How Do I Ask for a Raise?

Beatriz Solano: Office Hours, I'm Beatriz Solano. Today we hear the raise conversation from the other side of the desk. Marcus Ellery is principal of a twenty-two-person architecture studio in Bristol, and Yuki Tanabe runs a motion design studio in Osaka. Between them, they have approved and refused a lot of raises.

Marcus Ellery: Refused more than approved, sadly.

Beatriz Solano: Marcus, what makes you say yes?

Marcus Ellery: Someone who tells me what has changed since their last raise. Not how long they have been here; what is different. A designer told me last spring that she now ran client calls on two projects without a senior present, and that she had taken our planning drawings from three revision cycles to one. That's a list of things I would otherwise pay someone else to do.

Yuki Tanabe: For me, it is someone who comes with a number. Half the people who ask me say they would like more. I then have to guess, and I always guess low, because I'm running a business.

Beatriz Solano: How do they get the number?

Yuki Tanabe: Salary surveys, friends at other studios, job adverts. In Osaka, a mid-weight motion designer is advertised at roughly four and a half to five and a half million yen. If you are at four million and doing mid-weight work, say that with the adverts in hand.

Beatriz Solano: What is the worst approach?

Marcus Ellery: Arriving with an offer from another studio you do not intend to take. I can tell. And if I match it, I now know you were looking, and so does everyone you told.

Yuki Tanabe: Also timing. Do not ask in the week a client has cancelled. Our budgets are set in March, so I tell my team to raise it in January.

Beatriz Solano: What if the answer is no?

Marcus Ellery: Ask what would make it yes, and when. Then write it down and send it to me. If I say lead one project from stage two to planning, and you do it, I've given you the case for the next meeting.

Yuki Tanabe: Sometimes the answer is no because the studio cannot afford it, not because you have not earned it. Ask that question directly. A good boss will tell you the truth about the books, roughly.

Beatriz Solano: And if they won't?

Marcus Ellery: Then you have learned something about the studio, and it is probably time to look.

Beatriz Solano: Does anything other than salary work?

Yuki Tanabe: A four-day week, training budget, a better title. I granted one designer Fridays off instead of money. Three years later she is still here.

Beatriz Solano: Marcus Ellery and Yuki Tanabe, thank you. That's Office Hours.