A reader writes:
I work for a small company within a very niche field. The owner has been running it for decades and is an expert at this craft, and is in very high demand. The service the company offers is so specialized that the job takes about six months to a year of training, even with relevant prior experience. It was a perfect fit for me in a lot of ways. The only red flag I saw when I first accepted the job was seeing how high the turnover rate was. Only one coworker I saw on a 10-person team had been there for longer than a couple of years.
Well, I’ve passed the two-year mark of working here and I’ve hit my limit too. While the day-to-day work is pretty good and satisfying, the communication style and conflict resolution from management/owners are incredibly stressful. It’s hard to summarize since it’s a bunch of tiny miscommunications and friction in otherwise perfectly normal work days. Little mistakes are taken personally and, while it isn’t super frequent, you never know what will trigger a random hostile and accusatory reaction from management or the owner. It seems that it takes about two to three years for all those little moments to build up enough for employees to leave. While I’m disappointed to be at this point, I am ready to move on too as I am bordering on burnout from constantly walking on eggshells.
The problem I am having now is that the company also has a history of offering massive 20-30% raises, but only to employees who are already out the door. To almost everyone else, these desperate offers are too little too late, as previously dedicated star employees already exhausted all other options before they even considered leaving. But for me, as stressed as I am working here, there is a price where I can be bought and convinced to stay.
Unfortunately, I can’t ask for a raise outright. The owner has emphasized many times before that they only offer raises based on merit, not need. I have been working myself into the ground for the past year to try to hit that point. I have taken on the responsibilities of other positions, I have been put in charge of training people. I have anticipated needs and worked ahead on projects to meet deadlines. I often stay late, and I haven’t taken any time off for vacation all year. When I sat down for my two-year review, my boss praised all these things about my work ethic and dedication, describing me as an essential part of the team and someone they have “big plans for” … and then offered me an insultingly low pay bump to cover inflation. I had already brought up to the owner that the ratio of my workload to pay is unsustainable for me, and that I am actively looking for side gigs and part-time work to supplement my paycheck. I have asked if there is anything more I could be doing to justify a merit-based increase in base pay. All I got was some hemming and hawing and a vague suggestion about showing more initiative. (Which is a personal quality of mine that they had praised before.)
So, it is clear I am not going to be getting a raise unless I turn in my two weeks’ notice. I am the second most senior member of my team and the only one other than the owner qualified to help train new employees. I know they need me, but in my 2+ years here, quitting is the only time I’ve ever seen them offer raises to anyone. To me it feels scummy to look for other work and accept another job somewhere else, only to potentially turn them down when my current office offers me a big raise to stay with them instead. Obviously, I am looking for another job that I would be happy at and well compensated, but if I can’t, would it be wrong to accept another random job just to hear what my current company would counteroffer? Is this situation I am in more normal than I thought? Am I missing something obvious?
I really want to convince you not to stay — when you get another job, take it rather than trying to leverage it into a counteroffer!
You’re nearing burnout, constantly walking on eggshells, going above and beyond only to be told to “take more initiative,” and dealing with a manipulative owner who’s trying to convince you that what sounds like a massive amount of overwork doesn’t quality for you for anything more than a cost-of-living bump.
Until it affects them, that is. Because that’s what “you’ll be offered a huge raise but only when you’re walking out the door” is all about. They don’t care about paying you what your work is worth to them when you’re the only one who’s affected. Once it looks like it’ll affect them, they swing into action. And you know what, sometimes an otherwise decent manager falls into that trap — but this is their system. They designed it this way. They’ve had plenty of chances to realize, “Oh crap, we’re losing people because of money over and over and then we end up needing to swing big to keep them at the last minute” but they don’t care. They’re perfectly happy to wring every ounce of energy out of you that they can while underpaying you, until the literal last minute they have to do something about it.
This is not a place to stay. That kind of mindset is going to permeate all kinds of other parts of your daily life too (and indeed, it sounds like it does).
But none of that answers what you asked. You want to know if you can ethically line up another offer if you just want to use it to get a counteroffer. Some years back, I would have told you no, you can’t ethically do that. But with a greater appreciation than I used to have for how much capitalism screws over most workers and how much you’re on your own within that system, I’m less inclined to tell you that you shouldn’t play the game in a way that benefits you. You’d be wasting the time of the other company, but it’s not like companies never waste applicants’ time.
However, the ethics of the situation really only come into play if you’re dead-set against taking another job and would never seriously consider an offer somewhere else. But I don’t think that’s the case! A better way to look at it is this: You should be job-searching and you should be open to other offers. Your current company sucks! You should go into those interviews with an open mind, and you should be willing to take an offer if the job is right for you. You can balance any offer you get against any counteroffer your current company might make, and make the best decision for yourself. That’s a normal part of job-searching and it’s not unethical.
(But really, leave that place.)
