After you negotiate the raise, make sure you live up to it.
I disagree, not with the advice (obviously, living up to the new expectations is better than falling short of them) but with the attitude (often espoused by management) that a bump in your compensation comes with a harder job.
Often it comes with an easier job. The intellectual demands may get higher, but the emotional demands of subordination tend to go away when you go from a $90k junior peon to a $135k trusted senior to a $180k VP-level fellow who gets to call technical shots. When I was a junior, I had to maintain shit code written in languages I hated, and if I struggled with something and pointed to the bad code, that'd be met with suspicion because I was lower on the totem pole. Now I get to pick tools most of the time and if I say that something is hard and needs to be done a different way, people believe me.
The technical challenges have become harder as I've risen, but the jobs get easier and way better on the whole. Eight years ago I wouldn't just grab a side office and write some code (I probably could have, but I was insecure and young and felt a need to be in the open-plan environment for 8 straight hours, panic attacks be damned). Now, I know that I have sufficient status that I can do that, and that matters a huge amount. Technical challenges (the part of work that I enjoy) going up and the emotional load of being low-ranking (that slowly kills a person) going down is a win on both fronts.
Of course, if my company gets taken over and everyone has to typecast to a junior ScrumDrone-- "Agile" is "how to be a 2x Junior Developer"-- then I'll be laid off shortly after because I'm massively overpaid for a ScrumDrone. No one who takes "user stories" seriously is worth what I make, so the minute I hear people talking about Scrum (bringing down the 10xers to turn the 0.2x into 0.6x) I get nervous.
If you're planning to ask for a raise, you need to kick ass before you go in and ask for it. And you should really ask for a promotion (not, "boss, I want your job", but more responsibility and perhaps a title improvement so long as it doesn't put you in the awkward position of outranking your manager) rather than just asking for more money for the same job (an unattractive proposition to the boss, no matter what). In general, this happens incrementally. You ask for a 15% raise and only get 5%, so you ask for a title bump, even if it doesn't mean you take on reports. Because of the title bump, you get better projects, you're taken more seriously, you suffer less emotional load and perform better, and you're also in a higher bonus pool. Two years later when the company is flush with cash, you get a 25% raise without asking because you're actually the lowest paid VP and they've decided to correct that.
Working hard matters the most in the 3-6 months before you ask for the new responsibilities, promotion, and of course the pay increase that come with it (or, at least, can come with it). Then you settle into the new role and it doesn't matter that much how hard you work (average to average-plus effort is fine) so long as people like you and you follow the "become part of the team before trying to become its leader" principle. The before- and after-negotiation phases have different rules, but the former is harder on the whole.
Of course, people who are smart about this will negotiate continuously, involving themselves with (or starting) big projects without asking for permission, delegating the less interesting tasks to (preferably eager) juniors even if they don't formally manage them, making changes to your arrangements (WFH, taking a seat with a wall at your back) to improve your productivity, and generally feeling out what their position actually is. If you don't continuously negotiate, you're probably not going to feel comfortable marching into someone's office and asking for $20k more, and you probably haven't done the micro-negotiation ground work (getting your title in line, getting your best projects noticed and your weak spots ignored, delegating the work that won't help your case or make your important projects succeed) necessary to make the raise seem like an obvious "yes".
Reminds me of my first job being told that the way I was doing things was not right and to do it another way. Slowed down the process from 10 minutes to a couple of hours (which makes subsequent development way slower as well).
Looking back, my way was fine. But at that stage you do what you are told.
I disagree, not with the advice (obviously, living up to the new expectations is better than falling short of them) but with the attitude (often espoused by management) that a bump in your compensation comes with a harder job.
Often it comes with an easier job. The intellectual demands may get higher, but the emotional demands of subordination tend to go away when you go from a $90k junior peon to a $135k trusted senior to a $180k VP-level fellow who gets to call technical shots. When I was a junior, I had to maintain shit code written in languages I hated, and if I struggled with something and pointed to the bad code, that'd be met with suspicion because I was lower on the totem pole. Now I get to pick tools most of the time and if I say that something is hard and needs to be done a different way, people believe me.
The technical challenges have become harder as I've risen, but the jobs get easier and way better on the whole. Eight years ago I wouldn't just grab a side office and write some code (I probably could have, but I was insecure and young and felt a need to be in the open-plan environment for 8 straight hours, panic attacks be damned). Now, I know that I have sufficient status that I can do that, and that matters a huge amount. Technical challenges (the part of work that I enjoy) going up and the emotional load of being low-ranking (that slowly kills a person) going down is a win on both fronts.
Of course, if my company gets taken over and everyone has to typecast to a junior ScrumDrone-- "Agile" is "how to be a 2x Junior Developer"-- then I'll be laid off shortly after because I'm massively overpaid for a ScrumDrone. No one who takes "user stories" seriously is worth what I make, so the minute I hear people talking about Scrum (bringing down the 10xers to turn the 0.2x into 0.6x) I get nervous.
If you're planning to ask for a raise, you need to kick ass before you go in and ask for it. And you should really ask for a promotion (not, "boss, I want your job", but more responsibility and perhaps a title improvement so long as it doesn't put you in the awkward position of outranking your manager) rather than just asking for more money for the same job (an unattractive proposition to the boss, no matter what). In general, this happens incrementally. You ask for a 15% raise and only get 5%, so you ask for a title bump, even if it doesn't mean you take on reports. Because of the title bump, you get better projects, you're taken more seriously, you suffer less emotional load and perform better, and you're also in a higher bonus pool. Two years later when the company is flush with cash, you get a 25% raise without asking because you're actually the lowest paid VP and they've decided to correct that.
Working hard matters the most in the 3-6 months before you ask for the new responsibilities, promotion, and of course the pay increase that come with it (or, at least, can come with it). Then you settle into the new role and it doesn't matter that much how hard you work (average to average-plus effort is fine) so long as people like you and you follow the "become part of the team before trying to become its leader" principle. The before- and after-negotiation phases have different rules, but the former is harder on the whole.
Of course, people who are smart about this will negotiate continuously, involving themselves with (or starting) big projects without asking for permission, delegating the less interesting tasks to (preferably eager) juniors even if they don't formally manage them, making changes to your arrangements (WFH, taking a seat with a wall at your back) to improve your productivity, and generally feeling out what their position actually is. If you don't continuously negotiate, you're probably not going to feel comfortable marching into someone's office and asking for $20k more, and you probably haven't done the micro-negotiation ground work (getting your title in line, getting your best projects noticed and your weak spots ignored, delegating the work that won't help your case or make your important projects succeed) necessary to make the raise seem like an obvious "yes".