I recently negotiated a significant raise with my boss. Some of the main points I made to him were:
1) That I'm the de facto lead engineer on a product that's making €X million per year while also strategically important for the company. i.e. I'm valuable to the company and would appreciate them acknowledging that via the well-understood language of money.
2) That my raise would be small change to the company in the grand scheme of things.
3) That I could expect to walk into a different job at the salary I was asking my boss for, and have been considering doing so.
4) That if I left, he'd expect to pay an equivalently experienced replacement a similar amount, while also suffering the pain of upheaval on a small development team.
So I tried to keep it balanced between reasons why it would be good for both me and the company to give me the raise, while leaving him clear about the consequences of not doing so.
Note that I didn't have a job offer from elsewhere to use as leverage, but in my case the threat of leaving seemed to concern him sufficiently (recruiting good developers is pretty tough in northern England) that it worked almost as well. However, it still left me in a weak position when he asked me for a number.
I should also note that I was extremely nervous about championing myself so overtly, and it didn't come naturally at all (we programmers are excessively meek at times). I'm happy to report that none of the disastrous consequences I'd imagined in my head came to fruition, and my boss reacted extremely positively.
1) That I'm the de facto lead engineer on a product that's making €X million per year while also strategically important for the company. i.e. I'm valuable to the company and would appreciate them acknowledging that via the well-understood language of money.
2) That my raise would be small change to the company in the grand scheme of things.
3) That I could expect to walk into a different job at the salary I was asking my boss for, and have been considering doing so.
4) That if I left, he'd expect to pay an equivalently experienced replacement a similar amount, while also suffering the pain of upheaval on a small development team.
So I tried to keep it balanced between reasons why it would be good for both me and the company to give me the raise, while leaving him clear about the consequences of not doing so.
Note that I didn't have a job offer from elsewhere to use as leverage, but in my case the threat of leaving seemed to concern him sufficiently (recruiting good developers is pretty tough in northern England) that it worked almost as well. However, it still left me in a weak position when he asked me for a number.
I should also note that I was extremely nervous about championing myself so overtly, and it didn't come naturally at all (we programmers are excessively meek at times). I'm happy to report that none of the disastrous consequences I'd imagined in my head came to fruition, and my boss reacted extremely positively.