Never take the counter offer though. Take the new gig. If your employer didn’t value you they arent going to suddenly start. They are just buying time to find a replacement.
I’m sure someone will fill the need to tell me of the 1% times it works out but in general it’s almost always better to take the new gig.
Here’s an alternative perspective: if they counter offer, you’re probably still underpaid, so you may want to accept and keep looking for the next few months using the new salary as your new base expectation. But absolutely make sure you’re never going to come back to that org if you leave within a year of accepting the counter offer.
If you’re not going to take the counter offer, why even bring it up? I suppose it would be a message to your old boss that they ought to offer more when seeking your replacement, but they won’t. Maybe you could share the information with the person most likely to be forced into doing all your work under their old title and at their old wage.
unsolicited. I put in my notice, boss asks how much I’m getting offered and makes a counteroffer.
solicited. I get an offer and let my boss know a company is offering X and ask if they’ll give Y.
I think the line of thinking of intentionally trying to get a counteroffer is that if you get a counter offer you could take it to the new employer and try to get them to match. In a worker’s market that might get you some more money but in a employer’s market your only real choice is to go with the new employer. Does it hurt to ask? Maybe not, but id rather not risk it since at that stage you’ve already informed your boss of the new job offer so if anything goes wrong, your old employer is still going to start looking for a replacement.
Ofc, at the time salary is discussed you are talking with HR so it’s slightly less risk, but they still might have a candidate #2 and #3 on standby.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask the new company to beat it by a bit. Tell them you’ll verbally accept if they meet, say, 5-10% above the counter offer or even a one-time sign-on bonus because you’d like a change of pace anyway but want some compensation for taking the risk of making the jump.
Never take the counter offer though. Take the new gig. If your employer didn’t value you they arent going to suddenly start. They are just buying time to find a replacement.
I’m sure someone will fill the need to tell me of the 1% times it works out but in general it’s almost always better to take the new gig.
Here’s an alternative perspective: if they counter offer, you’re probably still underpaid, so you may want to accept and keep looking for the next few months using the new salary as your new base expectation. But absolutely make sure you’re never going to come back to that org if you leave within a year of accepting the counter offer.
If you’re not going to take the counter offer, why even bring it up? I suppose it would be a message to your old boss that they ought to offer more when seeking your replacement, but they won’t. Maybe you could share the information with the person most likely to be forced into doing all your work under their old title and at their old wage.
I think there are two paths:
I think the line of thinking of intentionally trying to get a counteroffer is that if you get a counter offer you could take it to the new employer and try to get them to match. In a worker’s market that might get you some more money but in a employer’s market your only real choice is to go with the new employer. Does it hurt to ask? Maybe not, but id rather not risk it since at that stage you’ve already informed your boss of the new job offer so if anything goes wrong, your old employer is still going to start looking for a replacement.
Ofc, at the time salary is discussed you are talking with HR so it’s slightly less risk, but they still might have a candidate #2 and #3 on standby.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask the new company to beat it by a bit. Tell them you’ll verbally accept if they meet, say, 5-10% above the counter offer or even a one-time sign-on bonus because you’d like a change of pace anyway but want some compensation for taking the risk of making the jump.