Guide
How to ask for a raise
The short answer
Stop thinking of it as asking, and start thinking of it as arming someone.
Your manager is almost certainly not the person who approves your raise. They have to go and argue for it — with their own boss, with finance, or against a compensation band — on a day you won't be in the room for. So the thing that decides the outcome isn't how well you ask. It's what your manager is holding when they walk into that argument.
Which makes the whole job concrete:
- Work out what your manager is actually struggling with.
- Design the work you'd take on that fixes some of it.
- Price that work against what it's worth outside, not against what you're paid now.
- Work out who absorbs what you're putting down.
- Put it in front of them in the right order, at the right point in the year.
- Send it in writing the same day, so it can be forwarded.
The rest of this page is each of those, plus an honest account of where the standard advice does help.
Where the usual advice is right
It would be dishonest to pretend the standard list is useless. Four things come up in every article about this, and three of them genuinely matter.
Know the market rate. Correct, and non-negotiable. You cannot name a number you can't defend, and "I looked at what similar roles are advertised at" is the cheapest credibility available. Do this.
Time it to the cycle. Also correct, though usually for the wrong reason. It's not about catching your manager in a good mood. It's that budget and headcount decisions get made in a window, and a proposal inside that window is a contribution while the same proposal outside it is an inconvenience.
Write it down. Correct, and underrated. A conversation can't be forwarded to the person who actually decides. A document can.
Project confidence. This is the one to drop. It's unfalsifiable advice that makes nervous people more nervous, and it's aimed at the wrong target — your manager's feelings rather than their constraints. Evidence does this work. Volume doesn't.
Where it runs out
All four assume the job is fixed and the only variable is your performance in a ten-minute conversation.
That's the weakest position available. You're requesting a larger share of a pot someone else controls, against colleagues who want the same thing, at a moment your manager didn't choose. Even from someone who likes you and rates you, the honest answer is usually not this cycle.
Don't ask for a bigger slice. Expand the pie.
Asking for a bigger slice makes you an adversary — every extra dollar going to you is one not going somewhere else, and your manager knows it. Proposing work that makes the organization measurably better off puts your manager on your side of the table, because now your raise is the cost of something they want rather than a deduction from something they have.
That's the actual difference between a request and a proposal, and it's covered in full in the method.
What to do before the conversation
Three questions, answered on paper. They take about twenty minutes and they do most of the work.
What is your manager accountable for, and what are they struggling with? What does their boss judge them on? What are they anxious about right now? What do they never get around to? What keeps landing back on their desk because there's nobody else to take it? Most people preparing for this spend all their time on their own achievements. It feels diligent, and it's why so many of these conversations go nowhere — you've built an argument about yourself and handed it to someone whose problem is something else entirely.
Where can you add value that isn't being added now? Three places to look: revenue your employer is leaving on the table, efficiency nobody has fixed, and responsibility nobody owns. You see the organization from inside the work, which is a view the people above you genuinely don't have. The opportunities are usually the things you already grumble about.
Who absorbs what you're putting down? If you take on new responsibilities, someone has to take the old ones. Some moves sideways to a colleague who'd benefit from the stretch, some justifies a hire, and some turns out not to need doing at all. Arriving with this worked out removes your manager's most natural objection — but then who does what you do now? — before they have to raise it.
That third one is the step almost nobody takes, and it is the one that most reliably changes the answer.
What to say, in order
Order matters considerably more than wording.
- The opportunity for the business. Start where their interests are, not yours.
- The challenge facing the team and your manager. Show you've understood it properly.
- The responsibility you want to take on. Now the solution arrives, and it involves you.
- Why you'll succeed at it. Evidence.
- The title and compensation that fit. Only now. Plainly, without apologizing.
- Timeline and next steps. Make it easy to agree to a process rather than a number.
Your salary comes fifth. By the time you name it, you've spent most of the conversation talking about your employer, and the number lands as the conclusion of an argument rather than as an ask.
On the number itself: name one, not a range. A range is an invitation to the bottom of it. How to work out what that number should be.
When to say it
Align with the cycles your organization already runs on — budget setting, headcount planning, the review round, the point in the year when next year's priorities get decided.
And you usually don't need a special meeting. Asking for one raises the stakes and puts your manager on guard before you've said anything. Taking time on an agenda you already share is calmer, and it works better.
What to send afterward
The same day, while it's fresh. Something like this:
Thanks for taking the time to hear me out today about my proposed new role and salary. I realize it's something you'll want to think over — might we pick it up next week, or would another timeframe suit you better?
Short, unapologetic, and it does three things. It puts your proposal somewhere it can be forwarded to whoever actually approves it. It names a next step, so the conversation can't quietly die. And it makes clear you expect an answer.
Most proposals die of silence rather than rejection. This is the cheapest insurance against that there is.
If the answer is no
Decide what you'll do in advance, while you're calm — not in the room, and not that evening.
A flat no is rare for a well-made case. Far more common is not this cycle or not at that number, which are different answers deserving different responses. Work out now which you could live with, what you'd need to hear in order to stay, and what you want to revisit in three months.
Full version: what to do if your boss says no.
Questions
Should I ask by email or in person?
In person, then in writing the same day. The conversation is where you read the reaction and answer objections; the written follow-up is what gets forwarded to whoever actually decides. Doing only the first leaves nothing to forward. Doing only the second wastes the part where you can adjust.
How long should I wait after starting a job?
Long enough to have evidence, which usually means one full cycle of whatever your work runs on rather than a fixed number of months. The exception is if your role has visibly grown since you were hired — then the argument is that the job changed, and it doesn't need a waiting period.
What if I'm told there's no budget?
Ask what would have to be true for there to be budget, and by when. "No budget" is sometimes accurate and sometimes a polite decline, and the follow-up question separates them. A manager who can name the condition is telling you the truth; one who can't is telling you something else.
Do I need a competing offer?
No, and using one is riskier than it looks. The whole approach here is built to work without leverage — it needs you to understand your own organization better than you currently do, not to threaten to leave.
What if my manager agrees but nothing happens?
That's the normal failure, and it's why the written follow-up matters. Agreement without a date is not agreement. Ask what the next step is, who else needs to approve, and when you'll hear — and put that in the note. ---
Ready to do it properly?
The free course walks you through all of this applied to your own job, one question at a time, and produces a written proposal you can take into the conversation. About fifteen minutes, nothing to buy, and nothing you write ever leaves your browser.