CEO Salaries

There's been a lot in the news lately about CEO pay packages and how they relate to company performance. The numbers are always mind-blowing, almost inconceivably large. How have we gotten to a point where these salaries are so stratospheric? Anyone who rises to that level in a company must have something going for them in terms of brains, personality, management skills-- at least I'd hope so-- but are they really THAT much more valuable than other workers? Sometimes, obviously, they aren't: the CEOs of companies that have crashed and burned can't possibly be doing their jobs right, yet even when they are fired for it, they walk away with severance packages worth more than most of us could ever earn in many lifetimes.
Why aren't more shareholders up in arms about this issue? How are some of these CEOs themselves not embarrassed by their pay?
I guess the world of corporate boards and compensation consultants is a pretty small circle-- they all think they deserve it themselves, so they vote for it for each other. I came across this chart while looking up a book I'm interested in reading, called Superclass. This chart of connections might strike some people as conspiracy paranoia, but to me, it's just not all that surprising that very rich and powerful people all have connections to each other, and that they would all do whatever they think makes their friends happy, whether that is donating to a favorite charity, or weighing in on how much someone deserves a huge pay package.

Do the Thing That You Can Do For 2 Hours Without Realizing It

I forget exactly where I was reading this, perhaps in some article about kids and their parents deciding whether an expensive college is worth it, etc., but someone was quoted giving this advice to people who are deciding what they want to do with their lives: is there something that you can get so into that you lose track of time and later realize that you've been absorbed in this activity for over 2 hours without even knowing it? That is what you should do with your life.

That struck a chord with me, as there are definitely activities that make me feel that way. Do I do any of these things professionally? A little-- I can get wrapped up in certain analytical tasks that my job requires and lose myself for 2 hours in creating spreadsheets and charts. I can also lose myself for hours reading books, and that is definitely part of my job. But the rest of my work life doesn't have that kind of absorbing interest for me.

What other activities do I enjoy that way? Painting. Digging around in a garden. Researching genealogy. I've also gone through phases where I was quite caught up in figuring out new templates for this blog or doing some kind of hack on a Palm Pilot. I guess I like figuring things out, being creative, and playing in the dirt. But would I be happy doing any of these things professionally? Would I make enough money to be happy doing them? The money is important to me, as this blog might suggest! But is there also something about being paid for a task that makes it less fun? Would I rather get lost for 2 hours in something that is pure recreation, or part of my career?

I don't quite know the answer to that question-- I've made the career choices I've made, and that is part of the answer, I guess. How about you? What do you love to do, and do you get paid to do it?

The Latest (Late) Links

An Explanation of the Credit Crisis

Raise your hand if you don’t quite understand this whole financial crisis.

It has been going on for seven months now, and many people probably feel as if they should understand it. But they don’t, not really. The part about the housing crash seems simple enough. With banks whispering sweet encouragement, people bought homes they couldn’t afford, and now they are falling behind on their mortgages.

But the overwhelming majority of homeowners are doing just fine. So how is it that a mess concentrated in one part of the mortgage business — subprime loans — has frozen the credit markets, sent stock markets gyrating, caused the collapse of Bear Stearns, left the economy on the brink of the worst recession in a generation and forced the Federal Reserve to take its boldest action since the Depression?

Teachers Can Make $125,000

“The money, as funny as this may sound, is not about the money,” he says. “The money is a signifier. Because money, in our culture, is a signifier of how jobs are valued, and right now schools are telling teachers that they are not valued. The great and talented people who go into teaching are incentive-ized in every possible way to leave the classroom for jobs in administration or jobs outside of schools altogether. What we are trying to do is reverse those incentives. We want the best teachers to keep on teaching, to be challenged and valued.”

Tuition Breaks at Harvard Law

For years, prosecutors, public defenders and lawyers in traditionally low-paying areas of the law have argued that financial pressures were pushing graduates toward corporate law and away from the kind of careers that they would pursue in the absence of tens of thousands of dollars in student loans.

“The debt loads that people are coming out of law schools with are now in six figures,” said Joshua Marquis, the district attorney in Clatsop County, Ore., and vice president of the National District Attorneys Association. “When the debt load is that great, I have had a lot of applicants who’ve said, ‘I’d like to take the job, but I really can’t afford it.’ ”

Women and Aging: Expensive No Matter What!

Here's another article I enjoyed from last Thursday's Times:

Nice Résumé. Have You Considered Botox?

We women just can't get a break sometimes. According to this article, if you let yourself age naturally, it will cost you money because you'll be passed over for jobs. If you combat aging with surgery, lotions, injections, etc., that will cost you money too! You can also spend $25.99 (or $14.29 at Amazon) on this book by Charla Krupp called "How Not to Look Old:"

The book is the latest makeover title to treat the aging of one’s exterior as a disease whose symptoms are to be fought to the death or, at least, mightily camouflaged. But the book offers a serious rationale for such vigilant attempts at age control, arguing that trying to pass for younger is not so much a matter of sexual allure as of job security.

“Looking hip is not just about vanity anymore, it’s critical to every woman’s personal and financial survival,” according to the book jacket.

Promoted recently on Oprah Winfrey’s show and “Today,” the book clearly speaks to the fears of professional obsolescence and economic vulnerability among women over 40, at whom it is aimed. “How Not to Look Old” made its debut on the New York Times best-seller list last week at No. 8 in the advice and how-to category.

Ok, on a gut level, this is nothing new to most people, but the article mentions a study that puts it in concrete terms:

In one study on hiring practices, for example, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology applied to entry-level jobs in Boston and St. Petersburg, Fla., by sending out 4,000 résumés as a female job applicant; the résumés varied the year of high school graduation, which dated the job seeker as being from 35 to 62.
The study, published in 2005 by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, found that younger women were 40 percent more likely to receive an offer of a job interview than women over 50; a woman over 50 in Boston would have to send in 27 résumés just to get one job interview, where a younger woman would have to send in only 19, the study said.
“Seeming young can definitely help your economic status, and that pays the rent,” said Joanna N. Lahey, the author of the study, who is now an assistant professor of public policy at Texas A & M.

Given that the jobs applied to were "entry level," the age discrimination might have involved a fear that the older applicant would be more likely to want more money or not stay in the job very long. Also, the study doesn't prove anything one way or the other about how LOOKING old affects your employability since the candidates were judged on their resume and the age it implied, not their face-to-face appearance. Who knows, maybe a thin, attractive and well-dressed older woman with grey hair and a few wrinkles would be more frequently offered a job than a younger woman who was un-stylish, overweight, and ugly.
But also, you have to remember how this plays out with men: older men are just more likely to be considered "attractive" than older women, and even if they aren't considered particularly "attractive" it doesn't seem to be as big a detriment to their careers. Look at all the major political figures we see in the news lately: there's no accounting for tastes, but Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, John Edwards-- all those guys would be generally seen as "attractive," I'm sure. John McCain? Rudy Giuliani? Dennis Kucinich? Mike Huckabee (at any weight)? Now you're talking about guys who are not that cute. But what about the women who are national figures? Nancy Pelosi? Condoleezza Rice? Maybe not everyone would agree, but I would say they are much higher on the attractiveness scale, and Hillary Clinton looks pretty good these days, even if she is never going to be considered a great beauty and has been the butt of way too much criticism over her earlier fashion mistakes. It's not like attractiveness is 100% necessary to succeed in politics, but something tells me that if we ever have a woman president, she will be well above average in terms of her appearance!

The article acknowledges the notion that it might be politically uncorrect, to say the least, to play along with any of our society's prejudices about appearance instead of working to change them:

Many people would shun a book if it were titled “How Not to Look Jewish” or “How Not to Look Gay” because to cater to discrimination is to capitulate to it. But the success of “How Not to Look Old” indicates that popular culture is willing to buy into ageism as an acceptable form of prejudice, even against oneself.

Even women who would probably identify themselves as feminists put a value on appearance and youthfulness, while trying to say it shouldn't be a basis for discrimination:

[Faye] Wattleton, 64, described people’s outward aging and their decisions to ameliorate it as personal choices that others should not judge.

“Being a person who has had plastic surgery and goes to the gym five days a week to work my muscles up so they don’t look atrophied as a 6o-year-old, I don’t disparage people who want to maintain their appearance,” said Ms. Wattleton, a former director of Planned Parenthood. “But what I don’t want is a society that tells me I have to.”

Ms. Krupp argues that economic pressures require most women to adopt age-management techniques. As her book puts it: we cannot afford to let ourselves go!

“What are we going to do if we have to enter the work force at a ripe old age?” Ms. Krupp said last week. “Out of necessity, you can disguise the age you are by looking younger, hipper and fresher.”

She added that Americans of one class, religion or ethnicity have often tried on other identities if they appeared to confer some professional or economic advantage.

“There was a book on how not to look Jewish,” Ms. Krupp said. “It was called ‘The Preppy Handbook’ and it was a best seller.”

Yeow! Of course that book would not have been a best seller under a more blatant title...

But back to the age thing, frankly, I think there is a lot more to this issue than wanting to be employed, or how society discriminates. We all want to look young and feel young so we can believe we are that much further away from dying! And perhaps, further away from having to start tapping into our retirement accounts...

Making Choices: Time vs. Money

Here's a story I enjoyed from last Thursday's New York Times. I think Thursday has always been my favorite day of the week for the Times: it used to be when they had the big Circuits section, there's always something fun in the Styles section, and the crossword puzzle starts to get interesting! And I often like Lisa Belkin's "Life's Work" column. This one is about how law firms are starting to become more flexible about the work/life balance, and realize that they might have an easier time competing for the best people if they acknowledge that the lifestyle of a typical big-firm lawyer kind of sucks! According to the article, lawyers at big firms are expected to bill about 42 hours a week, which means actually putting in more than 60 hours of time in the office. But now some firms are starting to allow people to choose other options, which basically mean choosing to earn less money in exchange for having a life.
Deborah Epstein Henry founded a consulting firm called Flex-Time Lawyers and proposes these work time options, under a program called FACTS:

FACTS is an acronym. Under Ms. Henry’s proposal, work time can be: Fixed (allowing lawyers to choose less high-profile work for more predictable schedules), or Annualized (intense bursts of high-adrenaline work followed by relative lulls); Core (with blocks mapped out for work and for commitments like meeting children at the bus); Targeted (an agreed-upon goal of hours, set annually, customized for each worker, with compensation adjusted accordingly); and Shared (exactly as it sounds).

As a single, childless person, I am not driven by some of the needs that would make people consider earning less money. My current job offers a pretty good balance of pay vs. a relatively sane lifestyle, and I wouldn't want to make any less money. I'd rather earn more money, but I wouldn't really want to have to work much harder for it! But if I was a lawyer and had to deal with working 60 hours a week as a baseline, and if I was making, say, $300,000 a year, then I think I would totally love the idea of working 40 hours a week for $200,000. (I'm just guessing at the salary range here, assuming someone my age would have over 10 years at a firm. Perhaps it's actually higher given that lawyers at these big firms are making over $150,000 their first year!)

Would you choose time over money, if your employer offered that option? How much money would you have to be making to consider trading some of it away for a less hectic work schedule? Which is worth more to you, money or time?

401k Annual Report

I periodically get emails from my company's HR department containing a summary report about our 401k program-- the value of the assets, administrative expenses, how much was contributed and paid out, etc. I usually ignore it. But this time, I didn't: I read it, and even did a little math to calculate how many employees might be participating and what the approximate rate of return was overall on the plan's investments. I didn't see anything that caused me alarm, and it was sort of interesting.
I was curious about it this time because I'd heard a rumor that our 401k plan could be in danger of failing the discrimination test-- in a nutshell, if highly compensated employees (HCEs) are contributing a much higher percentage of their salaries than non-highly compensated employees, it's considered discriminatory because the HCEs are getting more of a benefit than others. If a plan fails the test, HCEs might have some of their contributions refunded, and the allowed contribution amounts might be capped at a certain percentage of employees' salaries.

When you think about it, publishing seems like an industry where 401ks could easily run into this problem. The industry is largely based in New York, where the cost of living is extremely high. Yet average salaries are extremely low. So you're likely to have a lot of people who feel they can't afford to contribute until they start to get into the pay range of HCEs. For 2007, an HCE is defined as someone whose compensation is $100,000 or more this year, which doesn't go all that far in NYC. I think a company I used to work for may have had to limit 401k contributions for this reason-- I may be remembering wrong, as I wasn't as informed about these issues back then, but I think contributions were capped at a percentage, rather than the full dollar amount allowed annually for other plans.

At this point in my life, I'm about to cross the line into being an HCE myself-- whoopee, what a milestone! They should send you a lapel pin, or a Girl Scout-type badge or something... But since I am committed to maximizing my retirement savings by this method, I'd be annoyed if I could no longer contribute my full $15,500 or whatever the amount ends up being for future years. I hope our HR department is doing a good job talking entry-level employees into signing up for the 401k! And not just for my own selfish reasons...

In any case, I have no way of knowing where we stand on the HCE vs. non-HCE contributions just from reading the summary annual report, though the overall contributions vs. our number of employees suggests very few people max out their contributions. I guess that information might be in the full annual report, which I can request a copy of if I want to. I liked this paragraph at the end of the summary:

You also have the legally protected right to examine the annual report at the main office of the plan at XXX Publishing Company, New York, NY 100xx, and at the U.S. Department of Labor in Washington, D.C. or to obtain a copy from the U.S. Department of Labor upon payment of copying costs. Requests to the Department should be addressed to: Public Disclosure Room, N1513, Employee Benefits Security Administration, U.S. Department of Labor, 200 Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20210.

I wonder how many people show up at the Department of Labor asking to read their 401k annual report?!? It would be interesting to try it... I smell a My Open Wallet field trip in the making!

Success!

I finally got some resolution on the issue of my recent raise (the one I thought was too low). My boss said it wasn't easy to get approved, but they increased my raise from about 3.5% up to 5%! I was pleased-- I thought they might only bring it to somewhere between 4 and 5% but 5 is a nice round number!
They did say that I shouldn't think all it took was to be a squeaky wheel, and said that my salary is in line with other people in similar positions in my company. They reminded me again that the increase percentages tend to get smaller as your salary gets higher. But the bottom line was that they value what I contribute and want me to be happy and felt my arguments were valid enough to give me what I was asking for.
In any case, I'm glad that all worked out. But I may not be so lucky next year. I'll have to start thinking of a way to get another promotion!

Asking for a Raise Redux

One of the more popular posts on this site seems to have been How to Ask for a Raise, written back in Feb. 2006. About a year before that, I had asked for and received a better raise than my company had initially offered me when I had my annual review. The following year, I got a reasonable cost of living raise which I accepted without any objections, and then the year after that I got a promotion, with a larger, but not huge, salary increase.
That brings me to this year. I just had a performance review, which was as glowing as could be. While I was absorbing all of this and inwardly thinking, wow, just think how much better I could do if I wasn't blogging all the time, my boss got to the punchline, which was telling me how much of a raise I was getting. Anyone care to guess what kind of percentage it was?

3.5%.

Okay, is this terrible? Maybe not. It's not like they are required to give me a raise, and I should feel glad I got anything, I guess. But really-- from the Publishers Weekly stats I quoted recently, industry average raises are more like 4-5%. And my company is doing fine. And I'm doing great, supposedly! So wouldn't you think I'd get a raise that was a bit more above a cost of living increase? 3.5% sounds like about the level inflation is usually estimated at! If my job performance is considered superior, I should deserve an above-average, top-of-market raise, not a below-average, treading-water kind of raise!

I didn't question the amount right away. When presenting it, my boss pointed out that some of our department's business is down this year. She has also mentioned in the past that salary increase percentages get smaller the higher one's salary gets. She also said that since I had gotten a promotion last year, the raise this year wasn't as high. That was where I thought to myself, WTF!?!?!

I thanked her for the good review, we talked about a couple other things, and she said I should read it over again before signing it and giving it back to her to finalize things with HR. So I went back to my office and started making my case!

First of all, getting a big increase with a promotion one year shouldn't be a reason to get a smaller increase the next year. Then it's like it averages out to just a normal increase over two years, as if I hadn't been promoted at all! And in looking at my salary history, I don't think I've ever gotten a raise as small as 3.5%. I gathered my figures about the company's performance and my department's performance. I also pulled together some figures on the amount of new business that is under my management this year, as it increases the total I'm responsible for by over 30%, even if parts of that business are down vs. last year. I also thought more clearly about some new areas of responsibility I'd like to get involved in-- I should have had more talking points on that ready when I had my review, really, but since I want to reopen the salary conversation anyway, maybe it's just as well I left myself some new things to talk about! Rather than just complaining about my raise being too low, I want to speak positively about what I contribute to the company and my interest in doing more for the company in exchange for the extra money I'd like them to pay me. It's not like it's even going to be that much more money-- just a couple thousand dollars more if they bump my raise up to the 5% or so that I think would be fair. I think they can find a way to cough it up!

My boss is out for a few days so I can't have this conversation just yet, but I'm all geared up and ready to go in with guns blazing and sabers drawn... in my very mild-mannered, diplomatic, and courteous way, of course! Wish me luck!

Publishing Salaries

About a month ago, Publishers Weekly had their annual salary survey article. I always keep an eye out for this, in part because my annual review usually occurs shortly afterwards and I want to know if my raise measures up. Unfortunately, I never find their data to be all that informative for the purpose of comparison, as they only break out the data into broad categories, and who's to say how I should compare myself to an average or median for any given group. But it's still interesting to look at...
Here's a few tidbits from the article:

Selective Executive Salaries
Steve Riggio, CEO of Barnes & Noble: $2,835,744 total compensation
Sandy Cochran, President and CEO of Books-A-Million: $815,000 total compensation

Average Annual Raise
2002: 5.1%
2003: 4.9%
2004: 4.9%
2005: 5.3%
2006: 4.5%

Battle of the Sexes
Average salary for men: $99,442, average increase from last year 4.6%
Average salary for women: $63,747, average increase from last year 4.4%

Median salary at companies with annual sales over $500 million
Management: $146,500
Sales/Marketing: $80,000
Editorial: $54,500
Operations: $67,000
(salaries get lower as companies get smaller)

Average salary by experience
Less than 3 years:
Editorial: $30,100
Sales/Marketing: $34,000
Management: $62,500
Operations: $40,350

More than 10 years:
Editorial: $71,000
Sales/Marketing: $93,125
Management: $149,000
Operations: $65,000

Job satisfaction
Extremely satisfied: 13%
Very satisfied: 36%
Somewhat satisfied: 35%
Not too/at all satisfied: 16%

Why not satisfied
Low salary: 60%
Increased workloads: 45%
Lack of recognition: 40%
Management problems: 32%
Long hours: 23%

The wide disparity between male and female salaries surprised me, as publishing is an industry with a large proportion of women, but higher level executive positions still often skew towards men, I guess. The article also points out that all 93% of publishing employees are college graduates, and 25% have graduate degrees-- these salaries are quite low compared to other industries with as educated a workforce.
Anyway, this is my world. Within this world, I am someone with about 15 years of experience who will just barely squeak past $100,000 for the first time at the end of this year. I like what I do. I do wish I was paid more for it, but when I compare stories with some friends who work in higher-paying sectors of the business world, I think my job probably wins in terms of quality of life factors. But 30 years from now when we're all retired, I suspect my higher-paid friends will have a better long-term quality of life... but I'll at least have an awesome library.

Expensive Mistakes

Have you ever made an honest mistake, at work or in your personal life, that cost you or someone else a lot of money? At work today, something came up where due to a minor proofreading error, something happened that will cost someone at least $10-20,000 as far as I can tell. It's a little up in the air right now as to who has to eat this loss, and the people involved are, understandably, a bit anguished about it!
I'm glad I'm not in any way personally responsible for this mistake, because I'm sure I'd be giving myself an ulcer about it if I was! I'm not sure what I'd do if I was liable for something like that, where the money involved was so large in relation to my income and savings. If I was in someone's house and broke a vase or something, of course I'd offer to pay for it and unless it was some priceless antique vase, I could probably absorb the cost. And if I crashed their car presumably someone's insurance would cover it. I have homeowner's insurance that includes some liability coverage, but I think that is only for things that happen on the premises of my condo, not for stupid mistakes made elsewhere. Now I think I want to read my policy to check!
What would you do if you made an expensive mistake?

Bigger Bonus!

A letter from HR showed up in my inbox recently, detailing my eligibility for an annual bonus. I was surprised to see that my bonus is now based on 15% of my salary, rather than 10%! This, of course, was a very pleasant surprise. But it's weird, isn't it, that my employer sort of gave me a raise without even telling me? I suppose it must be something automatic that kicks in when you've been with the company a certain number of years. But I don't remember seeing that spelled out in the employee manual. (Not that I've actually read it lately!)
Usually employers don't give you anything you haven't asked for... and if by chance they do, they are sure to tell you what a big deal it is and how nice they are being. But in this case, I just found out by a random piece of paper that my boss never even mentioned. I just hope the HR department didn't make some kind of mistake!

"What do you do?"

I'm still kind of musing on the bachelorette party. My last post probably made all these women sound like a bunch of superficial cows, which they really weren't. Some have children, some have successful careers-- or at least so I've been told by Fifi. The weird thing was that in the course of the whole evening, I didn't learn what any of them actually did for a living. The closest I came to this was a chat with a woman sitting next to me about what'd we'd majored in in college, but then, perhaps due to the nature of parties, or perhaps due to the guests at this particular party, there was no other discussion of work, at least not at my end of the table.
We talked about food, weight, makeup, plastic surgery, Jimmy Choo bags, Christian Louboutin shoes, dating, relationships, children, the bride, the groom-to-be, and the possible uses and caloric content of the edible undies.

It's funny, the question "What do you do" is seen as kind of a cliched New York cocktail party question, indicating that we are more obsessed with work than with the rest of life. I always feel a bit self-conscious if I ask the question, but sometimes it just seems like the natural next step in a conversation. Do you think it's weird to ask this of someone you've met at a party? Do you feel like it's a thinly-veiled way of asking about their financial status, or just a way to find out more about their life?

What Are They Paying Me For?

I was eating lunch yesterday and went off into a little money meditation space-out... I was having a slice of pizza with chicken and bacon on it. Normally I get a plain slice, and find myself thinking I shouldn't always be so boring. But whenever I get some fancy slice with toppings on it, it's never all that satisfying, and I find myself missing the cheesy goodness of the plain slice I could have gotten for about $1.50 less.
So I'm not sure it really relates, but from thinking about pizza, I made some kind of mental leap into thinking about my job. My company pays me quite a good amount of money. What are they paying me for? Are they paying me for my skills at what I'm good at? Or are they paying me to do things that I'm not especially good at?
I've taken those Meyers-Briggs personality tests in the past, and found them annoying, but I was always fascinated, if somewhat perturbed by the results. My personality type is supposedly that of a person who should basically be sitting in a room alone all day, making numbers balance on a spreadsheet. But am I an accountant? No-- instead, a lot of my job involves managing people, going to meetings, making presentations. Does that mean I'm in the wrong job? I don't think so.
I think I am pretty good at some of the things I do in my job. I can make presentations confidently. I have good ideas sometimes and am not afraid to speak out with them in meetings. I am kind of naturally introverted, but it doesn't mean I can't present myself well in business situations. I can be outgoing and charming and diplomatic-- it's not like I'm some troll they need to hide in the back room! But my job also does involve a lot of numbers and analysis, and that is one of my strengths.
As for managing people? I'm not sure I'm all that great at it. I compare myself to others and think I may be too hands-off. I work with adults and expect them to behave like adults, so I tend to feel confident that they can work independently. I don't like to micro-manage, and perhaps sometimes that is a good thing. But there are times when I should micro-manage a little more than I do. I wonder if it has something to do with my not being a parent-- I've noticed my co-workers who are parents, particularly moms, seem to be very hands-on managers. I doubt that having kids would change my management style-- it's more that my personality is ill-suited to managing employees for the same reason it's ill-suited to managing children!

How about you? What is your employer paying you for?

Paystub Paranoia

My company recently switched to an online HR system where we have to print out our own direct deposit statements. I don't like having to do this, as I have always been very protective of my privacy when it comes to my salary. This may seem a bit odd given how open I am on this blog, but that's because I can be anonymous. In "real life" I definitely don't want my co-workers knowing my business!
Our paystubs used to be distributed by one of the assistants in the office-- usually if you weren't at your desk, they'd just hold onto it, but once or twice I came back to find it left on my chair or tucked half under my keyboard. It drove me nuts that someone could just snatch it and have a lot of personal information about me. Once I had my paystub in my possession, I would always stash it away in my bag unopened. That was a tip from one of my first bosses, and I've never forgotten it. Maybe it was more pertinent back when we worked in a store where everyone's bags were all on the same shelf in the stockroom and it was a bigger deal if a clerk making $5.75 an hour found out the manager made $30,000, but I still follow that advice to this day-- I don't peek at my paystub until I'm home.
So now, it bugs me that since the printer is down the hall from my office, I have to poke my head out, see if anyone is in the middle of a big print job, and then, if the coast is clear, hit PRINT on my computer and then run down the hall to the printer to make sure no one grabs my pay statement before I do! (I should mention that I don't have a printer at home, and wouldn't bother to spend money on one just for this!)
So I wonder, why is it that I don't want someone to see my paystub? There's the usual social taboo about revealing one's salary. There's the fact that I have people who report to me, and it just doesn't seem right to have them know how much more I make. But honestly, one of the reasons I worry about it is just personal embarrassment. I worry that some of the people who might see it would think I was underpaid for what I do, and that I'd look like a chump who'd never played her cards right, and perhaps I sort of am. Either that, or they'd think I'm overpaid, and wonder how such a useless twit gets away with doing so little for so much. Somehow, I'd be less embarrassed about that! They might not like me but they'd at least think I was a good negotiator. Especially since the possibility of me having seduced my current boss is pretty much nil, so they wouldn't think I was just some manipulative ho. Interesting value scale, isn't it?

• Bad: being seen as lazy and useless but able to fool someone into paying me well.
• Worse: being seen as a manipulative ho.
• Worst: being seen as a wimp who lets herself be underpaid.

I once inherited some old files from a boss who left the company, and she'd inadvertently left me a document with the salaries of everyone in our entire department. (At least I think it was inadvertent, but I have sometimes wondered if it was actually a subtle parting gift, as some kind of encouragement to ask for what I thought I deserved. This was actually the same boss who steered me in the right direction in my "How to Ask for a Raise" post.)
For the most part, in judging my salary against everyone else's, things seemed pretty much fair. But there were two guys who seemed wildly overpaid in comparison to everyone else. One of them was routinely ridiculed for spending a little too much time reading the newspaper with his feet up on his desk, and I'd already heard some gossip about him being overpaid. (Bad: lazy but fooled someone into paying him well.) The other guy had just gotten a promotion to become my new boss, so I now knew he was even more overpaid, and I wasn't too happy about working for him for other reasons that had nothing to do with money. (Probably because I suspected he was both useless AND a manipulative ho.) So that just felt kind of icky.
So despite my belief that financial openness is a very good thing, I do think there are times when it's best not to know how much people make. Anyone else have any stories about deliberate or inadvertent snooping into the salaries of others?

How to Ask for a Raise

I think a lot of women find asking for a raise really difficult, and I am no exception. We worry about seeming pushy or over-confident, and aren't always sure of our worth. Sometimes we just want to be recognized for our abilities without having to ask. Sometimes we're trying to be team players in an atmosphere of company belt-tightening, and sometimes we're just chicken, I don't know... but in books I've read and people I've spoken to, I've never heard of a woman who didn't have at least some pang of discomfort at the prospect of asking for more money. (I'm sure many men don't find it easy either, but for whatever reason, it seems to be harder for women.)
I work in publishing, which is an industry where people jump around from one company to another a lot-- often this is how you get a raise or a promotion, by starting fresh with a new employer! I've done a bit of that myself, but I have also been at a couple of jobs long enough to have negotiated raises.

So how did I do it? The first time was several years ago. The job I was in was a real step up for me, at a small company where I had quite broad responsibilities and a lot of independence. When I was hired I was on a straight salary, and was told they couldn't start me at much more than my previous job at a larger corporate publishing house. After I'd been there over a year and had gotten one cost of living raise, I noticed that two assistants who partially reported to me had been given large raises by my boss. So I thought, what the hell! I understand that they want to keep smart young people in the company, but what happened to all that talk about how tight the payroll budget was? I am smart and young too, and I need the money!
I went in and asked my boss if I could speak to her privately. I kind of started off on the wrong foot, telling her I was a little disgruntled that other people had gotten raises bigger than mine, both in percentage and actual dollars. My boss, who I got along well with and is still a friend, looked a little amused. She actually started to kind of steer me in a direction that was more politic, pointing out that what anyone else was making really was irrelevant. I countered that I knew that was true, but that it was relevant to what kind of raises were available and what the company's financial situation was. And besides, I said, I had recently broken up with someone, as she knew, and had moved and had higher expenses now, and though I knew that was not her problem... again, she kind of steered me a bit: "You mean, you have recently had reason to be more aware of the cost of living in NYC, and reason to prioritize salary more highly, rather than the desire for a good working environment and potential for advancement you were most concerned about when you started here?" Yeah, that! And also, I said, I've been selling to an account whose business has increased dramatically, and I'm not on a bonus plan and I think my hard work should be recognized. My boss pointed out that there were no hard rules about bonus vs. straight salary and that many people chose the security of a slightly higher salary instead of a lower salary plus a variable bonus. I then talked about my performance review and how positive it had been, and how I enjoyed my job and valued what I was learning there, but believed I was a strong asset to the company and just wanted my pay to reflect my value in the industry so that I would continue to be happy there rather than being tempted to look elsewhere.
The end result was that I didn't get an immediate salary increase, but was put on a nice bonus plan that significantly increased my income at the end of that year. I had a new respect for my boss because of the way she gently prodded me to say the right things, and I think she was pleased that I had brought up the issue instead of just stewing about it.

A couple of years later, I was working at a different job. I had gotten one really good performance review with a moderate cost of living raise. The next year, I knew I wanted to ask for more, especially since I'd always felt that I'd shot a little low when I negotiated my initial salary. A few things came together in the months right before my performance review was due. First of all, Publisher's Weekly did their annual salary survey. Its usefulness is probably limited, as the categories they survey are too broad and they lump Managers and Directors together when they calculate average salaries. Since job titles can mean such different things at different places anyway, it's all kind of meaningless. But it does give you something to compare your own salary to. The other thing that happened was that I got a call from a head hunter, which happens to me occasionally. I wasn't interested in the job she described and didn't even interview for it, but she mentioned a salary that was quite a bit higher than what I was making. Head hunters are always dangling that kind of carrot, but again, it was ammunition.
I thought about all this and came up with a number that I wanted to ask for, and then I settled in to wait for my review. At that point, of course I had some moments of doubt, thinking of ways my performance could be better, wondering if I would be seen as having delusions of grandeur if I asked for too much. But I just tried to calm myself down and wait to see what the review would be like. When it happened, once again I was told everything was going great and that I had accomplished a lot and was well-liked and respected by everyone including the CEO, etc etc. So that charged me up and when my boss said she had put me down for a skimpy cost-of-living raise, I was ready to come out swinging.
I kept it all positive, which was easy to do, because again, I had a good relationship with my boss. I said I was really happy with the review, enjoyed the job and really looked forward to continuing my career within the company, but that I had concerns about my salary. I understood that they hadn't wanted to start me at a higher level because of my past experience but that I'd obviously proven myself in the job if they'd given me 2 stellar reviews. I also mentioned the PW salary survey and said that though that couldn't be used to give a pay scale for a particular job, it gave a general sense of the range for a company of our size and my kind of position, and that if my performance was as good as she said, I should be paid at a top-of-market rate rather than a barely-average rate. I also mentioned the headhunter's call and the salary I'd been quoted, and suggested that I often heard about open positions from my many friends and contacts from the various places I'd worked. I was careful, however, to make clear that I wasn't saying I had an offer, and didn't want to interview elsewhere.
My boss countered with a few arguments about our company's performance and what our pay scales were for people with my title. I came back to my own performance and that I was willing to take on more responsibility. It was all very friendly and upbeat, and it worked. They counter-offered a little bit less than I asked for, but they still more than doubled the amount of my raise.
I think these are some key things to remember:

• go in with ammunition: stay informed about average salaries in your industry & city
  
• be positive and focus on your own strengths
• keep the discussion relevant to your work, rather than why you need the money
  
• time your request so it ties in with a performance review (and hope it's a good one!)
• position yourself as someone who actively networks and is known in the industry
• don't lie about getting other job offers
  
• you won't get what you want if you don't ask for it, specifically
• if you follow the rules above, the worst that can happen is that your boss will say no.
  

Some people might argue that I could have been even more aggressive in how I negotiated, and say that I should have asked for a bigger raise yet again the following year when I just got another cost of living increase. Perhaps-- but I did what felt right for me, trying to make a firm, reasonable request with solid arguments behind it rather than venturing onto shakier ground. We'll see how it goes next time-- I'll be due for another one of these conversations within the next year, I think!

Rule #8: Work for free...

Free stuff, that is!

• Work where you get something you love for free.

I do not work in a high-paying industry. 15 years into my career, I probably still make less than most first-year law firm associates, and I think I've had a better than average, if not stellar career path compared to other people in publishing. But I've always had a few perks that made it worthwhile. I don't mean perks like free espresso and ping pong tables in the office. One of mine is books: I've always loved to read, which is why I was drawn to publishing in the first place. If I'd had to buy all my books at full price, I'd be many thousands of dollars poorer. The other big perk I've had has been travel. At one of my jobs, I had to go to Europe 3 or 4 times a year, and was usually able to extend my trips into at least a few days of vacation time. I also racked up a lot of frequent flier miles than I was able to use for personal travel, again saving me thousands of dollars. I also save money in other small ways because of my job. I occasionally get free meals. And when it comes to tax time, I can deduct everything under the sun: internet access, movies, plays, museums, magazines-- all of these things very legitimately contribute to my awareness of the book market!
I'm sure I could also have been happy working in some other career where I made more money (and had the espresso and ping pong), but I'm sure there are many paths I could have taken that would have made me miserable. I kind of stumbled into what I do, but I've always felt that it is a pretty good balance in terms of its challenges, its time demands, and its benefits.