No one is going to restaurants without eating food. Bottom-line is that food is why people show up. The rest (taste, value, atmosphere, friends, pleasure) is ancillary.

As an owner of a software consulting firm. I can tell you, the margins (revenue per resource) are much lower than they were 5 years ago. You are getting an opportunity to gain valuable PM experience that will make you much more marketable in the future, especially when we get out of the tail end of this economy.

If you are not offered a $$ bump I can gaurantee you it is not out of greed because right now those $$ bumps could put the colleague next to you on the street which is the last thing an employer wants to do to anyone.

We are 10+% unemployment (24% under employment rate) and you have people telling you to negotiate? I have 500+ resumes sitting on my desk of people so desperate for work that they would work for FREE to prove themselves.

A lot of advice given in this thread has a complete lack of vision. Five years down the road, that PM experience wil make you worth ~125k when the market stabilizes. Thats = to a 50k education.

There's zero bad things that can happen from having the conversation I've recommended if OP has any social skills at all.

That answer works if your company is all about compensation. I'm sure it's a losing answer for companies that don't pay well (and know it).

Zero Bad. Depending on the size of the company...zero good. If as an owner I expected you to see the forest from the trees (++ market value of position) and you did not, your 1st pass/fail was..a fail. IMHO

Sounds like you'd prefer people who passively take what you give them and always trust that you're doing the max possible for them. You're looking out for your interests first ("I may have to fire someone", "margins are thin" in order to protect your personal bottom line) but somehow it's gauche for the employee to even inquire about the offer and look after their personal interests? And if they do it's their fault for not knowing the intricacies of the company's financial picture and they should've just trusted that any offer was the max possible? Meh. I don't buy it.

Huh, that came out massively wrong and sounded like a burn when I intended it to just be an analogy. Basically, no one is going to work for free, but the money isn't the main determinant of satisfaction. Similarly you would be mad if you went to a restaurant and walked away hungry, but you're not going to judge the restaurant based on how full you managed to stuff yourself.

Thats fine.

We make Class I Medical Devices.


If someone is threatening to leave the company, by all means, they aren't going to hold you back. Most of the good workers around here don't leave though. They recognize the place is growing like a wild vine. 20 years ago this place had 1 small building. They got 9 buildings in this same location, plus facilities at 6 or 7 other locations around the country.

Heh, there are really only three primary determiners of morale/job satisfaction: money, time off work, and pleasant coworkers. If you want your employees to be substantially happier, either pay them more or give them more time off. Obv there are some people who like to be at work as much as possible (either because they're trying to impress management and get promoted or because their home life sucks) but they're the exception. Most people prefer to be somewhere other than at work.

imo a lot of companies could get away with paying their employees quite a bit less if they cut a lot of the waste/inefficiency out of the workday and let their employees work less, and if they worked to filter out the *******s. At least in states/non-union workplaces where you can legally fire an ******* for being an *******.

It's so oversimplifying that its silly. Money gets people to show up and not get fired. What we're talking about is what motivates people to do better work. Sometimes thats more money, but often its not.

This just isn't true. I'm sure if you were to rank them Money (folding in things like health benefits and such) and time off work would be the highest but after that...

Seconded. For me, time off work wouldn't even be #2. I want some, but having excessive amounts of time just means that I'll usually carry it over, if I can.

Really, Zeth, I must be a huge outlier on your chart.

Yeah, "money" is an umbrella that includes benefits.

So... if you don't care about money, benefits, time off, or having nice coworkers, what DO you care about? I guess there are less certain concepts like "prospects for advancement," "health of company," "competent management" and such that we might lump together as "security" that counts, but tbh "security" is increasingly a phantom in the corporate world anymore.