No competing offer, no invitation, and a manager who will happily agree to revisit this later. Getting a yes is not the hard part — getting a date is.
R
Ruth
Director of Engineering, Halden Logistics
They open the call. Listen before you speak.
You are
An engineer three years into the role, asking your director for a raise.
The situation
You booked fifteen minutes with Ruth Alderman, your director, to ask for a raise. You are on 92,000. You believe the role is now worth around 105. Nobody asked you to have this conversation and you have no other offer. You led the migration that took the on-call pager from eleven pages a week to two, and you have been the person the team asks about the billing service since the person who built it left.
What you want out of it
Leave with a specific number attached to a specific date — or a written set of conditions that gets you there.
What you already know
— You are on 92,000 and think the role is worth about 105.
— You have no competing offer and are not going to invent one.
— You cut on-call pages from eleven a week to two.
— You are the de facto owner of the billing service.
— The last performance review said 'exceeds' and nothing changed.
4 things they won't volunteer, 2 of them buried.
How hard should they play?
Sharper, and harder to impress.
Coach mode
Call language
47 languages. The counterpart, the pressure and the scoring are the same in all of them.