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Incompetent work colleague on higher salary than me

lukin

I have been in my present job seven years and was assigned to train in another person who is supposed to work alongside me.
He is about ten years older than me. He started about eight months ago and has proven himself to be incredibly unknowledgeable about his work and downright lazy in that time. I posted about it here a few weeks ago but deleted it because I though it gave away too much information. Today I had a startling discovery; I found out he is being paid more than me (25 percent more). I can't say how I found it out, I don't know who is reading this. But I am certain the information is authentic.
I want to bring it up with my manager because I am fairly p****d to be honest. My problem is I obviously can't tell him how I know he is on a higher salary than me. He might possible deny it anyway.
He might tell me if I don't like it I can sling my hook. I don't think he will do that though because I have a high enough level of repsonsibilty.
I am fairly annoyed because I am far more competent than him at the job. He might have more experience than me but I can't see how he can be based on what I have seen so far. I was actually fairly shocked at some of the things he wasn't able to do and that I had to show him how to do.
He knows next to nothing about what we are doing and doesn't seem to care that he doesn't know. He is supposed to learn a couple of new technologies that we use and I have been teaching him that but he is doing nothing on it in his spare time, he only looks at it while I show him. He was mainly hired for his supposed competence in one particular field of what we do but he doesn't look to me to have much knowledge of it. There isn't enough work in that to keep him going every day in it anyway, he has got to learn the other stuff.
I don't want to make waves in work, I have kept my head down since I started there and I never asked for anything from my manager. I never asked for a raise. If my manager speaks to him he will know I have grassed on him.
I feel they are taking the p*** out of me. How can you have a situation where one person is training in another person yet the person who is being trained is on a higher salary than the person who is doing the training?
Surely it should be the other way around?
Fair enough if he proved himself to be very quick to learn and became competent in all these things that I am training him on in a short space of time. But that is not the case. He's robbing a living really.
I know they can't reduce his salary, if they were to pay me more than him I'd have to get a substantial raise.
I am not saying I would leave, I like the job but this is very disappointing.
It's my own fault I suppose, I have always ben very timid and undervalued myself.
But I am worried about broaching the subject of how I know he is getting paid more.

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HBC08

Maybe you should ask your new colleague in a subtle way about his negotiation skills.They are obviously lot better than yours so you might pick up some tips.

lukin

It seems to be that it works this way; if you apply for a job and you have a lot of experience in that field but know nothing about the particular area that the work requires, you can get paid more than a person who is better than you in the area that the work requires. It doesn't matter that you don't know how to do the job, you are more valuable because of "experience".

Is that correct?

I did have a few gaps in my CV when I applied for the job first so that is why I didn't want to risk asking for a high salary. ut that was seven years ago.

He probably doesn't have gaps in his CV but in the interview when he asked for what he got, my manager was aware that I was on less than that but still gave it to him. They must have known that he wasn't able to do any of what the job requires.

Or else he fooled them into thinking he does.

If he was hired to do something unique that I can't do it would might make sense to pay him more but he can't do much of the job .

Maybe he does know someone on the inside or there is something else going on I don't know about. I know that the company itself is rife with nepotism and cronyism.

I value the remote working so that limits where and what I can work at when I leave. The other option is remote contracting.

[Deleted User]

You are taking it a bit personally.

Why not tell your manager you know you are being underpaid and that you want a raise? It’s a perfectly reasonable thing to say. Don’t be aggressive about it, but there’s no reason to not ask.

Mrs OBumble

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122261451#Comment_122261451

Salary is not personally identifiable information, or sensitive data.

Some companies even have full salary transparency. Some workplace have published scales, and a culture where people are open about their grade on the scale.

In this situation, the other employee may have told. Or they may have left their contract or payslip in a discoverable place.

It may be a data breach, if the OP, or someone else, breached procedure to get the information. But it's not necessarily one.

[Deleted User]

Are you sure you're not underpaid and he's on a normal salary. Did you offer a range in the interview process?

I was on twice a guy a level up then me purely because I knew the going rate. He was naive and didn't negotiate.

It sounds like he's not incompetent when it comes to playing the game.

lukin

A few people have remarked that he must be "a skilled negotiator" and that is why he was able to get a high salary. I don't think that was the case because my manage told me himself that he didn't want to give the job to someone young and inexperienced because he knew they would only stay for a year or two and leave. He deliberately gave it to someone older because he knew there was a better chance they would stay. So obviously someone older meant someone with more experience. Hence a higher salary had to be paid. I would say there was little or no competition for the job so they said "we need someone and he is the only one applying for it so we will have to give him what he is asking for".

When I got the job seven years ago I had only been out of college ten years and I hadn't worked consistently for those ten years. So I didn't ask for a high salary. I also knew little about the stuff I had to do in the job.

The next salary review is probably off so if I do complain I might be told "OK I see your point, we will give you a raise but you will have to wait until then".

I will also inform my manager that this guy is not fulfilling expectations and is making no attempt to learn the new skills in the job that I am spending my working hours training him on. I will also tell him that I am not impressed at all with his level of ability. It was said to me by my manager in a previous job and I had to suck it up. I also feel it is my duty to tell my manager he is not getting value for money from this guy.

I didn't do it before now because I don't want to throw a person under the bus. But now that I know he is earning more than me I will happily do it. If the guy asks me to train him further on anything I will say "look mate, you've been here eight months, you are an experienced person in your field, you should be able to manage by now. If you can't you've no business being here"

He might report me to my manager but let him, I will tell him the same. When I started in the job I had nobody to mentor me, I had to learn everything by myself.

Maxface

Hard to get a 25 percent raise in a job, not unheard of but hard. And that puts you on a par with him, you'd ideally want to be ahead with what you are saying and with his potential for raises. So, maybe 35-40 percent raise is needed to ensure that you aren't in the same position next year if you happen to see he got another raise. Knowing the business, do you reckon this is possible?

'I will also inform my manager that this guy is not fulfilling expectations and is making no attempt to learn the new skills in the job that I am spending my working hours training him on.' Maybe leave it at that.

timetogo1

Too much focusing on your colleague. Your salary is between you and your management.

His salary is between him and your management. If he's not pulling his weight that's an issue that should be brought up if it wasn't before no matter what the salary is. I wouldn't be covering for him. If you haven't brought this up before it looks like your only doing it for revenge. That wouldn't shower you in any glory either.

Forget about his salary. You now know that management pay more for a job equal or lower than yours. If your negotiation skills only equal to "he's on more so I want more" then I can see why you're on the lower wages.

If it was me, I'd be checking to see what other companies are paying and either applying to those jobs or using that as my negotiation tactic. If they don't value you they won't move much and then your next step is up to you. They may be stuck in only being able to give certain percentages as pay rises (large companies sometimes put you in a band and to move out of it you have to change role). If that's the case you and your manager need to come up with a plan to resolve that. Pointing at your colleague and saying "but he's on more" won't do the trick.

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122262048#Comment_122262048

It is just a job, you are not there to be popular, not there to look out for your managers interests, not even the company's interests. So don't gossip about other people's salaries, don't offer opinions of other peoples performance or what you think management is doing wrong. Because the chances are they are not interested in hearing from you!

As I said before, you need to figure out what is important to you and concentrate on that. If remote working is fundamental to you and it is difficult to get in your situation then don't let your emotions talk you out of a job, out of pay increase, a bonus or whatever else might be on the table down the line. On the other hand if you don't care then go for it!

Clo-Clo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122261726#Comment_122261726

Most don't, from the information provided the OP is not supposed to have someone else salary and if they got it then it wasn't provided correctly.

muzakfan

No point blaming the new guy, he didn't do anything to ya, it lies somewhere between your company stiffing you and you selling yourself short. You're also not going to get that kind of raise from your current job at this stage.

Your only real option is to put yourself on the market and see what you can really earn elsewhere.

Clo-Clo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122261612#Comment_122261612

They also haven't told how they got the information so reading between lines it is dodgy, so yes some companies would see that as sackable as you are getting personal information about other employees

In this case the OP went looking for the information as well, it was not provided by mistake

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122262198#Comment_122262198

Based on the OP last post, it seems they were gossiping about the new hire's salary:

A few people have remarked that he must be "a skilled negotiator" and that is why he was able to get a high salary.

csirl

Steer away from dishing him. As someone said on this thread, he may be there due to connections. The most incompetent overpaid person I ever worked with was a friend of a couple of Board members. Anyone who complained got nowhere and disadvantaged themselves going forward. Concentrate on establishing your own worth to justify an increase.

Quigs Snr

OP, your colleague is not the problem you are. If you are good at your job and care about your job that’s great. But it means that you are likely to suffer the same fate as everyone who cares about their job. Which is that you will end up in the same situation anywhere you go because the reality is that what you describe is more common than not. Everywhere. Everywhere you go you will end up carrying people around who are not fit to lace your boots. I bet your incompetent colleague sleeps well at night. Maybe it’s time to be more like him in some ways. Talk yourself up, be your own biggest supporter, get the best deal for you and don’t care too much about others because that hurts you and not them.

dennyk

You've been there seven years; what you're experiencing is called "wage compression". Basically, internal compensation increases usually don't keep up with the broader market, so long-tenured employees end up making the same (or often even less, as in your case) as new hires, simply because the salary that has to be offered to get those new hires to accept the role has increased much more than the pay rises given to long-term employees over the years.

Now, the problem is that it's usually very hard to convince your current employer that they need to give you a significant pay bump up to market rate. When they're hiring a new employee, they simply have no choice but to offer a competitive salary, as otherwise they're not going to be able to fill the position at all. As a current employee, however, you're already working for them for your current rate of pay, so there is a lot less incentive for them to give you a large pay rise just for continuing to do your current job when they can just gamble on loyalty or fear of change or just plain inertia to keep you around instead. Unless you actually come to them with a better offer in hand, the chances of your getting an increase to the level of your new colleague are unfortunately quite low; usually the only way to get a pay rise to market value is going to be to look for a new job elsewhere.

If you do manage to secure a better offer, it's possible your current employer would consider matching it at that stage, as that changes their calculations quite a bit when your leaving has suddenly become a strong probability rather than just an unlikely hypothetical. There's a chance you will be branded as a "flight risk" and "disloyal" if you were to accept a counter-offer, however, which could have a negative effect on your future career with your current employer, so you'd want to consider any such offer very carefully. It can often be better to go with the new offer instead.

Jump_In_Jack

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122261136#Comment_122261136

While that would rightly annoy anybody in your situation, it is absolutely irrelevant as to how you go about sorting out your own salary to bring it in line with expectations.

It is good news that you’ve found out that your employer is willing to pay more for your job.

Now if you want to cash in on that information the best way to do that is as I’d described previously.

As another piece of advice, particularly when working in small specialised technical teams, it’s critical that you have a clearly defined job description to enable you to be properly assessed for your performance review. If part of your time is taken up by training a colleague, then how you perform at that training should be part of your performance review. So it would be very valuable to you in your pay review to have a professional looking training programme developed and documented with training records included. If you are not doing this then you are not valuing your training/mentoring and how can it be properly assessed then? It would also give your colleague a kick up the arse to learn stuff because you can point to the training record if the colleague comes back to you that they forgot the stuff you already trained them in.

Also, if you are good at aspects of your job, and particularly if nobody else is good at it, you should be putting that down in your performance review that you are the Subject Matter Expert (SME) on anything you are good at that nobody else is good at and give yourself the credit. If you have multiple areas where you are excelling then the more the better.

For your own information, multinationals often have pay scales based on specific criteria and within those scales there will be bands of pay. You can absolutely request from your manager to have the pay scales and bands explained to you. For example, holding a Masters might jump you up a scale, having 10 years experience in the industry likewise, having a role where you mentor another colleague, being an SME, having certificates for anything relevant to your role. All of these things can be used to push you up the pay scale or up the bands within the pay scales.

Where you are in the pay scale and what band you are is what determines how your raise is calculated, usually it’s a percentage of your base salary, so the larger your salary the larger the raise and it compounds up each year. This means if you start on a low salary the gap enlarges every year from where you should be, even if you score the same on your performance review.

This means at least every now and then you are absolutely entitled to approach your manager and query your rate if it is not at the expected market rate, particularly if you are consistently achieving your targets and getting a good performance review each year.

A good manager should be able to work with you to get you pushed up the pay scale or at least give you tasks to do to get yourself up the pay scale such as doing courses.

At the end of the day, the reality is that you have a better chance of getting the market rate if you move company, or at least if you can get a job offer you then can say to your boss that an opportunity has come up that you are interested in and unless the current employer can match the offer you will be mad not to take it. At least it could be used to bargain for a significant increase.

Best of luck.

lukin

A few people have said the reason for my dissatisfaction is "he's getting more so I want more".

That is simply not correct. It's that he's getting more and isn't able to do the job and is making little or no attempt to learn how to do it.

If when he started he immediately got stuck into things and became very proficient at everything and I'd seen his salary I'd say to myself "Jeez this guy is a real whizz, I can see why he is getting paid more. He will probably become better than me in a couple of years time". I can assure you that day will never come.

Another person said "he didn't do anything to me". Well that isn't correct either. On a couple of occasions I have had to do his tasks for him because he couldn't do them (very simple things) and afterwards when I showed him how to do it he showed no interest and was laughing and joking at another person's desk a few minutes later.

I have also had to show him a couple of times how to do things that he didn't remember or couldn't be bothered to take notes on it.

I know that people robbing a living is quite common, there are a few people in other departments where I work that are on massive salaries and do shag all and probably know shag all.

It's his incompetence that annoys me. If he was on a lower salary I'd be OK about it, I'd say "what do you expect?"

But he needs to be brought to book over it.

Aurelian

This just sounds like work 101 to me. The other guy is useless and I should be making more than them. Its a tale as old as time.

Mrs OBumble

there are a few people in other departments where I work that are on massive salaries and do shag all and probably know shag all

You've just told us all we need to know.

Best of luck with the job hunting.

RoTelly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122262414#Comment_122262414

You seem to be carrying him. Why? If something goes wrong or isn't done, when the management ask about it, let the management know you'd do it straight away and that you thought he'd done that task and say no more. Make a note of how many times the management have had to ask you to do something that your colleague should have done.

If he is no longer shadowing you then let him come to you for help and show how to do the task but that is all you should do no more.

Work with him as much as you need to and no more. The management team will have to notice.

Clo-Clo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122262243#Comment_122262243

We are making the assumption the OP is good at their job, plenty of people think they are good at their job but in reality to management etc they are not.

If they have found out the person wages not via correct procedure I would expect the company would be able to sack them. That is not information freely available in most companies

Yes if you work in HSE etc then your wages are laid out but that is not the case here

z80CPU

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122262562#Comment_122262562

If you have the bottle for it OP.

Tork

Aside from the money, his incompetence should be a management issue. Are you carrying him?

Vestiapx

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122261136#Comment_122261136

ignore this, if you want more money then get a job offer and then ask fo a raise because you have had a job offer at 25% higher.

only thing that works

lukin

I will say to my manager "Look what is the exact specific skill-set that this guy was hired for because I am not seeing it so far. Is there some project in the works for him down the line that that I don't know about? He was brought in to do this [mention what I was told he was brought in for] but he's not doing much on that so far and doesn't seem to know much about it.He has also shown no willingness or ability to learn other skills on the job.
I am also aware that he is on higher salary than me so I would just like some clarification on what it is that he is so good at that justifies this. Because as I say, it is not apparent to me yet."
If my manager replies "Well Pat (not my real name), we have a lot of work lined up for him in this area [mentions what it is] and he has x amount of years experience in it and you are not proficient in that so that is what we want him for"

I'd be satisfied with that and will say thanks and hang up and that will be the end of it.
But if I don't hear something like that I will ask "Why are you paying this guy so much money to do jack-s***?"

BQQ

many people have given you the correct advice at this point

You are long overdue a raise just based on inflationary benchmarking and if it’s not forthcoming then you need to test the market to either force their hand or move on

However, it seems like you’d be happier if he got a pay cut rather than you get a raise, which is not a healthy attitude to have

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122262638#Comment_122262638

Well ya, I did not want to go there, at least not directly….

Now back to you. Is your salary in line with the market rates? Where is your salary in the company's pay scale for your job? Have you had very positive performance reviews? How many promotions have you had with the company and so on. These are the key things that tell you about how much the company values you.

But I don't see that the OP responded to my questions…

thefa

I work for a multinational and used to work on a manufacturing site for it. Was there over a couple of years, doing a very good job and knew I was on a bit less than the market and asked for a €4k bump to hit what I thought was the lowest point of the range. It wasn’t coming and I transferred to the central office and have made progress too and am happy with my money.

Because of my role and system knowledge, I can see how much the replacements were and there’s been 3 in 3 years! Generally on €10k more than what I was asking for and a couple of them didn’t get past probation.

From my experience, some companies are so focused on the bottom line that they can easily be penny wise, pound foolish when it comes to staff retention. Then it becomes a supply and demand issue when sh!t hits the fan and they have to pay the going rate.

It could be as long as 7 years since you’ve been paid the market rate. Can only imagine what inflation has been in that time and could be a bigger impact if your profession is in demand. In many ways you are ideal from the company’s perspective but you are doing yourself a disservice. Makes sense to see what else is out there, have a call with a recruiter and gather more info but don’t expect an increase based on your ability versus this person.

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122263523#Comment_122263523

Over 40+ years I have seen this kind of thing go very badly for people how thought they could set management straight… most often they have talked themselves out of a job without realising it.

If you came to me with that attitude I'd tell you that it was none of your business and if you did not like your salary there's the door…. and your next move would be????

As I have said before you really should concentrate on what is important to you and concentrate on that. If you don't really care about your job and want to burn your bridges then you are definitely going about it the right way.