I’m an 8 year data center network engineer who recently broke 100k for the first time. When I got asked my salary requirements I actually only asked for 90k as my highest previous salary was 80k with lots of travel, then I found out they gave me 100k because it was the minimum they could pay someone in my position. I’ve read before about people making crazy salary increases (150%-300%) and am wondering if I played it incorrectly and how I could play it in the future. I plan to stay with my company for the next few years and upskilling heavily and am eyeing a promotion in my first year as I’ve already delivered big projects by contributing very early. I’ve progressed from call center/help desk/engineer etc (no degree, just certs) so my progression has been pretty linear, are people who are seeing massive jumps in pay just overselling their competency and failing forward? Or are there other fields in IT like programming/etc that are more likely to have higher progression scales?
Yeah, exactly. People upvoted this take that won’t work for 99.9999% of people lol
Negotiating hard works fantastically well for people who work in information technology.
It doesn’t unless you’re part of the absolute minority even in IT. You need to be really qualified for this.
I also again want to emphasize that not giving your expectation is not the same as negotiating hard.
Your run off the mill network guy or admin will not have success with this.
Source: Work in IT and manage people
I would argue that experienced quality - or even serviceable - IT is the absolute minority, to begin with.
There are organizations that aren’t one bad day in IT away from starting a company-ending death spiral, but they’re not typical.
Many CEOs and HR professionals underestimate that risk, but that underestimation is a self-correcting problem over time.
IT professionals may lose the current opportunity by negotiating, but their next opportunity isn’t (statistically) far in the future.
As a bonus, employers who are averse to having IT employees negotiate tend to be lousy employers
