Summary
Today’s guest is the amazing Betsy Jorgensen! She discusses the things she has learned as she has made her way upwards in various large companies during her career so far. She has found herself doing things she did not originally expect like managing people and negotiating contracts with vendors.
Even if you do not see yourself staying where you are, or even doing what you are doing forever, it’s still important to learn how to make the most of your opportunities, especially when negotiating starting salaries and raises. Understanding how things work behind the scenes at companies in general, and learning how things work at your current company is very important to not leaving anything on the table when the time comes to negotiate.
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Transcription
Phil Salter 0:00
All right, welcome to no better time. I’m Phil Salter, and I’m joined today with Betsy Jorgensen. Welcome. Thank you. All right. Oh, yeah. So happy to have you. I know, we’ve been kind of going back and forth for like a week or two now, and not super long. But I’m just really excited that we’re doing this. And that you’re giving me some of your weekend,
Betsy Jorgensen 0:18
I hope are giving me easy questions, Phil.
Phil Salter 0:20
Oh, they’re gonna be hard balls. It’s like, you’re gonna get into all the political issues. Like just kidding. Um, no, but Betsy is someone who’s just so awesome. In fact, her husband, Max is my workout buddy. And we go all the time to the gym. to something I’ve always appreciate you at Max’s as soon as you guys moved into the neighborhood. Like, what? How long has it been three years now? A little over two years? Like how long were you here before you guys really started reaching out and started.
Betsy Jorgensen 0:46
I remember it was just a couple weeks then we had like a neighborhood little barbecue. Of course, had we moved in just a year ago, that wouldn’t have been possible. But so luckily, we’ve got struth ago before the world of COVID. And we had remember having neighborhood barbecue on the driveway and getting know a lot of people that way. And it just snowballed from there. And now we’re all just hanging out all the time.
Phil Salter 1:05
Yeah, it’s great. In fact, I had an episode. A couple, like last week, the week before I talked about how hard it can be to make friends as an adult. and the value of that has not just you know, socially, but even just like in your career, you just kind of learned things. Even if it’s not like, hey, this person got me a job. You just learn things, and it helps you and your whole life in so many areas. Yep. Is it something you guys had always done in the past? Or was it like, Was it scary to reach out to all these people?
Betsy Jorgensen 1:32
It was a littlescary. No, we have not always done this. In the past, we’ve always been somewhat like transient marbre we’ve lived so we got married. In Utah, we moved to Arizona following some stuff for max, he was getting trained to be a motorcycle mechanics, we went to Arizona, and we knew it was short term. So something about knowing you’re not in a place for very long, makes it hard to want to plant roots. If you know to do it over again, I would still make the effort. But we lived in Arizona briefly. Then we had a one year internship for him and Milwaukee. Meanwhile, I’m working remote through all of this. But we’re in Milwaukee, we knew it was another just one year internship. So once again, we kind of we didn’t go out of our way to make any friendships, and we move back to Utah. But again, it wasn’t we were in a rental and something about being in a rental in our minds was like, well, we’re not here permanently, either. So we’ll go out of our way and invest in the people around us, which is a giant mistake. So when we bought our house, we made a very, very intentional effort to get to know the neighborhood. I mean, these were you and everybody else, right? People were going to be around for a long time, hopefully, and, you know, a lot of the time. So it was a very, it was different for us a little scary for us. But it’s paid off.
Phil Salter 2:40
So Oh, for sure. And it’s funny because I had a very similar situation where we lived at different apartments and places. And then at a certain point, we get a house, you know, like, Oh, this feels different. And you’re right. So it can be a mistake to not still try to make those connections. But it seems like you can get this attitude of like, no one’s reaching out to me. I’m not reaching out to them. Yep. And it’s probably more in our heads anything. I don’t think anybody actually writes us off. But we kind of feel that way sometimes. But so much value in making those those connections. And that was a huge example I brought up as you guys coming to neighborhood and starting this barbecues and making me realize, Oh, you really can like live that American dream and have your neighbors be your friends and spend Fourth of July. So for 2020 together. Well, you see like the king of the hill where it’s the guys all just hanging out on the sidewalk talking all the time. And I just I love that because it just the neighborhood. We’re always just up together on our lawn chairs, kids are running around, yes, rocking, and particularly two summers ago, like two falls ago, like 2019 the kids would get on there like what those like battery powered cars just go on. There’s a cul de sac and just going in circles. And we’re sitting on lawn chairs chat, and it was great. But one thing I want to ask you, Betsy is something I’ve been trying to ask and I don’t always do it. But uh like, what was relationship? What was your relationship to money because the premise of my podcast is I’m trying to like, stop being afraid to learn more about finances and investing and, and re preparing for the future and also having a more awesome present. Like, I can build wealth now. I don’t have to wait till I retire. But I look back at my childhood and what it was like to me, and it was, you know, not what I would have wanted it to be but it was what it was. But how about you? Well, this money like did you get an allowance? Did you or did you save money
Betsy Jorgensen 4:21
inconsistently No, never saved? It wasn’t something we talked about as a family. So what there wasn’t like a very open learning environment. I remember as a teenager, my mom just gave me $100 a month she just it was our clothing allowance. And I remember we would we had like church dances all the time. So I’d always use my clothing allowance to get a cute new outfit to impress the cute boy, the church dance. And so honestly I haven’t learned too much about we didn’t learn too much about money and it was just something we didn’t really talk about. So I went to college and I had to set up a bank account for the first time I had no money to put in said bank account had to get money. first job, I never really had the pressure to get a job either growing up because my parents paid for all my things, right? I really competitive soccer. And that was not the older I get, the more I appreciate how much money they spent on the things I was interested in as a kid. Yeah. But you know when to go to the movies, my mom would give me a 20. So there wasn’t a you know, if you want to do this, you need to earn that much back then, of course, appreciate it. And now I’m realizing maybe some tougher love would have been good, because, you know, to start me off on like a, you know, learn learning more about you want things, things.
Phil Salter 5:37
Yeah, I think that’s interesting, because I think if I’m giving you money to buy clothes, it goes way beyond what a lot of parents do, I think, which is really cool. Because you, I’m sure there were times you realized, you blew it all and maybe a pair of shoes or one outfit, and you’re like, oh, now that’s gone. Yeah, definitely still some money lessons that Yeah, so that’s good. You know,
Betsy Jorgensen 5:55
how do you, you know, and so I always got the 100. Like, this was just probably from ages 12 to there was like, probably four years or $100 a month I got to spend on whatever I want. But essentially, it was clothing. And yes, and my mom did not like going clothing shopping with us. So it was kind of like, Alright, go to the mall with your friends. Back when that was a thing. Say how far can you stretch the $100 every month, you can get a nice Abercrombie shirt, so you can feel really cool. But there goes like half your money. And so we still definitely some money lessons,
Phil Salter 6:25
which is good. And it’s just kind of a, I kind of have this attitude of, we’re going to learn that we have to earn money at some point. And I think the most valuable lesson is how to manage the money if we have it. So I think a lot a lot of times we focus so much on like, I don’t care, just give my kid allowance, they have to earn it. It’s like Well, yeah, like there’s value there. But I think just giving them some money to say, hey, like, learn some lessons with this. And also figure it out is value in both, right? Yeah, exactly. And then the same parents just gave you 20 if you want to go to the theater, which is good. But that could have also been like, hey, money, just, I don’t really need to worry about it, because it’ll come. But also it can be value there where it’s like a feeling of potential abundance, like money is not such a thing that is so lacking, like, hey, it’s there. I may have to learn how to get it, but it’s out there, you know. So, really interesting, very cool. And so as far as you which I think is really awesome with your families, you are the primary financial earner in your home, you both have ways of making money, obviously, but you’re the full time worker, how’s that for you guys? How’s that been?
Betsy Jorgensen 7:26
And it had, it wasn’t me know, kind of was always that way to a degree. So when we were you know, moving around following Max, his dream of becoming a motorcycle mechanic. I was working remotely for Honeywell at the time I moved to Arizona, got that job, put him through school, help me help, you know, paid off his his loans from his program. And then we moved around and he has internship, we moved back to Utah, and he stayed at that job for a couple years. But once you start having kids, you’re looking at your money very differently. So we had our first and we both still work. So she went to daycare. No regrets with that, because we hadn’t met some really great people. But once we had our son, we had to stop and just look at the budget realistically and say alright, well, putting two kids in daycare is the equivalent of one of your paychecks. So is it worth working, you know, a full month to only take home half of that adding in the stress of drop off pickup. And so we just looked at it from a variety of factors like quality of life, we didn’t like the stress of like, Who’s picking the kids up today. And we were one of us always was like late picking up Harland and it was stressful. And so we’re like, okay, we’re gonna take that out. So we still would have been net positive money if we had kept max in his role at the dealership, but the stress was worth it. So we looked at it and decided that he would stay home as soon as we had our second. So he’s been doing that for two and a half years now. Just a month ago, he picked up a little part time job for some fun money. So honestly, for his motorcycle for being honest here. So um, but it’s been good. I think it’s, it’s not totally rare, but you don’t see it a lot. Maybe it’s more in I don’t know if it’s just in our area or just in general, but it’s definitely like a mindset, you have to like a flip, you have to switch a little bit because I get you know all the doctor’s appointments, both of our phone numbers are on there for the kids, but they always call me instead of Max, they there’s a lot of things that I’m like, Hey, I’m working right now. Can you call my husband so that left son with money but more just kind of moving people’s assumptions about simple things. And
Phil Salter 9:36
culturally speaking, you mean
Betsy Jorgensen 9:37
Yeah, we’re not offended by those things. But then sometimes that does play into money. Of course, too. Like as a woman, I’m very aware of the fact that I might be less inclined or less bold about asking for a raise or doing certain things but I’m the primary breadwinner in our home and I have a responsibility to do my best to bring in income that will provide for our family kind of as you said short term fund money. Long term planning, right? I think about it in both ways. So lots of cultural things to get over. Definitely, you know, for our kids, it’s kind of fun to flip the switch a little bit. And but yeah, it’s been, it’s been good, I love to work, and he’s definitely the patient on the relationship. factor that made more sense. Well, it’s,
Phil Salter 10:22
it’s awesome and why not? Right? So it’s like, if you look at culturally speaking, there’s things where there’s assumptions made, and someone would just assume, oh, if one person is gonna work, I guess it’s the husband. Okay, just because that’s socially. The, I don’t know if dorms work, but just kind of like the majority of it’s more, you could say more common, I guess, is the word. But it’s like, you guys, it’s so common also, for both people in a relationship to be working. There might come a time where you say, okay, is this worth it all the expenses around this and like you said, hey, maybe we’re a net positive, but quality of life is super important and stress and just the time and the energy. So it’s like, if I’m doing all this to make this budget in a day, not worth it. Because if that was your actual salary, you’d say, I’m not taking that job. But you decide what makes the most sense for our family and who’s who’s on a certain path for you. It sounds like you were really liking the path you were on in your career. Yeah, it’s it’s like I want to keep going.
Betsy Jorgensen 11:14
And we also saw his role kind of had hit more of like a plateau right? So it at a dealership, there’s, there’s only so many roles you can move into. And even the really more more tenured people aren’t making that much more than max rd was. And at that time, I was already making more than Max was. And I still saw a lot of room to move up right and have since probably about double what I was making, we made that decision. But, you know, so we can also work, we’re looking at the potential like in Mexico, I love that job. So it was hard. But he also had to work every single Saturday. He worked till seven most weekdays and it just wasn’t really conducive to having two kids either in that sense.
Phil Salter 11:57
So yeah, so it’s like that, but also like, Hey, what are the future options here? Okay, there’s these two things. And it’s interesting that you also mentioned, like, there’s things that you might feel like, for instance, asking for raises, it’s like, you might feel a little more like, like, maybe less aggressive about that, but that I feel the same way. I get nervous around that. So it’s kind of funny, but also make these assumptions that like, hey, right, this way, women are that way. Well, maybe. But also, it could be totally,
Betsy Jorgensen 12:24
you know, and I know other women who are just like, the boldness of the bold, but yeah. Oh,
Phil Salter 12:29
and obviously, there’s cultural ramifications, unfortunately, for some women when they act a certain way. And it’s not taken as it should be, which is ridiculous, but it’s just kind of interesting, cuz I think sometimes I found myself patting myself on the corner, assuming this is just how I am. Yeah, it’s like, I’m not technical, or now I’m, I’m a software engineer. So I guess I’m technical. I just didn’t think I was, you know, so that’s really cool. So as far as you’ve worked for, like, large companies with Yeah, cultural culture, and like, particularly politics involved.
Betsy Jorgensen 12:59
Yeah, my first role was at Honeywell giant company, it was, I guess that’s my second role. But I don’t really like to talk about my first role, because it was just not fun. Anyways, um, let’s just say I’ll just say just, I had two co workers who hated each other so much. And back then I worked at a little Art Gallery, and my office was office was the, you know, two square feet of desk next to the coffee machine in the back room. That’s where I worked. And the two other workers just hate each other’s guts. So they would print something, not they actually needed to print anything, just as an excuse to come into the coffee room and talk to me about the other one. So then I started to build like that. Is it the Pavlovian response? Like what the bell like? I would hear the copy machine and I’d run to the bathroom to like, Oh,
Phil Salter 13:43
wow. Yeah,
Betsy Jorgensen 13:44
I remember a month down the line, one of my co workers came up being very concerned that I had a medical issue. So anyways, just to like paint how bad how much I hated that job. So took the first job I could get, which was as an internal communication specialist at Honeywell, so very big company, it was about 130,000 employees at the time. And then I was there for about three years went to work for it, which is a local company, here in Silicon slopes. That was about 1000, when we got most recently acquired by Adobe, and I work at Adobe, another bigger company, about 20 25,000 people. And definitely, there’s like, there’s politics, just on different scales at all the companies. So it’s just kind of a fun thing to navigate. And I’m learning you know, some about my shortcomings, as you know, where I’m not being bold or confident, or even as a manager, you know, where I’ve got a lot of work to do. And so yes, definitely familiar with kind of small company, big company.
Phil Salter 14:44
And would you say that, like from your perspective, as you’ve looked around it, would you say that being a woman is had positive results or sometimes negative?
Betsy Jorgensen 14:53
You know, I’m sure it’s like anything where you see kind of both, right, like I’ve had bad work experiences. I’m with men, right? And I’ve had comments made or I have a boss, I won’t name but a somewhat recent boss, we used to make comments about my hair a lot. So this is sorry, this is kind of a tangent off the finance this, we’re off the financial train, but
Phil Salter 15:19
it’s all related. I think in my mind,
Betsy Jorgensen 15:20
the work environment, though, like I hadn’t had a boss who would say things like, you know, on a day that I would be wearing my hair cut to naturally carve it curly, she would say something like, you know, just the hypothetical story. Or actually, to actually shoot kind of would tell hypothetical stories and the real stories, but she was telling me the story about somebody that she used to work with, who started to straighten her hair and wear it and slicked back ponytails. And what do you know, within like, a month that one woman was promoted? Like, just like these weird stories that weren’t super relate, you know, relevant and would essentially was portray and say, I don’t like your hair,
Phil Salter 16:00
like a passive aggressive kind of way to like, say, maybe be more professional. Yeah,
Betsy Jorgensen 16:04
yeah, it was like her talking about my hair. She didn’t like my hair naturally, wavy and down. And so she would make comments and tell me these stories about other women who started doing certain things, and they would get promoted, and that there’s so much that goes into getting promoted, it’s not about straightening your hair. Yeah. And just comments like that are bad. You know, there’s, there’s differences. And I’m sure everyone feels differences. And but those are some of the kind of
Phil Salter 16:31
Yeah, and obviously, I don’t want to like narrow you down to like, hey, you’re a woman who works. It’s like, You’re, you’re an awesome employee at a company, and you found opportunities to be in more and more managerial roles and have a team under you. And like, that’s got to be that might have been kind of scary at first. Like, if you ever thought like very scary, trust me to have people like to be under me. Yeah, yeah, it was like,
Betsy Jorgensen 16:52
not long after I joined workfront that I got a team, I suddenly had a person on my team that like you’re overloaded, and we have this person who we think could help you. And so they transfer somebody from another team to my team. And I was just like, oh, okay, so I’m like four years into my career. Now, I’m a people manager, I have no clue what to do with this person. Now, I manage Three, two people, and I work with contractors, which is a very new thing for me to support contractor as well, but definitely like a deer in the headlights moment, but also something okay, I’m just rewinding a little bit, thinking about experiences I’ve had. I know, I remember when we were at work front, we had like, not too long until I time at work front. They were doing like a pay parity exercise. And you know, like they’re analyzing people with similar skill sets in the same roles. looking at data, patron’s across gender,
Phil Salter 17:47
various companies or whatever,
Betsy Jorgensen 17:49
yeah. So like at work, when I remember, they had to do a ton of corrections for a bunch of women who were doing the same jobs as men at work for it. And whether it be through jet, I mean, I’m sure, I’m sure it was like, none of these were intentional decisions, or maybe people negotiated less than the offer process. I don’t know, I don’t know how it got to this point. But there are people with, you know, significant paid differences. And that’s the whole point of a pay parity exercise. And even Adobe does it annually to just say, hey, looking at gender, do we have people doing the same role? same responsibilities, but we’re seeing, are we seeing any patterns and women making less than men, and they do an annual correction? I don’t, it’s a very small amount of employees that get corrected as dummies, understanding, I’m new to the process. But you remember that for our first time, and that was eye opening to me that that really existed, that people were making, you know, whatever, some different than people doing the exact same job as them. So I think really cool that companies now are making a very more, much more intentional and transparent effort to make some of those corrections.
Phil Salter 18:54
Oh, for sure.
Betsy Jorgensen 18:55
But that’s Yeah, that was the first time I was like, Oh, that’s real. That’s, I hadn’t, I hadn’t really realized it for myself until I thought, you know, some of the data and, you know, but people heard the stories like, Oh, I got x increase, because I learned that my co workers making that much more than me, and it’s just like, that was kind of my first eye opening moment, just
Phil Salter 19:14
if you think about it that’s kind of, as far as I understand, like a newer thing to actually start considering these things. And this is been a thing, a potential problem for a long time. And it’s not just women, it’s minorities. It can be people with certain sorts of sexual orientations, whatever biases people have, even if it’s not intentional, even subconscious. You know, this whole idea of like, Oh, well, he’s, he’s got a family at home. So he needs more money. And this assumption, like, well, the wife, you know, she’s working really secondary. You know, it’s like that, which should not at all be a consideration for,
Betsy Jorgensen 19:50
like a super underlying current of thought, right? Um,
Phil Salter 19:54
I’ll be right up. Okay. Sorry, that’s my boy.
Betsy Jorgensen 20:00
You know, and against that. I mean, I, it’d be incredibly rare that that’s something I would ever be intentional, right? Like, also, hey, let’s say this person doesn’t negotiate, right? You’re like, Oh, I’m getting a candidate for $30k less than my budget. No complaints here, right? Like,
Phil Salter 20:16
yeah. And of course, you ask questions like, why isn’t someone feel empowered to negotiate? It could be from a systemic like, experience or whatever? Right? Yeah, for sure. Like I think. But what’s really awesome is in a world where sometimes it can be scary to admit you’ve made a mistake to correct things, because you could say, What if I just hope no one notices? Because sometimes saying, oops, look at this mistake I made could have its own repercussions. So to be able to say, let’s correct this is really a very awesome thing. Very cool. I think. So as as a manager, has there been things you’ve had to like learn financially speaking? Like, do you have budgets where you say, Hey, we have a team activity, or we have marketing or things you have to kind of do outward facing? Or maybe internally? budgets? I don’t know.
Betsy Jorgensen 21:02
Yeah, so my work is all internal employee facing communication. Yeah, I’ve it’s funny budgets in as a communications person are always tricky. So my budget is usually, you know, I pull from usually somebody else’s budget, but I do have, you know, line items that belong to me every year. So I’ve learned about negotiating on software contracts. So I remember when we brought on an internet vendor, which is, you know, the private, like Internet portal for your web, your employees, right. So we have a, we had an employee intranet, I was when my first jobs that worked for it was to, you know, build an employee intranet, and we remember negotiating with the vendor. And negotiating, my boss was helping me at the time. And negotiating is not really the right word, because I remember it was like, they gave us a number. And we’re like, cool, we just did it. Right. Like, I had never negotiated for software before I assumed my boss had done it a bunch, right. And I don’t know if he had either. And so then I remember a couple years later, we were like, you know, what, we actually maybe want to look at a different vendor, this one’s not meeting our needs. And I learned so much about how much you can move the dollar sign on, like a software contract negotiation. It was insane. I mean, we got I’m talking like went from like, $100k to $50k. Just with the right conversations,
Phil Salter 22:25
if you don’t know better, like, this is just what it is. Yeah, like you used to go to the store, you don’t go to Target and say, how about you give me this for half the price, that’s just not gonna happen. And then you, you know, you
Betsy Jorgensen 22:35
take it, it’s almost like, it’s like, almost like job offers, right? Where you like, you get an offer and take it back to your employer. Right. So for us, we got this offer, we took it back to our current vendor, they met it, but then we decided, we still wanted to switch. But we got this great price and kind of did some back and forth.
Phil Salter 22:50
Do you ever, like feel like a certain feeling? I don’t know if guilt or right skills like that? Cuz I do, because I would hate the idea of like, yeah, I’m leveraging this opportunity.
Betsy Jorgensen 22:58
That’s why the pecurment team is good at what they do. Your whole job is to be like, emotion, gone, pull it out of the equation, this is a business transaction. And we know you can go lower and the business is ultimately not going to offer you less than they could afford to make you know exactly what you do. So you only it’s only, it’s worth trying. So we saved a ton of money the second time around. And, again, that was another like, eye opening event related for me. And so I don’t have a ton of budget, like I was saying a few line items, internet was always one of my annual line items, I get small budget for, like team building, and, you know, that kind of stuff. So that was like, a big moment for me, and then even probably shouldn’t go into too much detail on this, but just looking at my employee salaries, right? And like, how can I advocate for them as their manager to get those to where I think those should be? Or you know, those are things I’ve had to do in the past and but there are lots of money lessons with that you don’t realize you’re going to get in your job outside of thinking about the money you take home.
Phil Salter 24:04
Like Yeah, for sure. And the higher you go, the more that comes into play, I’m sure
Betsy Jorgensen 24:08
Or even advocating for your own salary and even or even just kind of some of that corporate financial literacy, which I had never had before, but learning about pay bands. So like, for example, I’m like, I’m leveled at a certain level in my job at Adobe, and it was the same at work for it. And I think most big companies have paid them right. So it’s okay, Betsy is making X dollars. And she’s heard the range that she should make at this manager 30 level role, or whatever it is, right? is, you know, I’m gonna use like round numbers for simplicity. I’ll do so. Yeah. So let’s say the range could be from 1 million to $2 million. The midpoint, you know, is that $1.5 million, but he’s a little bit below median. So those pay ranges come into effect come into play too when you’re doing like annual conversations or even just an employee feeling of like empowered enough to say, Hey, can we talk more about my salary band and where I fit in that? Like, I feel like, I feel like that should be a conversation they should be allowed to have right? Like, hey, am I below the median in what people in my level are typically like getting? Right. So, you know, learning how to advocate for yourself financially, it comes down to just understanding a little bit how the backend works. And having sat in my, my communications role at workfront sat in a people department, and actually it does, again at Adobe. But it worked for me because it was so much smaller, my peers were head of compensation, head of HR. So I just got so much exposure to how do we manage pay conversations and annual merit increases? And how do we, you know, we’re using this contracted third party consulting firm who designs all of our pay bands, and just learning more about all of that was just, and it’s information I’m going to use? And are, you know, or have already started using to advocate for my employees that I manage? And for myself, even like, Hey, where do I sit in the pay band? And can we have a conversation about when they why I’m below the median? When I think I’m performing? You know, above average? And so there’s just a ton of that, that I’m
Phil Salter 26:11
getting it? Oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah. So it seems like kind of being able to, the more you understand the process, and it obviously will vary, but probably learn to understand the understanding what’s happening at the company right now. There may be variations that accompanies, but that’s going to kind of, it’s not going to be all together different. And understanding like, what comes at play, and like, what kind of Yeah, I’m centered and understanding what is my value
Betsy Jorgensen 26:35
can be hard. And when you’re getting a new job, too. So like I also head of recruiting at work from was one of my peers. So learning more about the recruiting process, and how much wiggle room they actually do have in the back end. And sometimes, you know, and just like anything, sometimes there’s more, sometimes there’s less, but you know, learning like, Okay, and so I actually had a job offer in the middle of all the integration, and I ended up ultimately turning it down. But it was for like, $15,000 more than I was making, and honestly, still am making. So you know, some days I’m like, you know, but then I remember, okay, it’s not just about the money. And that was the reason that would have been a good decision. But there are about 100 other reasons why staying where I was, and moving forward, the Adobe integration was a much, much better decision, right. But I use some of the skills that I, you know, knew in the back and I’m like, Okay, I know they have flexibility on this. So I’m going to go for that. And if I had never known that I wouldn’t have pushed for that. So I ended up getting an offer that was pretty good. They are still company that and have very forward thinking benefits, right? It was a very standard, you know, time off standard, you know, lots of things that at both Dolby and workfront, I was spoiled to have unlimited PTO and this and that, or you know, better maternity leave. And so, so many other factors that go into it. And that’s another thing too is salaried is not everything. Oh, for sure, in $15,000 more a year, but it would have reduced quality of life for me in a lot of other ways. But also
Phil Salter 28:05
financially speaking, like depending on the the actual benefits package, it’s really important to actually work the numbers like what is their 401k match and how much vacations actually given what does that actually worth in dollars? And oh, yeah, there’s other things like to contribute to my HSA. There’s like, or how much or how much and it’s just, you don’t always get this stuff up front, but like, how much does my premium actually cost? And that’s that you can’t ask for it front though, that people don’t often they’re like, yeah, like, you know, they may not just give it to you, but if you ask for it, yeah, what is the premiums? And like, what are the what what I’m looking for, like, the deductible and like, Well, yeah, so if I had a baby, oh, if I’m at Adobe, it cost me 2000 if I’m at this other place to be 8000 Okay, that’s important if I’m having a baby this next Yeah,
Betsy Jorgensen 28:48
that was part of what helped me make my decision on this company too is I was like, I need to see your benefits guide and they wouldn’t send me the benefits guide until they had their like and that’s when I knew I was like in a final two three candidate and some companies will send it to you at that point and some won’t they’re like we won’t send it to you unless we offer you and they offered me and I said okay, now I need to get your benefits guide and I just was looking through it and it was just very old school and I was used to very entrepreneurial startup be kind of more flexible, you know, work flexible PTO, or is this your button is in the seat from eight to five, get 10 days of PTO. After two years you’re going to be at 11 after four years you’ll be at 12 like I learned a lot of stuff that I was like that’s not worth the $15,000 annual yeah
Phil Salter 29:35
for sure. Even if like the money ends up being you end up ahead but yeah, that’s not the quality life you want. These are all things really anyone can learn Alright, is it to anybody as you’re looking for opportunities are to negotiate with Yeah, but sometimes
Betsy Jorgensen 29:50
you just don’t know what you don’t know. Right? So like, like pay bands that was a newer concept to me as a couple years ago and learning about when you when you get slotted into roll your seat Most companies, assuming they have some sort of process for this, but you’re sitting within it behave and like there’s a minimum and a maximum.
Phil Salter 30:07
Within like for your role? Yeah, okay.
Betsy Jorgensen 30:11
Well, my role was, excuse me. So let’s say my role the range was one to 2 million okay? Obviously not, let’s say I was sitting at to the conversation is then does she need to be leveled up? Like, because if let’s say I wanted more money, they’re like, okay, we actually hitting, we’re paying you, we’re paying you the max, we should pay for somebody at your level. So then then their question starts with your manager. Okay, how do I get to the next level? Right? And it’s not that you have to get to the max before you level up. But sometimes that is what forces that kind of,
Phil Salter 30:41
yeah, that’s a good point. Like, yeah, those are good conversations. And it’s important, like, a lot of us have, you know, reviews, either annually, or sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly, maybe quarterly with our management, talk about, like, where you’re at. And don’t be afraid to point out where you’ve grown, and actually talk about where you’re at before, so you can compare it, you know, and it’s okay to like, not really brag, but you know, you want to show all the things you’ve done, and then come up with a plan with your manager of like, what do I want to become and bragging about yourself is a it’s something that we’re taught our whole lives not really to do,
Betsy Jorgensen 31:13
right? It’s like, your vein, that’s, you know, you’re just taught your whole life subconsciously, sometimes more directly, not to be brag, you know. But it’s actually a critical skill. When you’re, when you’re in your career, it is to brag on yourself, and obviously, in the right time in the right place, and in the right way. It’s a skill that I struggle with.
Phil Salter 31:38
Big, I agree, like, it’s so much easier for me to, like, be self deprecating, and point out, like, where I screw up. Yeah. And then just assume someone’s gonna be like, no, yeah, exactly. And in some ways, it’s a way to like to ask for validation, which I really try not to do that as much as I used to. But what I was gonna say, though, is go to your manager and find out is there like a formal, like definition of these different levels? And like, I’ve learned, like, Okay, I’m a software engineer, okay. There’s a junior, there’s like, a mid, there’s a senior, there’s a team lead, there’s like management, you know, there’s different levels. It’s like, what is the definition of being a senior? And what are where are some places that you see, oh, if you level this up here in your skill set, you then could be qualified, as defined as this senior role,
Betsy Jorgensen 32:21
and actually, is something exactly like that, that recently was able to get my one of my employees leveled up, because I was able to point to the language they created and say, she’s doing all those things.
Phil Salter 32:31
Oh, she was already there. You could Converse, you could have said, hey, look, here, this is what you need. You know, like, if you’re not there yet, it’s like having a specific goal to work towards is so key. You know,
Betsy Jorgensen 32:41
a lot of this is just stuff that it took me a few years to learn. But if somebody at the outset of the career was like candid, like, Alright, let’s do a little deep dive into pay bands, let’s do a deep dive into exactly what you said, like, what are love? what’s, what is leveling? And how do they define the levels? And where do you sit? And what skills do you need to get? Like, what is such a much clearer roadmap than just like, hoping that you’re doing the stuff that’s going to move you to the next level? Yeah, getting like, Hey, no, I’m mapping to this. And this is the company’s definition. So let’s have a conversation about why I’m not at this level for Yeah,
Phil Salter 33:14
and we should get there. Yeah, we should treat our careers just like we treat, like if you let’s say you want to have goals with like, you’re investing or creating a business, it’s like, let’s take these seriously. And even if it doesn’t lead to a staying at that company, or maybe it leads us to skills that we go build our own company, whatever. But we should always take these things seriously, with goals in mind, because like, Why spend, like such a huge part of your life, you know, doing something, if you’re not doing it as productive and effectively as possible. Yep. Right. Because it’s time away from our family. It’s gonna affect what we can do with our families if we can make more money, and things like that. So yeah, it’s really awesome. I really appreciate the time you’ve taken it’s really cool. Like, I was telling you before, like, I don’t know where these conversations will go, I have an idea what I want to talk about, like this has been really
Betsy Jorgensen 34:02
reminding me that my sister who’s more junior in her kind of career, yeah, and honestly, us. I mean, I haven’t not sure I’ve talked to her much about all these different things that she could be using to advocate for herself. So it’s kind of fun to think, okay, now I need to go talk the talk and share this information with my sister and you know, the people in my life that could benefit from
Phil Salter 34:23
this what you do Betsy, you go, you say okay, here’s the podcast, you need to subscribe to scribe go to YouTube and subscribe to the YouTube channel. You gotta
Betsy Jorgensen 34:32
There you go.
Phil Salter 34:33
There’s a button on the anchor.fm site. anchor.fm/NoBetterTime that you could even like support financially, this podcast. I mean, come on people. Let’s do this.
Betsy Jorgensen 34:43
One thing that this is gonna say for me too, is sometimes other people make us feel guilty about wanting more money. So like, my sister just just got like an internal move and her company. I’m so excited perks that came with a $10,000 raise a role that she’s living But more excited about. But even just that $10,000 raise, I remember I was telling my mom, it’s so great Stephanie’s got this new job. And she was able to, she applied for this internal role. And Funny enough, she’s going to be doing internal communications like me, so
Phil Salter 35:15
Oh, that’s nice. She’s got a mentor.
Betsy Jorgensen 35:17
Um, so she moved to this internal communications router company. That’s kind of a new role. Oh, yeah. $10,000 raise. And I remember, they actually came back to her and it was about a $6,000. Like, the offer was for about $6,000 more than she made, but they made the mistake of telling her that their budget was, you know, x sell me that. And I was like, No, no, no, no. They told you the budgets this, they like you obviously, if they offered you the job, you already have some internal street cred, right? So, you know, I was telling him I was like, Oh, yeah, so I told Stephanie to, to tell them that she wanted this much. My mom was like, Oh my gosh, like she like she shook her head and was like, it was like, she thought it was like this greedy, like,
Phil Salter 36:00
was this before she was successful? Or was it like,
Betsy Jorgensen 36:04
this was I was telling her the story.
Phil Salter 36:07
So but I would say I could see like that fear of like, Oh, no, you’ve maybe screwed it up. You know, sometimes, like if I asked for this, there’s you say
Betsy Jorgensen 36:16
that and that’s all for to like from from our parents. And more conservative like, you just take what you’re offered, you take what you’re given.
Phil Salter 36:24
Like it was a healing of undergrad un-gratitude.
Betsy Jorgensen 36:27
Yeah. But she she said, Hey, can I have this instead? It was for like $4,000 more than they offered. And still $5,000 less than they had said the range included, which is smart budget, so $10,000 increase for her overall. And it took them like an hour to just get her new offer. like yeah, of course, it took it was an hour, she asked us a brave and asked one question. And her salary increased by $4,000 per year,
Phil Salter 36:54
per year. Exactly. Even if it was a one time $4,000 thing, but yeah, per year, every year, and then her next job builds off of the salary of this job. That’s that small conversation she had just anyways. Yeah, there’s a lot of different things. Three, and you start to realize like any amount of money you get more like just kind of compounds because it like you make more but then the next job and it gives you more power to say, No, I don’t want that opportunity. Because you don’t think I’m worth this much more like I’m happy. Like if you want me you’re gonna have to pay me maybe 30,000 more Who knows? You know, like whatever. So awesome. But let’s get Betsy thanks so much for your time and for your input. If anybody has questions that I could redirect to Betsy are in general about finances are kind of going up the corporate ladder and managing people you can email at no better email me at No Better Time. podcast@gmail.com I can forward those on to Betsy and see what she has to say. do my best to answer them myself. Also, if you have topics suggestion, things you’d like to hear about, I’d love to hear that too. Have a great day and thanks so much. And don’t be afraid to recognize your greatness and pointed out to
Betsy Jorgensen 38:07
Ask for that money
Phil Salter 38:08
and ask for that money!
Betsy Jorgensen 38:09
worse that happens as they say no.
Phil Salter 38:11
All right, bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
No Better Time 