How to Ask for a Raise in IT
How IT professionals ask for raises: timing your request, preparing market data, the raise conversation structure, negotiating beyond base salary, and...
Page Summary
A practical guide to negotiating a raise as an IT professional: gathering specific market data (Levels.fyi, Glassdoor, Dice), documenting concrete contributions from the past 6-12 months, and requesting a dedicated meeting rather than raising it casually. It lays out a conversation structure (appreciation, contributions and market research, then a specific dollar figure), the compensation components beyond base salary, how to respond to a denial, and why timing, after a visible success, a new certification, or at budget-cycle start, improves the odds.
Contributions
Every accepted correction to this page is recorded with the exact change, so readers can see how the page improved over time.
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The article stated IT professionals' average tenure before job-seeking is '2-3 years' with no citation. Real BLS/industry data puts overall median tenure at ~3.9 years (Jan 2024) and tech-sector tenure around 3.8 years; the 2-3 year figure is closer to the 25-34 age bracket specifically (2.8 years) rather than IT professionals broadly. Corrected to the better-supported range rather than the uncited specific figure.
BeforeThe average tenure for an IT professional before seeking a new job is 2-3 years; professionals who do not negotiate internally often seek external raises by changing employers, which is effective but disruptive.
AfterMedian employee tenure runs under 4 years overall, and younger tech workers tend toward the shorter end of that range; professionals who do not negotiate internally often seek external raises by changing employers, which is effective but disruptive.
Why: Applied the fix described in this contribution's suggested_change: replaced the uncited 2-3 years IT professional tenure figure with the better-supported range based on real BLS and industry data (overall median tenure around 3.9 years as of Jan 2024, tech-sector tenure around 3.8 years, with the 25-34 age bracket closer to 2.8 years). Verified via re-fetch of live post id 724 (asking-for-a-raise-in-it) that the uncited figure is gone and replaced with the hedged, better-supported statement, and HTML tags remain balanced.
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