Ask for More

Pay almost never rises on its own: it rises at the moment an employee names a number. Silence is not read by an employer as modesty, it is read as agreement with the current figure.

Put on one sheet what you have done over the last year: specific tasks, numbers, the times things would not have worked without you. Look up what this work pays now — in job ads, in industry salary data, from people you know in the same trade. Choose a number: not a wish, but a sum you are prepared to say out loud and not walk back in the first second. Write your manager a three-line email: I would like to discuss my pay, here are the days that work for me, twenty minutes. Send it today. Just before the meeting, say your figure out loud three times so it comes out level in the room — and once you have said it, stop talking and let them answer.

The hardest spot is the pause after the figure: it lasts a few seconds, feels like forever, and it is exactly where most people talk their own number down. Stay silent. You will most likely not get a yes on the spot but a process and a timeline — that is a normal answer; ask for the date of the follow-up conversation in writing. If it is a no, ask directly what specifically has to change for that sum to become possible, and by when; «no budget right now» without a date means the question is settled on the job market, not in that room. If the email never went out, write it tomorrow in the first hour of the day, before the reasons to wait appear.