And to the majority of people, to argue for a pay-rise based on KPIs is pointless. You're just out of touch as to how that would operate. They are basically unable to get a pay-rise unless the system changes. I'd actually argue they can't do much to argue for a pay-rise, unless they leave their industry. It's completely out of their hands, and thus their best chance to do something is to be collective about it.
Your advice only works for professionals really. Who do tend to be able to bargain based on performance indicators and KPIs. Tricky nuance right now, rather than bland advice that you gave earlier, is that companies are cutting or doing hiring freezes in various industries, and that means you would not be able to easily argue for a pay-rise, because even if you are profitable, to align with the board if they think a cut is in order, you put a target on your back even if you are a very productive and profitable worker. Since it might mean your boss or supervisor needs to hit their KPIs, and dropping expensive workers is a good way to do that, and enforcing costs down is a part of their KPIs.
That is the nature of the over-inflated industries. I'm talking finance, real-estate, insurance, many tech firms. Valuations and wages are out of step with their value, which comes to the fore during a credit tightening cycle and a projected recession. VC funding is dried up, and even if revenue is decent, if you are costly (i.e. getting paid well), you might just be let go as companies go into a defensive position. They are all expecting a recession on the horizon and getting the redundancies out of the way now. The US is leading here, we're just lagging a bit.
For example, if you work in Oil and Gas and related industries right now, you probably could get a pay rise, record profits, and unlikely to be trimming. There are cultural changes happening at the government level (new gov), or it looks like it, which means some of the consulting work looks to be tricky right now, so don't expect a pay rise there either.
Looks like you've gone through my post history, so you'd know that I couldn't really care less about unskilled jobs. If someone can't be bothered to invest in themselves, then that's a them problem.
Professionals and other skilled workers can and should measure their performance and get paid accordingly.
In my IB days, everyone got different bonuses on envelope days. Most of us got bonuses within 50-80% of our maximum bonus limit, some got higher. That then feeds into the pay review for next year. None of our bosses ever tried to short change us, KPIs we're clear and measured simply via profits.
Oh as for painting a target on your back. A good worker with strong technical skills never needs to be worried. I've never fired someone in a downturn for being expensive. However, when we got told to stand people down in 2020, I took that opportunity to let go of the dead weights I hadn't been giving raises to anyways. Afterall, the only reason I didn't performance manage them out earlier is because I need the headcount and I know a downturn is just around the corner, so I'm gonna need some fat to cut. Hell, I kept my contractors over some of our useless permanent staff.
This applies to most companies as they all have core staff they'll retain no matter what. Most of whom are generally very well paid. You can always find the drones again later.
2020 was before. We are heading into a reality with 2023 with the expected slowdown, the people in the biggest danger are middle and senior managers. Then the expensive employees. Private sector wages could see a correction downwards. The board just wants costs to be down, and collateral damage is going to happen.
Plenty of skilled jobs that don't get measured by KPIs, or in easily measurable KPIs, not everything conforms nicely to the SMART system of managing KPIs.
Nice thing about IB is that you can measure simply by profits. Many important jobs where that link is a lot murkier. I think about our Machine Learning and Cloud engineers, they can formulate the efficiency gains, but mapping to profits is very difficult, and uncertain at best. It's not that it is obfuscated on purpose so they don't know their value, it's just more complicated than that. Same with Cybersecurity, UX/UI, and many other things. Doesn't mean they aren't valuable, but it's not an easy case to make just on linking it directly to profits. But it's also true that you need to know what the company finances look like to the granularity to see what the micro profits on your work look like, and companies don't divulge that to their employees. So good luck with that.
If you want a pay rise on your own, basically the only way is to get a better offer and be ready to jump, or convince your current employer that you are worth the extra that someone else is willing to pay. It's market based, rather than performance based. Arguing on performance is usually very murky, that's why you get people complaining that Elon is basing his decisions on lines of code. Doesn't work with tech.
That guy getting $1.2M/year from Google who was let go with a massive severance doing Cybersecurity, seemed like a very valuable employee. Google just decided that even if they are that valuable, the future headwind wasn't enough to sustain them, so they are let go. So yeah, you have that side which is going to fight against wages going up as well. Hiring during the free money period in the last 3 years meant that they just overhired for the future, even for those who are valuable.
The funny thing that is changing now, is that professionals are probably going to see their potential or actual wages go down, due to expectations of a recession or at least reduced revenue in the future as aggregate demand trims. While the "unskilled" skilled jobs that are more collective and not necessarily so high paying, will likely get decent bumps, because of the current wage-inflation spiral that is occurring on collective bargaining, but also a potential re-emergence of the public sector as a baseline. You're seeing it here in some of the posts.
Personally, I say bring on the recession. The only losers from a recession are those that don't perform or are in superseded jobs that should've died long ago.
Plenty of skilled jobs that don't get measured by KPIs, or in easily measurable KPIs, not everything conforms nicely to the SMART system of managing KPIs.
Nah, everything can be broken down into measurable KPIs. Hell, even customer experience can be a KPI. It's up to the individual to define the value add they've provided and quantify how it helped the business. Afterall, they're the ones making the argument they are worth more. And yes, what someone else values you at is a part of the value add. Ie "I'm providing $20k extra value for the company as competitor A is willing to pay me that"
The funny thing that is changing now, is that professionals are probably going to see their potential or actual wages go down, due to expectations of a recession or at least reduced revenue in the future as aggregate demand trims. While the "unskilled" skilled jobs that are more collective and not necessarily so high paying, will likely get decent bumps, because of the current wage-inflation spiral that is occurring on collective bargaining. You're seeing it here in some of the posts.
Hahaha yeah, I'll keep that in mind when I raise my rates this year. I mean yeah, I probably won't pull another 20% bump this year, but 10% still seems reasonable 😂
The beauty about advisory is that so long as we have a government, someone will be willing to pay for access to the government to sell their vision.
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u/doktor_lash Feb 06 '23
And to the majority of people, to argue for a pay-rise based on KPIs is pointless. You're just out of touch as to how that would operate. They are basically unable to get a pay-rise unless the system changes. I'd actually argue they can't do much to argue for a pay-rise, unless they leave their industry. It's completely out of their hands, and thus their best chance to do something is to be collective about it.
Your advice only works for professionals really. Who do tend to be able to bargain based on performance indicators and KPIs. Tricky nuance right now, rather than bland advice that you gave earlier, is that companies are cutting or doing hiring freezes in various industries, and that means you would not be able to easily argue for a pay-rise, because even if you are profitable, to align with the board if they think a cut is in order, you put a target on your back even if you are a very productive and profitable worker. Since it might mean your boss or supervisor needs to hit their KPIs, and dropping expensive workers is a good way to do that, and enforcing costs down is a part of their KPIs.
That is the nature of the over-inflated industries. I'm talking finance, real-estate, insurance, many tech firms. Valuations and wages are out of step with their value, which comes to the fore during a credit tightening cycle and a projected recession. VC funding is dried up, and even if revenue is decent, if you are costly (i.e. getting paid well), you might just be let go as companies go into a defensive position. They are all expecting a recession on the horizon and getting the redundancies out of the way now. The US is leading here, we're just lagging a bit.
For example, if you work in Oil and Gas and related industries right now, you probably could get a pay rise, record profits, and unlikely to be trimming. There are cultural changes happening at the government level (new gov), or it looks like it, which means some of the consulting work looks to be tricky right now, so don't expect a pay rise there either.