Ask for the Raise: Showing Your Value Without Bragging

TL;DR If you never ask, your pay is still decided, just without your evidence, and often for another year. How to ask for a raise: find out when pay is set and ask a month or two before, map your work to the level above, name a number or a level, and if the answer is no, leave with what would make it yes and by when, in writing.

Do this: Ask your lead this month when pay and promotions are decided, and by whom.

Part 5 ended at Friday lunch, with Bun's question: if the client trusts Pip this much, and she's doing a senior engineer's work, is she paid like one? Pip has never asked for a raise. She pushes rice around her bowl.

"Won't Kit think I'm ungrateful?"

"Did he think that when you asked for feedback?" says Bun. "Bring him another good question. With evidence."

Dev Voyage: Open Ocean, in six parts:

1. Working With a Difficult Boss Without Losing Yourself
2. Feedback Both Ways: Asking For It and Giving It
3. Say No Without Making Enemies, and Keep Your Energy
4. Keep Learning: Bringing New Tools (and AI) Into Real Work
5. Talk to the Business: Working With PMs and Non-Engineers
6. Ask for the Raise: Showing Your Value Without Bragging (you are here)

Ask before the budget is set

Asking for money can feel rude. But your company decides your pay on its own schedule anyway. Asking puts your evidence on the table when it does.

Timing matters most. Once budgets are set, even a lead who agrees with you may have nothing left to give. So Pip asked Kit first: "When are raises decided here, and who decides?"

Budgets for the new year were set in late November. It was early October. She booked the conversation for the end of the month.

Map your year to the level above

"I work hard" is a feeling. "I'm doing the work of the level above, and here's the evidence" is a case. If your company has written career levels, read them. If not, ask your lead, and look at public frameworks such as Dropbox's engineering career framework or the collection on progression.fyi.

Pip put her brag doc next to the level above:

That table is the whole case: the brag doc Julia Evans recommends, started on probation, a year later doing its job.

Name a number, and plan for no

"I'd like a raise" invites "we'll see". Name a level, a number, or both. To find the number, look at what your role pays in your city: salary surveys, job ads that show ranges, friends you trust enough to ask.

Patrick McKenzie's essay on salary negotiation is written for job offers, but its core holds here: know the market and let your value lead. Harvard's Program on Negotiation adds one more: know your BATNA, your best alternative if there's no deal, so you can stay calm whatever the answer is. Don't bluff about an offer you wouldn't take. Leads remember.

I'd like to talk about my level and pay.
This year I've been doing most of the work of a senior engineer: [the table, with links].
I'd like to be considered for senior, at around <the market number for senior here>.
What would you need to see to make that happen this cycle?

If the answer is no, ask two things and write them down: what exactly would make it a yes, and when you'll look again. Send that back the same day, as in part 1. If it stays vague for two cycles, that tells you something about the ship.

Pip went into Kit's cabin with one page and a cup of tea.

Try it

This month:

1. Ask your lead when pay and promotions are decided, and by whom.
2. Put your brag doc next to the level above, with links.
3. Find a market range for your role and city.
4. Write your opening: the case, the ask, and "what would make it yes?"

Pip said yes before her tea went cold. Back at her desk, she opened her calendar: Monday, her first standup as lead of the checkout crew, with Brock in it. Reviews were already waiting, and a hiring request. She has no idea what a lead does on day one. The voyage continues in Dev Voyage: Uncharted Waters, starting with the move from best engineer to first-time lead.

Read this with your AI

Read the post "Ask for the Raise: Showing Your Value Without Bragging".
1. I'll paste my brag doc and my company's levels. Build the evidence table.
2. Help me write the opening of the conversation, with a clear ask.
3. Role-play my lead saying "not this year", and help me ask what would make it yes.