Webmaster salary help

[Rheves]

Hi all, I've been with this small company on the east coast of Canada for two years now, I started out with them right after college and hadn't asked for a raise since then and didn't get one. I had started out at $12.50/hr. I recently did though, and since it's a small company I spoke to my regional boss (There's just 2 of us in Canada, it's an American based company) and he said since the CEO wasn't going to be visiting for awhile he'd talk to him about the raise.

I got my first cheque today since then and the raise was for 4%, bringing my pay up to $13.00. Now I hadn't started looking around to compare wages until recently and clearly this is not enough. I have no additional benefits since it's such a small company, don't get holiday pay or paid vacation.

When the CEO does come up here I want to be prepared properly to talk about this. What would be a reasonable increase to ask for?

I don't expect to take my vacation so after looking around that would equate to a 4% increase in pay, cost of living (For two years) would be another 4-6%. Two years additional experience since they first hired me, and learning various new things would be worth something, that % I do not know.

Also since they do not offer any additional benefits at all should I ask that my pay be increase a little to compensate? I am diabetic and only recently got on a medical plan, so the lack of a medical plan has been hurting for me.

Anything information or direction would be appreciated.

[jatar_k]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld Rheves,

I have to admit that's a pretty dismal salary though I am not exactly sure what it is that you do for them (no need to mention who it is). How specialized the position is would definitely be part of the discussion. It would also make a difference as to how difficult it would be for them to find someone else where they are.

Are you in Sydney? Might be tough to find too much specialized help there.

My cousin married a fella from Sydney, was there for their wedding.

[willybfriendly]

What would it cost for the company to replace you?

That, unfortunately, is what you are worth to them...

[Demaestro]

Hey man.... welcome to WebmasterWorld

I am also in Canada, west though, without sounding insulting I will say that Tim Hortons is hiring here for $12.50 to start. Although we are in a labor shortage I would start with that as a reason to give you an increase.

This site generates excellent reports for Pay Scales. We use it to calculate bonuses and raises all the time. Take some time and play with it because you can get reports by the industry, or by the job title and so on.

[payscale.com...]

I think you will be even more sad once you see what this tells you about what you should be getting.

[Rheves]

Yes I am in Sydney. I started out doing alot of PHP work for them, backend stuff, but lately we've been updating the 3 sites they have to a new design so I've been working on that mostly. The stuff I do is pretty varied, I handle the online shipping carts, all of the content that gets added to the sites, graphics work, SEO stuff, etc. Anything on the web side of things, really.

I've looked at PayScale and Salary.com and maybe $17.00 would be a good rate to ask for? I don't want to ask for too much, but Salary.com gives $21.23/hr as it's lowest and Payscale has 25% percentile at $15.12 and 50th at $19.07.

Would I be able to use these as valid sources of information when negotiating my raise?

[jatar_k]

I think those sources would be good for negotiation, yes.

also, you know how hard you can push, don't lose your job because we say you should be making a bunch more, though you should.