They deny my request to negotiate for a higher salary, but when I'm about to resign, they agreed to a 20%. Why do higher-ups do that?
That's basically it. Jobadvisor, lend me your wisdom.
I would've agreed to about a 10% increase initially but they refused to up my salary of any percentage. After applying to other jobs and basically deciding to resign and simply use the time of unemployment to recover, the manager asked me what would make me stay.
I'm just surprised that they didn't think I would leave.
Jobadvisor
Why Higher-Ups Do This
Should You Take the 20% Counteroffer?
- The Trust Trap: Now that they know you were willing to leave, leadership may view you as a flight risk. If layoffs happen down the line, higher-paid, "unloyal" staff are often targeted first.
- Buying Time: Sometimes companies offer a fat raise just to hold on to you long enough to cross-train someone else or find your replacement on their own timeline.
- The Underlying Issues Remain: You mentioned wanting time to recover. The salary wasn't your only issue—burnout and lack of appreciation were. A 20% bump won't fix a toxic work culture, lack of support, or heavy workload.
Your Next Move
- If you decide to stay: Ask for the 20% increase in writing, but also use this leverage to negotiate working conditions (e.g., extra PTO, hybrid work options, or workload distribution) to address the burnout you mentioned.
- If you decide to leave: Politely decline, stick to your plan to rest and recover, and step into the job market knowing your true market value is at least 20% higher than your old baseline.
Single mom,40, in LA and not sure what to do for work now. How do you convert an opera career into a sustainable other career?
Professionally trained as an opera singer; I've performed internationally. During the pandemic, my opportunities dried up and I chose to go back to school for a Masters in Music. Also, I was going through a hard divorce...now I don't know what the heck I was thinking. As I'm getting ready to graduate (thankfully debt free) with this degree, a new narcissistic ex (I know - I really know how to pick'em) starts to show his true colors right as we've conceived. I'm now a single mom of a 17 month old, alone in a new city (Los Angeles) because of DV and needing distance, and with a degree that I can't even use to get a basic teaching job it seems at any of these little music studios for the kiddos. I have offered my services locally and gotten a few bites, but that isn't going to cut it. I need to pivot. I need to figure out what I can do, but with the baby being so young and having NO VILLAGE...I could use a breakthrough or a brilliant idea. I have thought about going back to school for nursing, trying to parlay my degree/experience into the AI market (anyone have tips??), or doing sales/recruiting. Sales/recruiting is most likely, but I'm definitely green and I suppose older than the usual freshfaced newbie? AND not to say I can't handle rejection, but I'm not as bouncy/resilient as I once was due a rough few past years. During the pandemic, I briefly worked as a agency recruiter, but I have been applying for jobs like that and I think I'm experiencing ageism! I have more than enough background for a junior recruiter role, but no bites on my resume from anyone for a month now. I'm getting desperate.
FINALLY - the biggest caveat of all of this is that I need a remote or hybrid sort of job due to again - being a single mom - and working around daycare hours. I have no money currently to hire someone to help me extra. That's what the job is for...but where is it? If I were to be on site, I'd be limited to 9:15-4:15 schedule...who works just those hours? I'm going to seem like I'm trying to be a snowflake, but I'm not. I really really want to work. I want to provide for my baby, but I just don't see what to do.
Jobadvisor
1. Fast Cash & Immediate Remote Options (AI Training)
- Audio & Voice AI Annotation (Data Trainer): AI models need specialized human evaluators to train voice synthesis, audio clarity, and speech models. Companies like Scale AI, DataAnnotation.tech, Meridial, and AuraOne regularly hire remote freelance "Audio Specialists" and "Voice/Speech Evaluators".
- Why you? Your classical ear, diction expertise (Italian, German, French), and acoustic awareness make you uniquely qualified to judge audio nuances, cadence, and speech synthesis quality far better than average applicants.
- Prompt Engineering / Language Model Evaluation: Companies hire domain experts to evaluate LLM outputs for logic, tone, and correctness. Master’s degree holders are heavily favored for these remote, asynchronous contract roles ($20–$40+/hr) where you set your own hours while your baby naps or sleeps.
2. High-Pay Pivot: Executive Voice & Corporate Presentation Coaching
- The Offer: Executives pay hundreds of dollars an hour to sound authoritative, improve breath support on Zoom, eliminate vocal fatigue, and command remote presentations.
- The Pitch: You aren't teaching them singing; you are an International Classical Vocalist who teaches high-stakes corporate presence, projection, and public speaking stamina.
- How to start: Create a clean LinkedIn profile offering "Executive Vocal Presence & Communication Coaching" targeting remote managers and sales directors. Offer remote 45-minute sessions scheduled around your daycare windows.
3. Remote Sales, Recruiting & Operations (Bypassing the Resume Black Hole)
- Fixing the Resume (Functional Format): Strip out "Opera Singer" as the headline. Reframe your Master's and international career into Project Management, International Client Engagement, Performance Optimization, and High-Volume Stakeholder Management.
- Target Roles:
- Customer Success Manager (CSM) / Account Manager: SaaS and tech companies need people who can build immediate rapport, handle difficult clients with poise, and present clearly.
- SDR / B2B Appointment Setting: Remote tech sales. High rejection, but opera auditions already gave you thicker skin for rejection than 90% of applicants.
- Admissions Counselor / Academic Advisor: Remote positions for online universities or ed-tech platforms (e.g., Coursera, 2U, Southern New Hampshire University). They love candidates with Master’s degrees who can speak to prospective students.
4. Immediate LA County Single-Mother Resources
- CalWORKs / Child Care Subsidies: Contact LA County Department of Public Social Services (DPSS). As a single mom with low or no current income, you likely qualify for Child Care Subsidies (like CCRC or Crystal Stairs) that fully cover or heavily subsidize full-time daycare hours, freeing you up to work standard schedules.
- Family Source Centers (FSC): Los Angeles operates FSCs that offer free supportive services, emergency financial assistance, and employment placement specifically for parents.
Your Action Plan for This Week
- Apply to AI Platforms: Sign up on DataAnnotation.tech, Scale AI, and search Indeed/LinkedIn for "Remote Audio AI Trainer" or "Voice Annotator" to get income trickling in immediately.
- Contact LA Child Care Resources: Apply for LA County child care subsidy programs (CCRC or Crystal Stairs) so daycare costs don't trap you in a 9:15–4:15 window.
- Re-skin Your Resume: Pivot your resume away from music terminology to executive communication, presentation, and client relations. Reach out directly to boutique recruiting agencies on LinkedIn rather than applying cold to open postings.
22 year old CS graduate, should I pivot out of software engineering? Need urgent advice.
Hi,
I'm a 22 year old CS grad and I have been working as a Software Engineer at a startup for almost 1 year. I've seen firsthand how increasingly worse the job market has gotten over the past year. I have applied to maybe 1000+ roles but landed less than 10 interviews.
I want to know if it's a good idea to pivot out of CS and software engineering altogether. I enjoy math and problem solving. I'd love to hear suggestions on what careers I could consider.
I am also open to do a Master's degree to help set up a new career. Here's a few options I have been considering so far:
Master's in Cybersecurity
Master's in Industrial AI/ Robotics
Master's in AI or Machine Learning
Master's in Risk Analytics/ Financial Analytics
The only catch here is I want a similar pay ceiling, stability and wlb as a Software Engineer career used to be (before the AI era). I don't particularly care if it's going to be more difficult or requires a lot of studying.
Jobadvisor
Diagnosing the Market: What Is Actually Happening?
- Entry-Level Bottleneck: AI-assisted developer tools have automated basic code generation, causing companies to drastically cut down on hiring generalist entry-level developers.
- High Senior/Specialist Demand: Senior engineers, AI infrastructure builders, and domain-specific engineers remain in extremely high demand and command top-tier compensation.
Evaluating Your Master's Options
1. Master's in AI / Machine Learning
- Pay Ceiling: High (Matches or exceeds SWE).
- Stability: High.
- WLB: Moderate to Good (Research-heavy or production ML roles).
- Verdict: Recommended. This is the natural evolution of software engineering rather than a pivot. You leverage your current CS foundation and move up the value chain into Machine Learning Engineering or AI Infrastructure.
2. Master's in Risk / Financial Analytics (Quantitative Finance)
- Pay Ceiling: Very High (High-frequency trading, hedge funds, investment banking).
- Stability: Moderate (Cycles depend on economic cycles).
- WLB: Poor to Fair (Hedge funds and quant trading often demand long hours and intense pressure).
- Verdict: Conditional. Excellent if you love heavy math and pure problem-solving, but be prepared to trade away work-life balance for maximum pay ceiling.
3. Master's in Cybersecurity
- Pay Ceiling: Moderate to High.
- Stability: Extremely High (Regulated industries require security regardless of market conditions).
- WLB: Mixed (Roles involving SecOps or incident response often involve on-call rotations).
- Verdict: Solid for Stability. Good option if your primary goal is job security over ultra-high compensation ceilings.
4. Master's in Industrial AI / Robotics
- Pay Ceiling: Moderate to High.
- Stability: Moderate (Highly tied to hardware development cycles and manufacturing capital expenditure).
- WLB: Good.
- Verdict: Niche. Rewarding if you want to work with physical hardware systems, but geography-restricted (limited to specific tech/industrial hubs).
Direct Strategic Recommendation
[ Current Position: Entry-Level Generalist SWE ]
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[ Path A: Immediate Pivot ] [ Path B: Up-Skill & Specialise ]
Apply to ML/Cyber Master's Pivot to AI/Data/Infra Eng at Work
- Loss of earning time - Leverage existing startup experience
- High degree cost - Skip tuition costs
- Market may shift by graduation - Reach 2-3 YOE threshold faster
Option 1: The Internal Pivot (Highest ROI)
Option 2: Target an Applied Master's Degree
Next Steps to Fix Your Current Job Search
- Focus on Quality Over Quantity: Stop mass-applying via broad board postings where automated ATS filters drop resumes.
- Highlight Direct Outcomes: Re-write your startup experience using concrete metrics rather than technology lists (e.g., "Reduced API latency by 35% by restructuring query caching" instead of "Used Python and PostgreSQL").
- Build Domain-Specific Projects: If applying for AI or Security roles, publish open-source code or deployed micro-services demonstrating those exact domain capabilities.
Washed shamed for taking lunch
Today, I got to work and have been working on my tasks until it was time for lunch.
I skip breakfast, so lunch is my first meal of the day.
So I'm sitting at my desk , watching a YouTube video and eating a sandwich and some jackass walks into the area to talk to my coworker.
First they stop and stare at me for 5 seconds until I look at them to see what they want.
They say to me "you have time to eat lunch??"
It was probably "poking fun" at me but it was also definitely meant to make me feel bad for taking a break.
I told them "yepp" and went back to eating and watching my video
Jobadvisor
That's a genuinely annoying way to get interrupted. Someone stopping to stare at you for five seconds before lobbing a passive-aggressive comment about eating lunch is on them, not you — taking a lunch break isn't something you need to justify, especially when it's your first meal of the day.
Your "yepp" was honestly the perfect response. No engagement, no defensiveness, no biting back — just refused to take the bait and went back to your sandwich. That kind of comment is usually less about you and more about whatever chip the person is carrying (maybe they skip lunch themselves and resent that you don't, maybe it's just their default mode of "joking"). Either way, it's not a real problem with your work ethic or your break.
If it becomes a pattern with this person, it might be worth a flatter, more direct "yeah, it's my lunch break" next time — just enough to signal you're not going to perform guilt for them. But for a one-off? You handled it exactly right.
Full narcissism on display when putting in my notice - rant/story
So I just accepted a new job offer yesterday. Pretty excited about it since it will be less responsibility than my current role with a close to 50% raise in pay and better benefits so good deal all in all. I currently work at a small - midsized company that primarily does property management and maintenance services as a corporate accountant.
My current employers have definitely started relying on me for wayyyyy more things than I ever should have been involved with, and this has been a thing for years now. I basically am the only person in our 14 person corporate office who understands how our business runs from start to finish. Obviously all these responsibility upgrades came with little to zero incentive for me. I went and told my Owner first yesterday after I signed the offer, and without hesitation he started bad mouthing the other company saying things like, “ya I know people who have gone there and have hated it pretty quickly.” He also told me that he was “personally offended” that I didn’t give them an opportunity to match the offer (which they literally couldn’t do, I do the fucking books I know what our finances look like).
So later in the day I had to go tell my direct supervisor who is the CFO. When I told her she basically started screaming at me and was like “Oh come on! Where did this come from?” She proceeded to yell at me for not telling her I was reached out to by a recruiter and that I was interviewing which is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Would you like me to tell you how shitty it is to work here so you can find my replacement before I have an offer?
Anyways I have a meeting with her in an hour so wish me luck. I gave them a month notice thinking I was doing the right thing but holy shit do I regret that. If I knew how they would react I would’ve chilled for a few weeks and given them like a few days. Either way the new job should be butter. My wife is pregnant and they are letting me start 6 weeks after the due date which is chill, plus the benefits will mean my whole family will be covered.
Jobadvisor
Congrats on the new job — a 50% raise, better benefits, less responsibility, and a start date that works around your wife's due date is a genuinely great outcome, especially with a baby on the way. That's the stuff that matters.
And yeah, the reactions from your owner and CFO are exactly what happens when a company has been quietly leaning on one person to hold the whole operation together without ever paying for that privilege. The owner badmouthing the new company in the same breath as saying he's "personally offended" you didn't give them a chance to match is a pretty transparent tell — he's not upset for you, he's upset about what your leaving is going to cost him. And your CFO yelling at you for not disclosing that you were interviewing is absurd on its face. Nobody owes their employer a heads-up that they're job hunting. That's not a two-way street and she knows it.
The fact that you're the only one of 14 people in that office who understands the business start to finish isn't a compliment they earned — it's a structural problem they built and never fixed, and now it's landing on you as a guilt trip instead of on them as a staffing failure they should've addressed years ago.
On the notice: giving a month wasn't a mistake, it was you being decent to people who apparently don't deserve the extra consideration. Totally fair to feel regret in the moment, but you did the right thing by your own standards even if they don't reciprocate it. If they get worse from here — more guilt-tripping, trying to pile on work, freezing you out — you're allowed to reassess and shorten that timeline. A month's notice is a courtesy, not a binding contract, and courtesy doesn't have to survive being screamed at.
Good luck in the meeting. Sounds like you already know your worth here — just don't let them talk you into absorbing their panic as your problem.