Show me (some more go#!*) money!

March 13, 2012 12:57 PM

Sooo ... I'm their supervisor but they make more than I do? How does that work?

I'll try to make this as quick as possible:

I started with my company a year ago. About a month ago, my boss decided to split her team so that I now have three direct reports.

I am slowly transitioning into a full-fledged managerial role with them and as such, I was asked to sit in on their job performance/salary review discussions.

In those discussions, I learned that one of the people who reports to me makes about $10K a year more than I do! The other person, with her new salary increase, makes $2k less than I do.

I was pretty stunned by this but I didn't act quickly enough so now I think I'm stuck for this year's salary discussion cycle (which is very formal at my large, global company.)

What should I do next?

A bit more background:

1. The other two people have been with the company longer than I but I was still asked to supervise them. I tried to rationalize the salary disparity by saying "Hey, they've been here longer" but I still have far more responsibility than they do.

2. The person who makes more than I do doesn't have an advanced degree. I do. The person whose salary nearly matches mine has an advanced degree but it is wholly unrelated to our roles.

My plan is to go to my boss when we next have a meeting and say something along the lines of:

"I know I'm new to the company and that might have played into my salary level but I'm a bit surprised by the disparity in my salary versuses Dick's and Jane's, given that I was asked to supervise them. Is there any room for discussion on my salary increase? If not, is there a way I can ensure a larger increase next year?"

I'm new to this negotiation world but I do know for sure that the company a) got me cheap and b) is continuing to get me cheap.

Salacious morsels of wisdom from Mefites welcomed.

posted by nubianinthedesert to Work & Money (18 answers total)

Being more senior doesn't necessarily make you harder to replace. Responsibility doesn't equal value.

If someone has a technical/skilled role, they may well be worth more to a company than their boss.

In my opinion, the salary of others should never factor into the reasoning behind your own compensation reviews. Everyone stands alone unless it's a non-skilled role.

To directly answer your question, if you feel you are under-remunerated then raise it - but don't use others salary internally within the business as reference points. (external comparisons are fine though!)

(UK based here. My opinion only)
posted by Simon_ at 1:03 PM on March 13, 2012 [10 favorites]

Best answer: Never, ever go into a salary discussion and bring up what someone else makes. There are two issues here:

-Are you compensated commensurate with the results you are producing for the company? Note that responsibilities isn't part of that equation. Do market research, check glassdoor.com, etc. If you are out of whack, bring it up and say you'd like a salary adjustment. Be prepared to walk if they say no.

-Are your directs making too much compared to the results they are producing for the company? Gather data (that means hard numbers, not value judgments). Check market factors. Bring this up when their salary reviews come around.

Note that what your directs make has absolutely no bearing on what you make. Emotionally the situation is annoying as hell, but from HR's perspective, they are not related.

This situation is not particularly uncommon, particularly if you're a line manager managing advanced technical people. How you handle this is going to say a lot about your professionalism and may shape your fledgling managerial reputation.

Also: manager-tools.com. Listen and learn. Trust me on this.
posted by bfranklin at 1:05 PM on March 13, 2012 [7 favorites]

Best answer: I am slowly transitioning into a full-fledged managerial role with them

It sounds like you're a "manager in training" right now. In my corporate-world experience, an out-of-cycle salary adjustment can happen when an arrangement like this becomes more formal/permanent, or when you are included in discussions about how/when to make that happen. You can definitely initiate those discussions, but because of your own salary wrt your responsibilities, not because of salary disparity with your direct reports. Never ask for a raise based on somebody else's salary.
posted by headnsouth at 1:05 PM on March 13, 2012 [2 favorites]

As an extreme example, consider coaching in professional sports. Almost all of the coaches, though they "manage" their players and tell them what to do, make less than several members of their team.

It may be that you are managing people with skills completely separate from you. Just because you are their manager does not mean that you are providing x% more value than they are.

On preview, definitely don't compare yourself to your reports. Compare yourself to other managers with similar responsibilities.
posted by thewumpusisdead at 1:08 PM on March 13, 2012 [2 favorites]

You responsibilities just changed, so you should expect that your next review/comp cycle should make up for things. There may be plans to do an off-cycle uptick if you manage (no pun intended) to do a good job in this new role.

I manage plenty of people with years of experience more than me, and a few with higher salaries. It's just the way things work out sometimes.

It doesn't matter what other people make, it matters if your salary is commeasurate with your responsibilities, experience and skill. If you are learning new skills, then raises and such come after that has been demonstrated.
posted by rich at 1:08 PM on March 13, 2012

Yeah bringing up what your reports make is bad bad bad and could put your job in jeopardy, I suspect. Don't do that.

nthing everything else.
posted by eggman at 1:10 PM on March 13, 2012

Best answer: It seems like you have internalized the belief that managerial skills are inherently more valuable to an employer than the skills of the person being managed. Sometimes that's true, and even when it's not true, a lot of pay structures are set up according to this belief.

But it might not be true, and even where it is true, it's worth examining. A lot of pay structures create an artificial ceiling around non-managerial work such that no matter how good you are at your job, it'll be harder and harder to get a raise unless you are willing to take on the specific responsibilities that are involved in managing others.

This is not always in the best interests of the company: you would not want to take up Albert Einstein's time with managing personnel, for instance. He's not good at it and there are other things that only he can do for the company, so a pay structure that allows someone like Einstein to keep doing the profitable things that are in their wheelhouse -- rather than having to learn the managerial skills -- is sometimes a good idea.

Your company might have taken this approach. You don't know, and won't know unless you ask. So I'd definitely talk to your boss about it, but I'd shy away from having it be a conversation in which you are asking for a raise as such.
posted by gauche at 1:11 PM on March 13, 2012 [20 favorites]

Note that what your directs make has absolutely no bearing on what you make. Emotionally the situation is annoying as hell, but from HR's perspective, they are not related.

This is basically where it is.

As a reference point, I know for a fact this is the case at an organization I've worked at. Why? Because the manager is a really smart person who, nevertheless, is "just" a really smart guy with good management skills; his direct reports, though, are not only really smart but also have decades of hyper-specialized experience and are about as close to irreplaceable as anyone ever really gets. They get paid more because, to the company, they are more valuable and harder to replace than their manager.
posted by Tomorrowful at 1:11 PM on March 13, 2012

I still have far more responsibility than they do.

But are you harder to replace? Trainee managers are a dime a dozen, but advanced techincal people may be--may actually, literally be--irreplacable.
posted by MrMoonPie at 1:13 PM on March 13, 2012

Response by poster: Thanks to everyone for all the great insight.

Just to answer a frequent question here: No, these are NOT advanced technical people. These are people who are often coming to me to ask how to do their jobs.
posted by nubianinthedesert at 1:15 PM on March 13, 2012

you should definitely re-negotiate but it shouldn't be dependent on anyone else's salary. it's based on your experience, your responsibilities, the number of direct reports that you manage, and industry averages. you need to make a case for yourself as to why you should be making what you are asking to make.
posted by violetk at 1:19 PM on March 13, 2012

Best answer: Just to answer a frequent question here: No, these are NOT advanced technical people. These are people who are often coming to me to ask how to do their jobs.

Maybe your manager isn't good at effectively evaluating these people. Maybe your director is aware of the salary inflation, and you've been installed to fix the problem. Maybe the person making $10k more was hired in a down market and is almost topping out the salary band, and won't ever make significantly more than this. There are a million maybes, but again, the best thing you can do is just file this away in a box. That they make near or more than you does not devalue you in any way.

You were the one selected for management. Your earning potential (and likely the high end of your salary band) has just jumped above either of these people. Rest assured that in the long term, should you continue to perform well, you will see your pay continuously increase.
posted by bfranklin at 1:22 PM on March 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Honestly, thank you all so much for your help. I was very emotional about this and I'm glad that I stepped away to ask for advice.
posted by nubianinthedesert at 1:24 PM on March 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: This likely falls under "salacious morsels of wisdom", but I just went through this. I worked for a relatively small company that was bought by a great big company about 3 years ago, and there was very little thought given to "mapping me over" to the new HR levels, titles, pay ranges, etc. I did not have direct reports at the time, but about a year ago I moved under a new boss who is awesome and wanted to give me direct reports as a precursor to promoting me. We hung out a couple job postings, and guess what? People who worked for mega-corp for ages were at a different salary than me, even at the same title level.

So, If you're me, you luck into a great boss and you can say "wow, I really liked the interview we had with Suzy, but did you know that her salary is X, and that's about 16K per year more than where I am?" and my boss says "OMG, that's crazy, you guys are at the same title level and that's just wrong" and she spends the next 2 months making the case to her boss and his boss that THIS WILL NOT DO and that if Katrina leaves we're boned, and besides, Katrina is performing well above her title level. It was fixed for me with a small series of nice raises, but I was kept fully aware of what was coming every step along the way.

I was in my role about 6 months when this happened, so it wasn't one of the first conversations I had with my boss, and obviously "have an awesome boss" is not advice or an answer, but hopefully this shows that even a big, bloat-y corporation can be swayed by the right, passionate people.
posted by ersatzkat at 2:03 PM on March 13, 2012 [2 favorites]

Just wanted to add that even with non-technical positions, the idea that an employee would earn more than his/her boss isn't all that unusual, depending on the job.

For example, I work in sales, where it is entirely common for individual salespeople to earn more than their managers (in fact, many high performing reps will regularly turn down the chance to be put into management roles since they know it would be a pay cut).
posted by The Gooch at 2:19 PM on March 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

The uneasiness about pay tends to work both ways. A few years ago I found myself working for a boss who was earning quite a lot less than either I - or several of the people he was managing - was making. I think this often happens after a classic corporate shake up where people from different parts of an organisation find themselves thrown together in the same team. As sub-ordinates I don't think we had an explicit way of knowing this - but people have a way of finding out or making intelligent guesses: if you are aware of the discrepancy then you should assume your team members do too. Given the choice I would rather be in your position than theirs: you have some pretty good grounds to with which to start to - carefully - assemble a case to be paid more. They, on the other hand, probably feel they are viewed as over-priced: they may face losing their jobs at worst and a medium term capping of their salary at best. The key metric I would consider is not so much how much you are making vs your team as what you believe you are making versus other team leaders.
posted by rongorongo at 2:42 PM on March 13, 2012

I've had it go both ways. It may depend on your relationship with your boss. I pointed out the disparity to one boss and he immediately got me a $10K/yr raise. I pointed it out to another and he said, "Yeah, that sucks, huh?"
posted by kamikazegopher at 6:12 PM on March 13, 2012

Here's one way to think about salary vs jobs.

You may be good at your (non-managerial) job, and were paid for the combination of your age, job responsibilities, and longevity at the company.

Now a manager, you are (necessarily) spending less of your effort on doing your (non-managerial) job. Yet you aren't yet an experienced manager, having just started on this recently. So the best the company may do is pay you what you were paid before.

Individual contributor (IC) tracks and management tracks are often different at companies. What makes you a good IC may not make you a good manager, and vice versa. In theory, when you start managing, it is almost like you start from scratch -- the company would be within its logical reasoning to pay you entry level salary in this new position.

Of course, the company is realistic, and knows that it's not right to take trustworthy ICs and downgrade their salary. So they keep you at your current one until you prove yourself further in your new managerial role.

As for your coworkers: salaries are at the level they are for a variety of reasons. Responsibilities, degrees, longevity, competitive landscape, past compensation history, need to promote to retain. All of these factor into initial compensations at offer time, as well as into raises.

If you enjoy the work that you are doing, and think the company is a good place to work, and think that they're fair _in the long term_, give them a chance to set things right in a year's time. If you kick ass in your new position, this should be noted and you should see upward progression in your compensation.
posted by haykinson at 12:34 AM on March 14, 2012