posted by j_crazy
I was thinking this earlier today, has anyone here ever gotten a COL raise that was ever in line with true inflation.
Like I can remember 3 COL adjustments in my 15 year career:
In 2008 I got 1.5% when CPI was 3.8%
In 2011 I got 2% when CPI was 3.1%
In 2018 I got 1% when CPI was 2.4% - it's worth noting that i took a 7% pay cut in 2016 when oil prices crashed and this was my first raise since that time
I ask because my company (I found out this morning) gives out raises on the first paycheck in April, so everyone here is expecting 6-7% raises and I'm far more pessimistic. Disclosure here is that all of my previous experience comes from a company I left for my current job in 2018, so I may be way off. But I thought the people here might have different experiences since no one else is in my industry here that I know of.
First company I worked for I tended to get better COL raises than inflation, but that's because, as my boss put it, "The average raise across the company is 3%, if I thought you were average I wouldn't have you in our R&D group". I would get anywhere from 5-9% depending on the year and how he thought I did that year.
No other company have I ever got more than 2-3% COL increases.
I literally got told last year that I was "only" getting 2% instead of 3% because I had just got an actual 3% raise a few months earlier. So I was given 1% less COL because I had earned a 3% increase (a metric I had hit). Because that makes sense...
When (not if) I don't see 7% this year I will definitely ask "so I am making less money now than I did last year?"
On top of the fact that I was told I would get a promotion this year before Q2 is over which would be a 10-15% increase, hasn't happened yet, but I bet they include that increase in the COL, which would be BS.
There's a reason for the saying "the only way to get a true raise is to leave your current company".
This is over 4 different companies in 22 years of being in the same industry. So it's not just a single company doing this.
