I just doubled someone’s salary.
A team manager shared their uplifting experience of hiring a warehouse worker for an analyst position. Despite the applicant’s background in a developing country and non-English experience, his skills and work ethic stood out during the hiring process.
The manager pushed HR to ensure the candidate received a fair salary, resulting in a doubling of his previous pay. The candidate was ecstatic upon receiving the offer, accepting immediately and likely celebrating his well-deserved opportunity. read the original story below…
‘ I just doubled someone’s salary .’
I manage a team of analysts, and I got this application for an open role recently from a guy who’s been working in my company’s warehouse for a year. Not some kind of technical position, either – he’s been slinging boxes. Still, we try to give internal candidates a little bit more of a shot, make sure they don’t get lost in the pile.
And it turned out that this guy’s actually INCREDIBLY qualified. It’s just that all his analytical roles were from his home country, and when all your work was done in [developing country not known for producing analysts] and done in [not English], it’s pretty hard to get hired.
But his skills were so relevant, and my team really liked him, and he’s picked up a crazy amount of useful knowledge in the past year. Our HR can get a little iffy about giving someone too much of a salary increase when they change roles internally, so I came at them pretty hard about not lowballing him, and they didn’t.
They did let it slip to me, though, that it’ll be double what he’s making now. I got to give him the verbal offer today, and he didn’t even wait a second before accepting. He was so stoked. I think he’s out celebrating right now, we may not be at peak warehouse efficiency tomorrow. This is the most fun I’ve ever had hiring someone.
Here’s the feedback from the Reddit community:
RoyalEnfield78 − Well done friend
echochilde − As someone who was in a high managerial role who was basically instructed to f**k everyone over until it broke me emotionally, this makes my heart happy.
AmphibianAvailable73 − This is the wholesome content we needed for today 🥰
[Reddit User] − When I was fresh out of college, I low balled myself in my first job. But the offer for it came back much higher than what I asked for. I pay that forward every chance I get. I had an applicant low ball herself, and I just straight up told her “nah, you want $X” .
I’ve also had frank conversations with other managers throughout my career about compensation. We should be advocates. It’s not our money coming out of our pockets, if someone gets an extra 7k at the beginning of their career, it can be life changing. 7k out of the bottom line of a huge company? Not even noticed.
SlightAddress − Exact same thing happened to me in 2017.. I was the warehouse guy… needed a job. In a foreign country with a new baby..
TheTimeIsNowOk − I recently hired someone off Reddit who was asking 48K for a tech role, but I could see she was worth more than that so we gave her 63K instead of saving $15K
migoodridge − Well done OP!
Rare-Lifeguard516 − How wonderful to see past his labor and see his true value.
[Reddit User] − You are a GREAT person op!
BigBaboonas − Well done! The last grad I hired asked for a raise after a year and was told he could only get a grad salary for the next year too, unless he could prove he was worth more by getting an offer from somewhere else. One day at lunch a few weeks after he told me had accepted an offer and it was double his grad salary. I high-fived him.
When my boss found out he tried to save face by saying ‘we wouldn’t have kept him, would we?’ even though that was exactly what we were doing. I just replied ‘We couldn’t afford him anyway’ . They didn’t ask me to train any more grads after that.
What do you think of this manager’s efforts to recognize talent and advocate for fair pay? Have you ever experienced or witnessed something similar? Share your thoughts below!