Worker quits after company making $15m profit refuses to give decent raise, everyone follows suit

Employees have seen their disposable income reduce drastically in recent times due to inflation. Many are forced to look for new jobs with their employers refusing to compensate them fairly and as per market standards. Major companies, on the other hand, want to boast about their record profits while also poorly paying their employees. One employee explained how their boss was left red-faced after they quit the job after being denied a hike. A Reddit user who goes by NonVeganMillennial on the platform explained how their company lost an entire department after they refused a hike to employees on the pretext that it wasn't in line with the salary policy. "No, your salary policy is not what will determine my future salary. Not in this job market," they titled the post. The Reddit thread went viral, being upvoted more than 13k times. 

"A year ago, I walked into my boss' office and demanded a 15% salary raise. I presented to him some statistics on the average salary in my field of work and the number of years of experience I had at the time," they wrote. "I told him that he had told me that he was pleased with my performance, so I wanted the average." The worker's boss argued that they were asking too much of a hike, considering the company salary policy. "He told me that the salary raise I asked for wasn't in line with the company's salary policy and that he could give me at most 5%," they wrote before adding that their boss even tried to shame them for being demanding. "He also told me how outrageous my demand was since it would mean that I would get more than others in the same department who had more years of experience than me," they wrote.

The employee decided that they wasn't any point arguing with the boss but decided to find a new job that respected their work. "I contacted a friend of mine who works in the recruiting business. He made a few calls, and a week later I was at a job interview with another company in the same city. They offered me a 25% salary increase and more benefits," they wrote. "I gave my boss the 1 month's + current month's notice as is the law in Denmark. He was furious. I told my colleagues about the situation, and all four of them asked for my friend's number, and 3 months later they had all found a higher-paid position."

The multimillion-dollar company lost important projects as a result. "The entire department and all the knowledge disappeared because a company that made a 15 million USD profit didn't want to pay their workers a fair share. Last I heard, they had found two newly educated workers to replace us, but have had to turn down several potential multi-million dollar sales projects because those projects are NOT going to happen without that department being fully staffed. But oh well, they saved a few pennies in salary expenses."

The majority of users backed the employee in the comments section. One user explained that the culture at companies had changed over the decades and it meant that the onyl way to get a proper hike was to jump companies. "I saw this somewhere and it made perfect sense to me: people USED to stay with companies because raises were fair, you got pension, etc. In other words, the company took care of you. Nowadays, the only way to get a fair raise is to get a new job. The culture they’ve created is coming back to bite them in the a$$. Good for you OP for making them pay through the nose. Damn, I need a recruiter friend lol," they wrote.