When it comes to pay, it’s an inherit property: you’re looking to max out your pay, and they’re looking to minimize. You negotiate to a middle ground. By antagonistic, I don’t mean that you’re in some kind of never ending battle to the death; but your goals/incentives clearly do not align. Obviously an actively malicious HR is a different story, but ignoring that, it would be naive to pretend you’re aligned, and leave your fate to a person/group who should not be acting in your best interest.

Your employer is not your agent. He doesn’t work for you.

> Your employer is not your agent. He doesn’t work for you.

No, but I work for him. If an agent working for me would also be an antagonistic relationship, then what use is the agent?

A good employer cares about more than just what their employees cost. At the very least, happy employees are productive employees. Employees that don't feel appreciated are not happy employees.

An employer who will only give you a raise after you've found a better offer elsewhere is a bad employer.

If you’re happy, and oblivious to knowledge that you could be paid higher elsewhere, why would I as an employer bring it up?

More notably, if you’re happy, why would I initiate the re-evaluation process to even find out whether you could get paid better elsewhere?

Would you come and tell me that you’ve been overpaid after self re-evaluating? But you expect me to come and tell you that you’ve been underpaid?

What’s the incentive here? You’re happy not knowing, I’m happy not knowing, what’s the problem? That you might find out in the future that you could have made more money for the last year, but your employer didn’t do the research and offer it you out of his own goodwill? The onus is clearly on you; you’re the only one with anything to gain. If the employer does it for you, then you can be grateful, but it would be absurd to be irrated by his not checking into how he could possibly hurt himself to help you.

>If an agent working for me would also be an antagonistic relationship, then what use is the agent

It depends which part of the relationship is adverserial. There is really no relationship where all your goals are aligned — you position your payment system to align specific components, but you should still acknowledge there are misalignments. Your travel agent is paid to get you good flights; but at the same time, he might make additional money by favoring specific airlines (with perhaps some, but minor, cost to you). There’s nothing wrong with this scenario — you’re just not fully aligned, but both parties still see benefit, so its still worth striking the deal.

In the same fashion, you as an employee are looking to make money (and don’t expect an infinite amount of it) and your employer is looking for work to be done. You dont try to find/create work to do for your company (unless you’re in sales), and the company doesn’t try to find ways to make you more money.

And thats fine. Obviously there are caveats (you can look better / earn promotions by doing more than you were requested, and the company can hand you bonuses you weren’t expecting, increasing moral), but its not part of the core relationship. It’s something the other party can be grateful for, but it would be absurd to expect it, because, well, who told you it was someone else’s job to improve your situation at cost to themselves?

Its the same kind of thinking that leads to absurd situations like putting 30 hours extra per week for free in gamedev crunches, and then being offended that it didn’t really get you anything. It’s not EA’s job to tell you that you’re doing something stupid (not that I agree with the request in the first place, but the entire gamedev industry is so problematic because the employees keep doing stupid shit in the unfounded belief of their all-benevolent employer).

An enployee that doesn’t look out for his own needs is a foolish employee.

> If you’re happy, and oblivious to knowledge that you could be paid higher elsewhere, why would I as an employer bring it up?

Aren't we discussing the situation where an employee asks for a raise and it's refused? So the employee is already aware that something is missing and is bringing it up. If the employer ignores it, that's a recipe for unhappiness.

But even more than that, some employees are bad at asking for a raise for a variety of reasons, and might be unhappy about their pay yet feel uncomfortable bringing it up. There's a risk that it's easier for them to look for another job instead of asking for a raise directly. The employer giving them a raise without being asked for it, can prevent that, and make the employee happier and more likely to stay.

If you wait until the employee is unhappy enough to start looking elsewhere, the employer is already too late.

>Aren't we discussing the situation where an employee asks for a raise and it's refused?

I was only talking about the scenario before the query occurs, and that the onus is on the employee to research and bring it up; my opinion on if its refused (and the alternative option is worth the trouble of change; whatever that worth may be), then it would be absurd to stay (you have a better option.. the only reason not to switch is guilt, probably misplaced)

I don’t know how much this mistake has cost us. I get the feeling that most of our conversation can be invalidated, and we’re likely very much in agreement.

I think you're looking for the word "adversarial".

You’re right

> When it comes to pay, it’s an inherit property: you’re looking to max out your pay, and they’re looking to minimize.

While I can understand what drives this statement, I believe it's fundamentally flawed (from both perspectives).

A business is attempting to minimize and maximize many things simultaneously. One of those should be maximizing employee "happiness" for the purposes of retention, productivity, etc. Similarly, they are attempting to mimimize costs. The employee is also working to minimize and maximize many things at once. And, similarly, one area they work to also maximize is their own personal "happiness".

So, at a fundamental level, the employee and a good employer should both have they employee's happiness as a stated goal of something they'd like to maximize.

Happiness (personal and professional) can mean many things. And, an employer has many levers they can pull to help improve an employee's happiness. Sadly, one of the fundamental problems that exists in a typical employer/employee relationship is that there are very few things that an employee feels they can discuss with an employer in an attempt to maximize their own happiness; salary is typically at the top of that list.

When an employee finds their happiness tanking, it could be for many reasons. And, salary could be a cause of the unhappiness. For example, maybe the employee has taken on considerably more work in the past year and doesn't feel fairly compensated for it. But, it's quite often been my experience that the issue is actually something else entirely, and the employee is just grasping at one of the only levers they see available to pull on in the hopes it will make them happier (spoiler: it rarely does).

An example (true story) would be the Day Care provider used by the employee is no longer an option, forcing them to look for new Day Care options (highly stressful), and they are either farther away and/or cost considerably more.

An employee wouldn't typically feel comfortable bringing this (personal) problem with their employer, and instead simply ask for a raise without stating that it's to cover the increased costs (after all, this is the employee's problem). But, because they did bring up the root problem, the employer was able to discover it was an issue for many of the employees. They then found it was more cost effective to team up with a local Day Care provider within a few blocks and help provide subsidized Day Care for all the employees within walking distance. It had the benefit of dramatically improving the employees' quality of life, retention, peoductivity, etc. Likewise, it was cheaper than giving everyone raises and not actually solving the root problem.

To the OP, my recommendation would be to think through the fundamental reason why you want a higher salary. There's nothing wrong with wanting more money, and if that's what it is, go for it. But, it means you will likely need to switch jobs. If the raise, however, is a means of trying to fix something else and make you happier, think through what that is and be open to working with your employer to come up with solution together (which might be a raise!).

You may be pleasantly surprised.