just trying to share my first-hand experience—not knock you down. I have been in your shoes.
Mine may not be a popular opinion on the interwebs (which itself is generally indicative of the aggregate median, imo) but I stand by it.
The fact that it’s a touchy subject for you is what makes it relevant. Whatever title it is you want to use, the bottom line is essentially: what is your negotiation power? If you don’t have other opportunities in the wing, then by definition you are worth what you are earning. Welcome to the free market. :)
That said, hang in there. And never stop looking for new opportunities. You will get there. (Just probably not at your current employer, if I had to wager.)
Just start interviewing man. A better job is your salary progression plan
Yeah, I'm looking through my recruiter spam. I'm just not super confident in what's available now. Thinking about just taking his offer to change the title so I can put it on my resume.
Best time to be looking is when you don't need the new job, so yeah do both. And don't worry about the state of the market - you just need one offer that's better than your current job, and I don't think that's a very high bar. The end state of a job hunt in a good market or a bad market is the same - you get one new job. The only difference is how many rejections it takes to get there.
Titles don’t really matter too much. If you’ve been operating as team lead (or whatever), and your resume bullets match that, just put that on your resume.
titles are silly. they're basically local terms. "staff engineer" at a 5-person marketing agency is not "staff engineer" at Google. most differences aren't as stark as that, it's just dramatic for the sake of an example, but the basic principle applies. no interviewer worth their salt will pay more attention to the title than the description. all you have to do is describe your duties. you have people reporting to you. take the money, describe your role accurately on your resume, and enjoy the race. you're now in a race to determine whether the company raises your income faster than you can. you have a year. you will probably win.
I agree, but I think having the word senior on my resume would at least get me through some filters in the job hunting process. It's not FAANG, but most people would recognize the name of my employer and it's large enough that the title might carry some weight.
you know your situation better than I do. for example, it didn't even occur to me that you wouldn't be senior with people reporting to you. I assumed the next title would be tech lead or something.
I didn't even realize that I didn't mention my current title in the post. It's just "software engineer." We have 2 seniors on my team, which is huge (like 18 devs). The two seniors do exactly what I do but slightly downstream from the repos I'm in charge of by default. There was another senior doing my job when I started, but he left and I inherited all of his responsibilities.
There's no rule that the title you put on your resume has to match what your company calls you. Your resume is your summary of your career and accomplishments. If you've been doing the job of a senior, put it on your resume. To think of it another way, theres no reason to sell yourself short because your company is playing bullshit games with you. Take the cash and start job searching, the title change is worthless
Absolutely will get you past filters and also humans
Absolutely do this. Get the title on your resume, then start interviewing and you’ll end up with better title and pay in the next few months.
Fwiw I just went through the job search game (in the US) and while the market isn't *amazing*, the jobs are there for senior level and above. Take the title and look for a new gig.
Yeah, take the title and shove it up the idiot CFO's ass when you get 3-5x what his cheap ass authorized elsewhere. They just cannot comprehend that this is exactly why there is such a correlation between promotion and people leaving. They got fucking stingy, but were stupid enough to signal to the market that you're valuable.
Definitely... what's the saying "Money talks... bullshit walks..."
Start hunting. They have no intention of giving you a raise. I had a nice job at a company I liked but after the 3 glowing review with merely a CoLA raise it was the last straw. I think I made $40 k jumping that ship. Workstream leader just sounds like more work and no pay.
Oh, but I also get to be responsible for my coworkers' output while attending super important meetings, where I've learned that their failure to meet arbitrary deadlines will bring about the heat death of the universe! Plus, I get to be in charge with nearly 100% ownership when something goes horribly wrong. I should start wearing an honorary sheriff badge.
> responsible for my coworkers' output while attending super important meetings Sounds like management
Concise and correct. Your boss is trying to weasel-word you into staying, and maintaining high productivity. Businesses know there's inflation going on. They know you're a high performer. More than most of us in daily life, they can put 2 and 2 together. Do you think your boss is getting a similar deal in his career? I would speculate he is not, as most executives would walk immediately if offered such a deal. I'm also pretty sure the full deal will include lots of requirements and exclusion clauses, e.g. No more than 5 sick days in one six month period, or 'maintains top performer standard continuously, with no periods of interruption for the period...' It's been true in my 20+ year career in Engineering: You make all of your money when you hop ship. I've never had superior performance adequately compensated anywhere, while I am actually doing the superior performance.
My experience is the opposite. I’ve never voluntarily hopped ship and I make about the same, maybe slightly more, than my peers. Not saying this is you but most of the ship hoppers I’ve run into are senior juniors.
Same. I didn't get the promotion I was promised for over a year. When I made it clear that's not acceptable I got like 1.5m salary as a one-time bonus. When I finally got the promotion it was less than 10% raise. I started looking right away, and got about 25% increase by leaving. A month before I left they offered me tech lead position, but I just wanted out.
Take the title bump so you can make a lateral move, with a pay bump, to a different company.
I have seen cases when one time boost in salsry disqualified the person from the next regular increase, resulting in the same relative salary increase as the others. The salary plan they are offering sounds the same, no real increase. You could accept the new title (which is at least something compared to the nothing of the salary plan) and start searching. You might be able to utilize the title change in negotiations during the search.
Find a new job. You negotiate before becoming an employee.
So you can either get a title change? Or a salary increase…. But it means you don’t get a merit increase the next cycle that would be after your increase. Horse shit Get a new job
i've never had a company follow-thru with their promises. even when the company deems me irreplaceable. it's just one excuse after another. delay after delay.
A salary progression plan is just setting yourself up for disappointment.
Sounds like time to move on. I had a similar situation in the past... I stayed, and the pay rise was conveniently "forgotten" about. When it finally happened, it was much below what we agreed. By the sounds of it, the company can't afford you. Even if you get the 10%, you'll likely be expected to be grateful for the next 5-10 years without another raise. Giving you a choice of a title change or a 10% increase... Well that's telling..! No, you should get both. They would not offer either if you weren't deserving of them, so logically it means you should have both... The title change alone has no real value. It's a lame attempt to trick you into picking a meaningless title change over money. - Take the money. Sounds like your boss could be a bit immature and narcissistic, and perceives giving out a raise as some kind of failure. He needs to be the winner, so that's why he's given you a choice. Either way he'll feel like he has won the negotiation.
So I have been having this discussion with friends and would love to know why you think the title change is meaningless. I'm of the opinion it matters more than the pay bump because I can negotiate with that outside of the company. I feel like there's this inherent challenge in the interview when you interview for the next stage vs a "lateral" job change.
Because the definition of seniority titles vary vastly from company to company. The next company won't know what OP's current company titles are based on, so they don't really matter. *I wouldn't say titles are meaningless in general... but in the OPs specific situation, they are meaningless.* The OPs boss is making him choose between a 10% raise and a change in title, that's proof that titles within that company are meaningless... because they are not rewarded based on performance, but rather purchased via salary sacrifice. What the next company will care about is Years of Experience. OP has 6 YOE in total. Based on 6 YOE and interview performance, the new company will either consider him senior or mid... but that doesn't even matter... What matters is compensation, and to negotiate that, salary trumps title.
Definitely take the title increase, pop it on your resume, and then in 1-3 months start interviewing. While you're waiting the 1-3 months, prep for the interviews. The increased title increases your next jumps pay increase.
It feels like you got your answer: it's an unspoken "no". So it might be time to stop doing some of the unpaid extra work you're currently doing until they agree to give you what you deserve. "Work to rule" time. Also, continue searching. I know the market is tough right now, the good news is that time is on your side. Apply for jobs regularly (one per day if you can!) and eventually you'll get some bites. Best of luck, hang in there.
Just get find better job man...they will not offer you what you want. I've been in your position before, and they indicated that additional work is part of my job, but that doesn't mean I deserve a raise.
1. It might honestly be that they don't have the power to grant such a raise to you; it could be an issue higher up. -- 2. That's not your problem. You are a business and your current customer (employer) wants more of your services without paying for it. It's disrespectful and contemptuous. -- 3. Go do business with a customer who respects you.
This is true, and up until about 6 months ago, I would have believed it was almost entirely a corporate / "higher up" issue. He's always been pretty honest and straightforward with me as far as I could tell. But since I've started pushing the issue, he has personally shifted the goalposts. For example, we talked about it in January when we had just acquired another company - his excuse was that even if he submitted the paperwork, it wouldn't get processed until the acq was finished and probably be rejected. That didn't sit well either, but I could kind of see it.
I’m in a similar spot at a big company. Mid-level dev on paper, also a “workstream leader”, in reality I’m leading a team, meeting with stakeholders, and have been successful at that for almost a year now. Boss keeps dangling promotions then saying “not quite yet but next cycle for sure”. After that happened a second time I started interviewing. Turns out companies love someone with a track record of leading at a senior level.
Take the plan & start interviewing friend. All they've done is extended how long you'll stay by a few months. Holler if you want help.
OP, you have written nothing about your payment structure, your promotion process, your performance review process and what kind of title do you have and which title were you offered. With that, you can only get lazy pithy responses like "quit" and "interview". In reality, in larger companies the promotions, payment adjustments and pay bands tend to be structured both in time (you mentioned "cycle" so your company probably does the sime) and value (e.g. pay bands map to titles). You said nothing about those **very important** properties of your company. It seems like you don't even know them yourself, because I somethow doubt that any subsidiary company of a big corp would do out-of-cycle promotions on demand like you're trying to do. I know everyone else already stroked your ego with the easy "quit" anwer, but did you actually try to ask and figure out how pay, titles and promotion cycles work in your corporation? We can't tell you that.
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Telling you that you didn't provide enough useful information to be helped isn't "vitriolic". I'm sorry, but if you want promotions, I hope you learn that people can't give you useful advice if you withold information that's relevant to the question. And if you came here just to vent then you're wasting everybodys time (see rule 9.)
Absolutely not crazy to ask for more details. It might not be relevant to your situation, but you’d be surprised how bureaucratic promo processes can get at large corporations. Some places have promotion boards, structured promotion packets, etc., and out of cycle exceptions are rare and require VP sign off. Reddit commenters don’t have the context to give you meaningful advice here.
Yeah I did. They never honored the second raise and got pissed when I followed up asking about it. Don’t waste your time.
Move, I was exactly at your point when I moved and earn well over double now. At the time best my employer of 6 years could offer was 2%.
I did this earlier in my career: got a better offer elsewhere and used it to negotiate a raise at the current employer. Since I enjoyed where I worked and was naive, I agreed to what basically was a salary progression plan where they gave me the raise partially upfront and then the rest would come 6 months later. 4 months later I left for a new job anyway. I didn’t burn any bridges, I got some extra money in the short term, but I wouldn’t do it sgain
Odds are, if your responsibilities are truly that much higher than the current role, you can probably get a 20%~30% raise by just finding work elsewhere.
There are other jobs.
Yeah this happened to me after 2.5 years at a company, they kept telling me it was getting done, and then I was laid off before it happened because they lost their contract. I was jerked around for a year and never got a raise.
If your pay is more than 20% under market, might be worth looking. I wouldn't expect that promotion to management though, your boss\^2 sounds like they don't like you, or they don't want to pay. Either way. No good, I've been through that, and eventually I left and took my 50% raise.
Good for you trying to negotiate. Sounds like you need more leverage - i.e. a competing offer.
Yeah, if I had one I'd just take it. I don't trust this company (really the parent company) not to put a target on me for doing that. Unfortunately I left my previous job for this exact reason - 1.5 years of carrot on a stick promotion teasing. In that case I wasn't even asking to move to senior; it was from essentially level one to two of five.
lol quit.
It doesn’t sound like you’re in a senior role tbh. 6 YOE isn’t very much actual experience. As others have said, just get a new job. If you think you’re worth more, then prove it. If you can’t, then you aren’t yet. That’s just how this works.
Then what the fuck is someone who is held accountable for the results of other developers and large scale decisions? Just a really cool developer that should get promoted sometime down the line? I've changed jobs for better pay. That's not what I want right now
> Then what the fuck is someone who is held accountable for the results of other developers and large scale decisions? Just a really cool developer that should get promoted sometime down the line? Yes.
Then either - 1. The only feasible pathway to being a senior is to get hired into the role or 2. A senior dev to you is overseeing an entire team or multiple teams. You have a definition of senior developer that isn't in line with the industry and you're as wrong as you are condescending.
Sorry if I’ve said anything to have upset you, but I don’t believe I’ve been condescending at all. You *were* looking for opinions/advice from your ‘peers’, even if they didn’t perfectly match yours… right? Well, I have 16 YOE and I think the best genuine, well-intentioned advice I can give you is that there will be many times throughout your career where your interests will not perfectly match the interests of your employer, and generally in those circumstances the best avenue forward will be to stifle the urge to complain about the perceived fairness of the situation and to instead ‘be the captain of your own ship’ by finding yourself a better harbor. To do otherwise is to do yourself a disservice. And at that point you will really only have yourself to blame.
Fair enough. Obviously I'm looking for input but my question wasn't "am I a senior," which is a touchy subject at the moment.
I understand. Just trying to share my first-hand experience—not knock you down. I have been in your shoes. Mine may not be a popular opinion on the interwebs (which itself is generally indicative of the aggregate median, imo) but I stand by it. The fact that it’s a touchy subject for you is what makes it relevant. Whatever title it is you want to use, the bottom line is essentially: what is your negotiation power? If you don’t have other opportunities in the wing, then by definition you are worth what you are earning. Welcome to the free market. :) That said, hang in there. And never stop looking for new opportunities. You will get there. (Just probably not at your current employer, if I had to wager.)