In our series Salary Stories, women with long-term career experience open up about the most intimate details of their jobs: compensation. It’s an honest look at how real people navigate the complicated world of negotiating, raises, promotions and job loss, with the hope it will give young people more insight into how to advocate for themselves — and maybe take a few risks along the way.
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Age: 32 Location: Bay Area, CA Current industry and job title: Technology, human resources business partner
Current salary: $176,000/year Number of years employed since school or university: 10 Starting salary: $42,500/year
Biggest salary jump: From $126,000 to $165,000 in 2021.
Biggest salary drop: From $90,000 to $68,000, to get on a new career path.
Biggest negotiation regret: For at least my first few roles, I did not negotiate. I was worried that the companies would take away my offer if I asked for more money. I now realize how unrealistic that thought was (and if a company ever did take away an offer, I definitely don’t want to work there). I was leaving money on the table that I really could have used at the time!
Best salary advice: My boyfriend at the time (currently, my husband) told me that when he was hiring a few reports, he had approval to go up to a certain amount of base salary without asking his lead. One of the people he hired negotiated while the other didn’t. It was eye-opening to me that companies don’t come to you with their “best and final” and actually expect you to negotiate. And if you don’t, you’re missing out!
I graduated college in the midwest with an English degree and had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. All of my friends had big plans and next steps, and I felt a bit directionless. I started to apply for any jobs I could find that were located in California (that was the dream!) and landed a role as a sales associate, though officially the job title was “program manager” but the job didn’t match up to that. I absolutely hated the job and only lasted nine months, but made some lifelong friendships and got the first company on my resume. In the end, it was totally worth it.I moved to a new company as an office manager, making around $18 per hour. Clearly, this was a pay cut from my current role but my thought process was: I need to get out of this job that I hate and this was the only company that interviewed me. It ended up being a great company with a lot of opportunity for growth. I always recommend that people consider an office manager role; it gives you a ton of exposure at a company and allowed me a lot of different paths to explore for my career. After a year as an office manager, I was promoted to a marketing assistant. The woman running our conferences decided to take a different role, which opened an opportunity for me to take on that responsibility. I got to travel to Barcelona, Los Angeles, and London with the company and got a pay increase. This felt like the first “adult” role of importance that I had in my career. I moved to a new company after a lot of changes at my last company (start-up life, they were literally a sinking ship) and got an official role in conferences and events. I thought I was making the most money ever, and got HUGE imposter syndrome. I was so stressed out during my first few months at this job because I thought everyone would figure out how little I deserved to be there. Looking back at it now, I was doing a great job and I was probably even a little underpaid!I was promoted to the associate director of conferences and events, though not a lot changed about my role. My manager at this company was amazing. She did such a good job advocating for our team and providing the right level of guidance. I spent a few years here focusing on conferences and events for the company. After a while, I grew tired of the company and started looking for other roles. I realized then that events weren’t really my passion and started to explore other career paths when I stumbled upon the human resources world. I decided to enroll in a certificate program and the local university and took night classes to get my certificate in human resources. The program cost around $6,000 and I consider it one of the best investments (both monetarily and my time) of my career. I ended up getting an annual cost-of-living and performance-based increase.After I completed my certificate, I wanted to take an entry-level role in HR. I thought back to my experience starting in conferences and events and how unprepared I felt to be in that role. I wanted a role where I could see all the different paths I could take in HR so I could determine how I wanted my career to grow. I really hit the ground running in HR, but I’m so glad I took this pay cut and entry-level position. I was SO stressed learning everything, and it was nice to start at the beginning even though I was 29 and my peers were all 22!After six months as an HR coordinator, I was promoted to an HR generalist. I think I was promoted this quickly because a lot of what you learn in an entry-level position is HOW to work, not necessarily what you’re doing. Because of my past career experiences, I was able to pick up a lot of the tasks really quickly. In my new role, I had regained the salary decrease I took to come here and felt SO proud of myself for quickly regaining my momentum in a totally new field. We all took pay cuts related to the COVID-19 pandemic. My company also went through layoffs, which was really challenging to plan and execute from an HR perspective. It was a huge learning experience for me.Because of the layoffs, a lot of my teammates ended up finding other roles. I was promoted internally to HRBP and didn’t feel ready for the role. I felt like I was not supported, not being heard, and not being fairly compensated (in HR, you can see salaries and I knew my colleagues were making more than me in the same role). I ended up starting to look for other opportunities. I moved to another company into an HR generalist role. I still felt like I had a lot to learn before I was ready to be an HRBP. In this role, I had a fantastic manager who took me under her wing and taught me so much about being an HRBP. She gave me a ton of responsibility and autonomy to try things, make mistakes, and take risks. Because of the experience I had at my past company, I felt really confident in this role and knew I was doing a great job. About three or four months in, my manager let me know she thought I was under-leveled and was going to put me up for promotion. My manager put me up for promotion and it was approved! I continued doing similar things in this role, as I had already started to operate as an HRBP at this point. I got a nice pay bump related to my performance. After a lot of soul searching, I have decided to relocate. I’m currently working with my company to determine if my role can be made remote as I love working there and hope to stay. If not, I will start to pursue remote roles. As I’ve done in my past, I am very comfortable taking a pay cut if the role is right and offers me what I’m looking to get out of it. My current company pays very competitively, so I’m imagining it will be difficult to find a role that is similarly compensated, especially in a different cost-of-living area.
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