An Unexpected Raise: How I Accidentally Increased My Salary

In 2023, I created my ideal job description in an area of need for the client and told my employer that the new job responsibilities would require a promotion.  About two months after writing that job description, I started working the job I created while enjoying a higher salary.  This allowed me to remain with the employer that offers benefits I love and remain with the same client, a team of government workers with which I enjoyed working.  I had the perfect scenario: A job I enjoyed, an employer offering the best benefits, a team I liked and respected, and the pay I felt I deserved.

I was content and planned to happily enjoy the position I created for years to come.  I made enough money and had plenty of flexibility, so I did not see any reason to try to climb farther up the corporate ladder.  Working on projects I enjoyed with people I enjoyed each day was more important than another $20k or more a year.  Once you can maintain your lifestyle and adequately invest for retirement, day-to-day happiness becomes more important than money.

But I did not get to enjoy my blissful situation as long as I hoped.

Forced to Make a Decision

In September 2024, the realities around me changed, and I could not have all the pieces of the perfect scenario.  The government contract on which I worked was awarded to a smaller company that offered fewer benefits than my employer.  The company for which I worked never received the opportunity to bid on the contract, despite the high-quality work we delivered for years.  The government team with which we worked did not make this choice.  A contracting officer who did not know us as individuals decided to switch to a smaller company without considering the potential repercussions.

In the three months leading up to that, I also started to feel unpredictable pressure for teleworking.  This had not been a problem in the past.  I started working on that contract in March 2020 and had to learn how a new team operated in the height of the pandemic.  I still believe this actually helped me: I read everything, explored resources, and conducted some of my own learning process.  I learned more about the responsibilities of the team than I would have if I had relied on a more traditional approach where a fellow employee took me through their day-to-day work in the office and showed me how to do basic tasks at a slower pace.

Since I onboarded in a fully remote environment and kept showing my value while working remotely, nobody bothered me too much when I resisted going to the office.  Particularly when I shifted into the role I created, the job responsibilities required more deep work, analysis, and advanced problem solving than my previous role on the team, and working remotely helped me protect blocks of time to complete my most complicated objectives.  Nobody seemed to mind this approach because the results helped the entire team.

The sentiment around my teleworking seemed to shift in the summer of 2024, when the team leader told me that I needed to come into the office for an entire day each week just because.  I am not someone who agrees with a “just because” rationale.  When there were important reasons to be in the office, I was happy to oblige, but I would come in for that specific event and leave once it was complete.  The pressure to adhere to an arbitrary guideline that did not actually improve workplace efficiency added some stress around work.

It added enough stress that I decided in advance what I would do in the event that my employer did not win the contract when it was due to be re-competed in  September 2024 (before we knew we would not even have a chance to bid for the renewal).  There were two obvious options if my employer lost the contract on which I worked:

1. Stay with my current employer and move to a different contract.

2. Stay with the government team with which I worked and switch to the employer that won the contract.

But I was lucky enough to have a third option.  After years of investing at least half my salary, I had the freedom to say no to both options and choose option three:

3. Say no to both and leave the 9-to-5 work life, at least for some time.

I fully enjoyed the benefits my employer offered me, but I knew enjoying the day-to-day work and people was more difficult to find.  If my workplace flexibility continued without question, I would have likely favored the second option to continue working in this ideal position with my ideal team.  However, the sudden and unpredictable pressure to come to the office started to cause enough stress that I questioned whether the surges of anxiety were worth it if I had to sacrifice the benefits I valued.

But I also did not love the idea of starting over on a brand new contract with a new team, and likely a new government agency altogether.  As September approached without any word, I decided option three was my decision if my current employer did not keep the contract.  If I still had great benefits, I would put up with the stress around my teleworking, but it was not worth it with less competitive benefits.

Since my employer did not get the contract, this meant I should have gone with option three.  But I did not.  It turns out that I had become a more valuable employee than I knew.

The Negotiations and Bidding War

The new company had lesser benefits, but they called me personally and made it clear that they prioritized keeping me on the contract to the tune of a $25k raise.  I could make a lot more money doing the same great job I already did each day.

I learned that the small company had done this with a few other contracts: The company took over contracts from larger companies and threw large amounts of money at the key personnel.  The position I created for myself ended up becoming one of the four key positions on the contract, making me an important piece.

The money was enough to make me consider moving to the new employer.  Getting paid significantly more for the same day-to-day work is appealing.

But the recent stress around teleworking made me hesitate.  No amount of money is worth unnecessary stress and anxiety.  So I reached out to the leader of the government team asking for a guarantee that I could telework.

After some pushing, I received what I considered a soft guarantee.  I could telework all the time unless I had a specific need to be in the office, but I would be doing this on a probationary trial period to see if it went well.

This felt a bit insulting because I had teleworked the entire time I worked on the contract—more than four years at that point.  So I went back to my current employer.

At this point, my current employer had found another contract for me and hoped to keep me.  They offered a raise, but it was significantly less than the one I was offered at the other employer.  They cited their better benefits as reason for the lower raise.

I told my current employer what I was offered by the other company as well as the value of the benefits my employer offered that the other company did not offer that I actually used.  This was around $5k, so I told my employer I needed about a raise just above $20k to match the value of the competitor’s offer.  I gave them a number to the penny that I would need to stay.

And I got the salary, to the penny.

Ruminations on My Accidental Raise

I thought that I had secured my final $20k salary jump in May 2023 when I created my own job.  The May 2023 jump was my fourth jump of $20k or higher since 2019, and I was pretty happy just relaxing after four such increases in salary in four years.  Most people do not average a $20k raise each year.

The fifth $20k jump was unexpected, but that may be the biggest lesson of all:  If you are working to be the indispensable employee that deserves the large salary adjustments, you naturally become valuable enough for generous offers to quite literally fall in your lap.

Honestly, my preferred situation would be to continue with the ideal job I created with my current employer, while working with the team I enjoyed while primarily teleworking without stress.  I would probably even take a bit of a pay cut to go back to that situation, but it simply does not exist anymore.  With more initiatives to bring everyone back to the office full-time, I am less hopeful than ever that I will get to work in the field I enjoyed the most.  Life always comes first for me, so I would never sacrifice that flexibility to work in a certain industry.  But it feels too bad because I was pretty good at my job, and added efficiency and innovation to a field about which I cared.

Perfect work situations exist for fewer and fewer people, so I still cannot complain.  I make more money than I need and work 100% remotely.  I still have a job.

And I secured five $20k-plus raises, totaling more than $100k in raises over a little more than five years.  More importantly, I know I can demand my worth.  That confidence is worth far more than $20k, or even $100k, in a volatile job market.