I Asked For The Top Of The Salary Scale

Illustrated by VIVIENNE SHAO.

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.

Been in the workforce for at least five years and interested in contributing your salary story? Submit your information here.

Age: 34
Location: Portland, Oregon
Current industry and job title: Communications specialist for a labor union
Current salary: $125,000
Number of years employed since school or university: 10
Starting salary: $30,000

Biggest salary jump: From about $62,000 a year to $110,000. After splitting with my longtime partner, I was living alone in a high-cost-of-living city so I started looking for a new job. At the time, I had worked in the labor movement for six years and I knew I was being underpaid and underutilized at the organization I worked for. I had a lot of connections in this field and I used them to get a similar (but much higher-paying) job at another labor union.

Biggest salary drop: From about $30,000 to $23,000. After one year at my first job out of college, I pivoted to the education field and my salary dropped. I thought I might want to go to grad school to become a teacher, and I wanted to get some experience in classrooms before I made that choice. I had to work part-time as a server to make ends meet.

Biggest negotiation regret: When you work in labor, salary transparency is huge. There are usually scaled “steps” that correspond to your experience level and when I got my first labor job, I just took the step that was offered to me because I didn’t know I could negotiate that. At the time, I thought the salary was a lot of money, and I was just excited to be offered the job. But when I started working for the organization, I realized I had a lot more education and experience than a lot of my colleagues who started at a higher step, and I wish I had asked to be placed higher on the scale.

Best salary advice: Ask for the top of the scale! When my current employer asked me which step on the salary scale I thought I deserved, I said “the top step” and THEY JUST GAVE IT TO ME. I do have a lot of experience in my field but I was not expecting them to just give me the salary I asked for. Now I will never not ask for the highest salary in the range, because the worst that can happen is that they’ll say no and you can negotiate, and the best that can happen is THEY JUST GIVE IT TO YOU.