How To Get Paid Your Worth in Corporate America

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I'm going to take a quick break, y'all and be right back with another Baqa. All right, this question comes from We'll call her. Oh why can I only think of names of Bridgerton characters. I'm gonna call you Penelope because Bridgerton has your girl in a choke hold. I can't even tell y'all. All right, Penelope, Penelope has a question. Let's dig into it. Penelope says, I love y'all, and I'm so thankful for the work that you're doing. I want to stay anonymous since a lot of my coworkers

listen to you too. Here's the deal. I've been with my company for about a year on mid level, and our executives just announced an annual bonus amount as well as annual salary increases. My annual bonus is one percent of my base and my salary increase is two point

five percent. I make fifty five thousand dollars, so this would be a five hundred and fifty dollars bonus and a thirteen thirteen hundred and sixty five dollars raise, respectively, which clearly she's done the math and says meaning over twenty six pay periods, I will only net about thirty five dollars more per paycheck. Is this normal? I wasn't expecting a twenty percent raise, but at least something a little closer to keep up with inflation? Am I expecting

too much? I have over ten years of work experience, but never in a corporate salaried setting. I pulled a few friends, and a couple said it's normal, while others says I'm being wildly underpaid. It's starting to feel like job hopping and racking up signing bonuses and equity is the only way to make more money in the corporate world. Thoughts. I appreciate y'all, Penelope, okay, pen my little baby, my

little baby Bridgerton. I would first of all, I want to commend you on actually talking to people about your salary to get their feedback, even if what you're hearing is yo, that's what you're getting paid. That may be painful, It may bruise your ego a little bit. It may make you feel like, well, shit, am I doing something wrong? But that's an uncomfortable feeling that we need to sit

with sometimes. And I think your friends probably have your best interest at heart when they are telling you that. And it's the only way you're really going to find out, like is when you compare your salary to peers or to just people in general to see what their feedback is. But without knowing exactly what you do, your level of experience, you got to take other people's feedback with like a grain of salt. Right, So do they really have experience

with your industry? Do they know about you? Know what your skills are? In particular? You know, they may have a much better insight into whether or not you're getting underpaid if they, of course, have a little bit of experience in your space. If they don't, then okay, cool. I would go online. I would check glassdoor, salary dot com. I would check job listings for comparable positions in states where they have to list the salary range and see what you got there. But I would just keep looking

for additional sources. Now to your question about the amounts, So honestly, I kind of like that. I mean, transparency is great, right, companies that actually come out and say, you know, here's the salary increase we're going to have, here's a bonus bands that we're going to have, and they release them, like, okay, kudos for actually telling people so that they don't have to just wonder. But those numbers are really underwhelming, Like, you're not crazy a one

percent bonus for a fifty five thousand dollars salary. I mean, I the that's just a bit of a it's a bit of a slab in the face. That's I mean, it's just five hundred dollars. And that's pre tax so once you know, you take your income taxes, that of that it's a lot less than five hundred and fifty dollars. So that's extremely underwhelming. Now you say you're mid level. Honestly, at a mid level position, I would expect at least a five percent, but you know, more like a ten

percent annual bonus. And the thing is your annual bonus is typically called a target bonus. Companies don't promise to give you this money. They always have the asterisk of depending on company perform you can get up to this percentage of your base salary in the form of an annual bonus. So you may not even get the five hundred and fifty dollars if they don't do well. So yeah, I'm really underwhelmed by that bonus amount. Nice that they at least have it, but like Jesus, just one percent. Uh,

It's yeah, it's giving broke. But we're trying to give y'all something. I guess the salary increase. So this is going to be like I'm guessing this is like a cost of living, you know, salary increase, which is where the company from the top will decide, Okay, what what standard increase are we going to levy across the board for our employees, just to you know, take into consideration things like inflation. But also the it's not really for them about inflation. It's about the cost of labor and

because of inflation. This is basically like it's like a corporation's version of like, ooh, we're stressed about the price of cereal and laundry detergent going up or eggs, right, Like we obsess over a gallon of gas and what that cost us, and how inflation is making it go up. But if you're running a company, your people are your biggest expense, and when our lives get more expensive, we start looking for jobs that can pay us more. That means that our asking prices, our salaries are going to

go up. So if you're a company, that means you're going to be paying more for talent. So they will put these salary increases across the board to try and get ahead of that. Don't let them tell you it's to help y'all keep pace with inflation. N No, they are just doing this to keep to help themselves stay a little bit more competitive in a more expensive market

for talent for people. Right that being said, two point five percent ain't nothing, okay, And yes, I would say that this is like kind of in the standard range. I think it's about right in the standard range for like what a typical salary increase could be, like a cost of living adjustment could be, I would say between two to four percent. You may have seen hire during the pandemic years while companies were in their you know, just to save face with their employees, like taking into

account how much more expensive things we're getting. But two point five percent is like, fine, these are really underwhelming numbers. And basically what you're hearing is like your salary is going to remain flat for the time being. Now you say that, you feel like job hopping and racking up signing bonuses an equity is the only way to make more money in the corporate world. That's a little bit too big of a thought. Okay, that's kind of like, oh,

I'm doing everything wrong. What am I going to do? I'm going to be a job hopping and racking up looking for signing bonuses and equity forever. Well, that's a big again, that's like big, big picture. It can feel overwhelming. But let's just like sit with where you are in this moment, all right. If you want your pay to substantially increase, a couple of things are going to have

to happen. You don't have to quit necessarily, but you do need to get a competing offer from a competitor, from a comparable size company or wherever, and that will give you some leverage you be able. You may be able to leverage a outside job offer for higher pay where you are, and then you can see those big twenty percent raises, thirty percent raises, whatever. That typically only happens when someone has gone outside and got a competing offer.

You can also job hop. Yes, so let's say you you know you're okay with your pay right now, but the fact that you're only going to get one percent based bonus and like a salary increase of about two percent every year, you're just like, uugh, let me move on to someplace where I've got a little bit room, a little bit more room to go up. That's a fair thought, But you can't just consider, you know, salary and pay when you're thinking about job hopping. You want

to like where you work. You want to like your commute, you want to like the work that you're doing. It's got a lay into your overall career path, like what skills, what opportunities am I going to get here? And where do I see myself going by staying here? Maybe right now, you're happy where you are, You love your team, and you know that in a year or two you'll be eligible for a promotion or a management position or what or whatever, and so you decide to stick around. There's

no shame in that. But if you decide to go outside. Of course, you want to look for a higher salary, but just don't forget to also look for things like the culture fit your schedule of course, like the commute, the the you know the team that you're going to be working for. Is there a good vibe when you do your interviews. Those things are going to matter as well. Hey, ba fan, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back now. Signing bonus is an equity.

Those are nice. Those are sprinkles on top of the compensation cupcake. I love them. I talk about them a lot. A signing bonus you really can get when you leave and join another company. So if that's what you're after, those those like little windfalls, Yes, those do come when you leave. However, you can also negotiate a spot bonus

for yourself. You can negotiate a retention bonus. So if you, for example, get an outside job offer and it's like a twenty percent raise, you bring it to your manager and hr the whole team is like, ugh, we really want to keep you, but we can't afford twenty percent.

Maybe you could negotiate, well, can I have a one time bonus retention bonus in the amount that you know you would have been getting if you left, And that's kind of sweet because then you get a lump sum and you don't have to work, you know, and rack up that money over time, like in the form of additional salary, Like you just kind of get that money in one fell swoop. There's always strings attached when it

comes to bonuses, signing bonuses, retention bonus. Typically they require you to stay with the company for at least a year. Got those golden handcuffs locked, you know what I'm saying. I know I'm going on and there's a lot of things to consider right here, but there's possibilities for you to get you know, richer, get more wealth while you're in your current company. But the key, if you're kind of following where I'm going here, the key is to

have outside offers. And in order to do that, you want to be investing in spending a lot of time getting on LinkedIn, going to you know, different company events like industry events, conferences. You want to be upskilling at all times, like and I don't mean going back to

school and getting degrees. I mean looking for new ways to improve your skills at work, whether it's taking a training that they can you know, they can cover the cost for you, or you shadow other workers, you learn new skills, but be gaining new skills and be gaining more specialization. The more unique you are, the more likely they are to want to fight to keep you. Right, What else can I say? Get more specialized? Oh? Right? So when you're investing your professional brand, why are we

doing that? One because you want to be more appealing to your current company. But two, it's so that outside companies, recruiters, hiring managers, they're going to start to say like, oh, Penelope is the shit like I want to poacher or I really want her to work on our team. And when they come to you for job opportunities, the chances that you're going to get a really competitive salary and

those juicy benefits like bonuses and equity is a lot higher. Okay, I'm gonna leave it there, Penelope girl, But thank you so much for this question. And I'm glad that you're doing the work that you're doing right now to get the pay that you want to get. Yeah, thank you, okaba fam, thank you for tuning into this week's be AQA. Don't forget that broad ambition is on three times a week now. We have our throwback how to episodes on Monday, main show on Wednesday, and on Friday. It is all

about you, babes. It is all about our listeners and answering y'all's questions. So until next time, Bye,