Related Posts
Best place to score moving boxes?
K
Sent from my iPhone
It's like Scott Adams is spying on me...
Has working in corrections changed your life?
Additional Posts in Salaries in Finance
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
I've done 2 pivots now. Both essentially lateral moves. Both came with small pay raises but big potential. First pivot paid off eventually, but longer than hoped, over 5 years my comp 2x.
Second pivot is in year 1 so tbd. But it comes with some nice LTI so if that pays out it'll be good $$$
That’s a hell of a run. Doubling comp in 5 years usually means you’ve mastered the 'market timing' of your own career.
The real question for 2026 is: How do you protect that increased baseline from the public market volatility? Most of the 'high-comp' crowd in this bowl is starting to look at late-stage secondaries as a way to lock in 'Series D' pricing for companies like Stripe or SpaceX that are already printing cash. If you’re buying at a 30% discount to the last round, you’re essentially giving yourself another 'lateral move' raise before the IPO even happens. Ever looked into the secondary spread for your own portfolio?
I have had an almost identical experience to that of @Investment Director 1. Pivots 2 x. First time came with a 5-7% range because same job classification and led to a doubling of my salary and upward mobility in 4 years. Second time, no pay raise but more authority. Crushed the opportunity and quadrupled my comp being offered salary, cash comp incentives to hit milestones, and LTI equity awards.
That’s amazing! I love hearing others’ success stories like this
Leader at my company for 20 years. It’s impossible where I am to get a raise for a lateral move. Only situation would be if you got an adjustment in the new role based on that particular job having a much higher competitive range than the old job. But even then, that’s rare.
Thanks for the insight! This is helpful
Not wishful thinking at all. Most firms have a 'new hire' budget that is significantly higher than their 'retention' budget. If you're under the midpoint now, a lateral move is actually the only way to reset your baseline to market. Just make sure you’re benchmarking against the total package, sometimes a lateral base move with better bonus/carry structure is worth way more than a 10% bump at a stagnant firm.
So true! Thanks for the advice
I took a lateral move at one company I worked at, and it didn't come with a raise. It was promised that it would be a role I could grow in, and that was not the case. I don't know that I would move for a 10% raise.
Lateral with a raise? Didn’t sound lateral to me.
I’ve done it. I didn’t get a raise but did get a pile of RSUs and a promise of more opportunities. 4 years later I’m 2 levels higher and my comp is just shy of 4X. Maybe dumb luck. Maybe I was under-titled and under paid originally. Who knows. Looking back, who cares.
I did! One with zero raise. I was disappointed to find out that it wouldn’t come with a raise, but it turned out to be very pivotal in my career path.
I was on an operations team with a trade support component but was mostly back-office, I made the lateral move to another trade support team that actually sat on the trade desk and was more mid-office. My next role was front office and came with a relatively large raise.
It definitely felt like a little bit of a gut punch when I realized it would be another 2 years or so until I could go for a new role that would come with more of an increase, but at that bank it was very difficult to break out of operations and into a front office role without the right connections, so this definitely ended up being the move that set up my career trajectory.
Rising Star
Yes I took a lateral move before and there was only a 2% increase
Rising Star
Pretty sure this was posted the other day are you another person copying posts?
No—this is my legitimate situation.