Find salaries paid at companies using foreign worker data (opens in new tab)

You are expected to leave the company. Raises are kept far, far below the rate at which employees actually accrue value in order to ensure that employees do not stay at a company for longer than 4 or 5 years. After 4 or 5 years, the gap between what you would make anywhere else and what you can make where you already are is enormous.

There is a quote from hundreds of years ago which applies. "Make game of that which makes as much of thee." They fully intend to game you and exploit your desire for stability and predictability in your life. Play them back.

(this is assuming a large company)

Raise an issue with them that you feel you're being underpaid. I've done this in 1-on-1 meetings with managers in the past. If they think you're worth keeping, they will do what they can to give you a raise when the time comes. But keep in mind that other people on their team maybe be underpaid more than you, so they might try to correct those people's salaries first.

At least from what I've seen, managers at some level (your direct manager, or their manager) are given some numbers of dollars to increase the salary of the employees. They have to choose how to distribute that between their people.

Depending on the company, it may take you moving to a different company to get what you're worth. Most companies know that transitioning jobs is difficult and a lot of people won't go through the effort. Because of this they will underpay people that they don't think are going to leave. If you want to try, apply around, interview, and get a job offer at another company. Present it to your manager and see what they say. Some companies will counter-offer, while others have policies where they will not counter-offer.

Story: a friend was offered a contracting position with the same company he already worked for (from the contracting firm, the company didn't know yet), that would be paying far more than he was making. He didn't take it and his manager didn't do anything to correct his salary. But it was pretty funny to see.

The first thing is to be brave. Understand that the market is currently in your favor. If you leave then you will make new friends and form new relationships. And if you leave then management will likely be very nice to you for two reasons: 1) to build their own network and 2) it kills morale if others see you being treated poorly.

If they treat you poorly then no one from your network will ever work for them. And if you take the story to the Internets then it gets even worse. Trust me, the company has more to lose than you do if the relationship sours.

Even though you have most of the leverage, approach your manager with respect and graciousness. Thank them and talk about how much you enjoy working here. Then tell them your pay is compressed and ask for a raise. You can google this part. Some approaches suggest being straightforward and others say build a list of your accomplishments.

Most companies even have your comp-a ratio on file, they already know you are underpaid.

If they say yes then congratulations.

If they say no (I can't make this decision. I need the VP's approval. We don't have the budget. blah blah) then work on finding a new job. Which sounds daunting but really isn't that bad.

Anyway good luck!

EDIT: Shitty story time. I have had managers say "What we can do to change your mind?" I love that...but the last time I asked for a raise my boss gave me a lecture on how there are more important things in life. People who make over 250k a year are not allowed to tell me money is not important. What a jackass.

Schedule a meeting with supervisor.

At the meeting, bring up how well the company is doing and how well you are doing. Ask for a raise.

You don't need to say where you got your number, or complain that you were underpaid before. Go in knowing your market salary -- which they probably know anyway.

EDIT This isn't a surefire plan; as the sibling comment says, sometimes you have to leave to get paid your market.

Hey I'm at work right now. Later tonight I will try to give you some success and failure stories.

But basically they are more worried about poisoning relationships with you than the other way around. If you leave for a higher paying job and your peers find out...that's much worse for the company.

Note that (if I'm not mistaken), PERM is the program for green card applicants. I would imagine that GC applicants are on average more senior and better paid than H1Bs applicants.

To answer your question below, you can get the H1B data through http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm -> disclosure -> LCA.

Cisco's firewall blocks it too. Funny stuff.

Thank you for the note. Whenever salar.ly is linked from somewhere popular I have to spin up more Heroku instances.

This is not true. You are only underpaid if you compensation is below market rate compensation. If I got paid $1 plus a $1 million bonus I would not be underpaid.

You should consider how much risk you are willing to take and how likely it is that you will get a smaller (or larger) than expected bonus.

I'm not sure about the data source, but my query on my situation seems to be accurate (base salary was roughly matching).

i don't know but it has matched up with friends' salaries at smaller companies so i trust its data

This dataset often has typos and other mistakes. If you consider the other salaries for that company, it's likely there's just an extra zero at the end.

"That said, it is important that people understand what these figures are - they are not actual technically salaries."

Can you explain?

Yes, but if you hire software engineers and label them as computer programmers (see my post here), employers completely side step the "meet or exceed prevailing wages" requirement.

In fairness, blue chip US tech companies don't do that.