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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Dr_Pillow on 2025-06-28 16:58:58+00:00.

I spent a few years at this company. The pay there is not as competitive and we all got measly 2–3% raises each year, nothing close to inflation levels. I had been in a starter position and still studying on the side, so I agreed with my boss already a couple years ago that I’d get a promotion once I graduated.

Well, last September I graduated, and asked for my promotion. I had looked over the worker union’s salary statistics and the median would be around a 18% bump for me. I didn’t expect to get that much because, besides them being a cheap AF, the economy was bad and they had just downsized like 15% of the staff in July. Luckily I had gotten myself into a strong position of being one of the only ones left with some unique skills, so I survived the downsizing. Anyhow, I show my boss a copy of the statistics and ask for the median.

Boss scoffs and proceeds to fight as hard as he can to justify lowballing me. He says several things baffling to me, not limited to:

• “damn, you’re rich bro” about my salary (no dude, I’m really struggling in this economy)
• “If I give you more, you’ll just spend more” (not your concern what I do with my well-deserved money).
• “no one at that level makes that much here” and that the statistics must be wrong. (I later went around the office to find colleagues in that level. First co-worker I ask? Earns exactly what I asked for.)
• Brought up some concerns about my ‘communication’, petty things like me not replying to a colleague’s email for like 3 days (3 days during which I was off-site to give a course somewhere).

But my favourite thing he said was: “You can go look for other jobs to see how much others are offering, you’ll see it’s not going to be any better”.

He lingered on my salary adjustment until December, “negotiating with HR”, and then finally offers me 11%, which is around what I actually expected. But, there’s a catch… next year I would not get the usual 2-3% salary adjustment like everybody else. WTF. I told him: “deal”.

You see, I had taken his advice (or rather called his bluff) and was already getting quite far in interviews.

Come January, I land an offer from the top company in our field (think Google, Apple) offering me what would have been a 35% bump. I hit my boss with the news, he promptly panics. Says they want me to stay, they need me, my performance and development have been great, etc… but they can’t match that offer because “not even top management makes that much”. I obviously didn’t believe him, but I said “I understand it’s not fair that I earn more than everyone else, just do your best”.

He runs to the top boss’ office and somehow, within 30 mins, they magically found budget for a 30% raise. Perfect, now I had leverage to negotiate an even better offer from my future boss. After all, I had already made up my mind to leave long ago.