SPUG: How to make a living with perl(.|?)

Richard Anderson Richard.Anderson at raycosoft.com
Thu Feb 15 19:11:40 CST 2001


I'd like to second David's comment: if you really feel that your salary is
not commensurate with your experience, abilities and performance, your most
effective strategy is to seek employment elsewhere.  This may also be best
for your company if you are disgruntled.  (I haven't worked as a captive
employee since 1992 and probably never will again, but that doesn't stop me
from having an opinion :-] )  Managers have to justify their actions to
their managers and to human resources.  Managers know that employees share
information about salaries.  If one employee gets a big raise, it can cause
internal friction and cause the company to lose other valuable employees.

If financial success is a big priority in your life, there are other things
you can do that may have more affect on your ultimate net worth at the time
of your retirement.  These include: educating yourself about value-based
investing in the stock market, finding a good investment advisor, starting
your own business (risky, but fun), doing things to enhance your
professional knowledge like participating in user groups, taking/teaching
computer classes, attending or presenting papers at conferences, publishing
technical papers, etc, etc.

Fcussing on your next raise or next job is a short-term thing that has a
short-term payoff.  The activities described above are long-term things with
long-term payoffs.

Richard.Anderson at raycosoft.com        www.unixscripts.com
Perl / Java / Oracle / Unix consulting      Seattle, WA, USA

----- Original Message -----
From: "Patterson, David S (Pat)" <davidpa at avaya.com>
To: <spug-list at pm.org>
Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2001 1:42 PM
Subject: RE: SPUG: How to make a living with perl(.|?)


>
> (Sorry this is late -- email weirdness...)
>
> But, this is an interesting topic.  What actually happens in salary
reviews
> is
> nothing like what I thought it would be when I first came on board
permanent
> full-time, appx 2 years ago.  I've been through two salary reviews since
> then.  The bottom line:  Your best opportunity for affecting your salary
is
> when you hire on.  After that, your salary raises/bonuses are almost
totally
> based on how valuable you are to the company.  I.e., if you have to ask
for
> a raise (as opposed to being offered one) you're probably not as strong an
> employee as you could or should be.  If you think you're deserving of a
10%
> raise and you get a 2% raise, its time to re-evaluate whether you are
really
> contributing to the company in the way you want.  In this case, maybe a
job
> change would be better for everyone concerned?
>
> > ---
> "Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both no
> and yes..."
> > D. S. "Pat" Patterson
> > Software Engineer
> > Avaya, Inc.
> > 6464 185th Ave NE
> > Redmond, WA  98052-6736
> > 425-558-8672
> > 888-501-4835 Pgr
> > davidpa at avaya.com
> >
> >
>
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