Negotiating For Compensation

Asking for a raise can be treated as an opportunity to give employees more and more goals with the implied promise of more compensation (or perhaps a direct promise), only for raises to be resisted, delayed, or provided at trivial amounts.  Negotiating for or requesting a raise does not have to be like this.  In a world without anyone motivated by fallacies, malice, or selfishness, it would never be the case that workers would need to ask for livable wages/salaries, and raises based upon expanding responsibilities, higher positions, deepening seniority, or personal productivity or talent would not be blocked or dependent upon an employee's conversational skills with an employer who might be trying to overwork and underpay wherever they can.  Unless this is to become this world, negotiation is a burden that can fall far more on employees than those they work for, and being prepared to communicate the disproportionality between current and merited pay is a necessity of sorts.

Everything down to the length of time someone has spent with a role or company can be relevant.  Seniority can give a person time to amass knowledge of company operations, formal and informal policies, and useful relationships with other workers (even if they do not extend to anything outside of a workplace context and into genuine friendship).  Since some company or department norms might not be officially documented or might easily be forgotten during transitions of power, prolonged seniority paired with a memory of precise details like these can certainly be appealed to for negotiation purposes.  More significantly for the company, though, a longtime employee might have a lot of productivity contributions or know how to navigate flexibly around problems.  Specific examples of competency or desire for growth (not it is possible for there to be endless professional growth) can help in negotiations over pay increases.

If a company would be crippled or just set back dramatically if one was to quit or withdraw effort, then one has not just the same level of baseline power that all employees have because an employer needs workers to uphold the status quo; one would also have power as an individual worker on the basis of milestone accomplishments, talent, familiarity with the company, or connections to people within the hierarchy.  All of this can be mentioned and emphasized in a discussion about compensation.  Unless one has a manager or employer who actively avoids neglecting, trivializing, or oppressing employees, one might have to bring these things up oneself instead of hoping that achievements and potential will be noticed by default.

Drawing attention to the genuine justification for a raise or promotion (which should come with a raise already unless a person voluntarily declines it) based on merit is not guaranteed to be met with approval or celebration by an irrationalistic boss.  The company figure on the other side of the negotiation might have already noticed what the employee cites, hoping they would not bring them up or ready to dismiss them for irrelevant or vague reasons.  Rationality and firmness are needed together in this case.  Of course, an employer who wants to reward workers for their integral contribution to his or her successes would not be waiting for workers to mention these things in hopes of receiving an arbitrary raise.  No, they would be eager or prepared to give one beforehand.

In the numerous cases where the employer or manager is not this kind of leader, one might need to fight for even deserved raises, either to adjust for the rising cost of living or to account for increasing seniority or skill.  The same handful of idiotic excuses will probably be stated by an irrationalistic leader, though.  The budget might supposedly be too restrictive to permit livable or individualistically deserved compensation, but it will simultaneously be "compatible" with high executive pay or expensive gifts for clients.  Minor or irrelevant blunders by the employee--though they would deserve at least livable compensation regardless--might be treated as if they invalidate strong work.  Be prepared to push back against this stupidity without resorting to the idiocy of assumptions, slander, hypocrisy, or selfishness that many employers might be slaves to.