If you’re unsure how to get rewarded at work, one tech worker claimed she cracked the “laziest way to get promoted and double your salary.”
TikToker Avni (@yourtechgirly) posted a video on June 19 sharing the strategy she used at her job to get a sizable pay bump. As of June 21, the video has over 236,000 views and almost 20,000 likes.
@yourtechgirly This is the laziest way to get promoted and double your salary, it’s what I did and got a 40K raise during my promo cycle! It’s all about quantifying your impact outside of your main roles and responsibilities, which are often a milltion tiny things that are hard to quantify. Find a really quick way to document on a page, every time you do one of these microactions so you can sum it all up during your promo and actually showcase large, quantifiable impact outside the scope of your role. #careertok #salary #paytransparency #promotion #payraise #bigtech #tech #startup #jobadvice #softwareengineer #productmanager #team #notion ♬ original sound – Avni | Gen She
“I was probably one of the literal worst employees of all time. I still got a $40,000 pay bump because I did this one thing right,” she said in the video.
The method boils down to one thing, Avni said: “I would document literally everything.”
The TikToker said she would keep a bulleted list of any project she did at work, including links to her projects and screenshots of Slack messages that took longer than five minutes to send. That way, when it was evaluation time, she had a repository of all the ways she had contributed to the company.
“Coming up with tangible, quantifiable metrics of why you should get a pay raise when it comes down to your promo cycle is incredibly difficult to do because oftentimes the work you do is not as simple as I saved this many dollars,” Avni said. She added that the people who have the power to give you a raise aren’t often the people you work with daily, making it more difficult to convince the powers that be that you deserve one.
Avni explained that she would go down her list and see which tasks moved the needle in some way, like quantifying how much time she saved a co-worker, which she translated directly to a cost saving based on that person’s average salary. No one can argue with numbers like that, she said.
Avni concluded, “I promise you, you’re literally going to double your pay by the end of the year with this strategy.”
In the comments section, many viewers attested to the efficacy of Avni’s strategy.
“Girl this isn’t lazy this is providing value as an employee,” one commenter wrote.
Another said, “my coworker got promoted bc she took her slack messages answering my questions and called it ‘mentoring.’” Avni replied, “That is very real! This how people get promoted to managers so it works for sure.”
“Keeping a brag sheet is key… I just wrote my annual review yesterday and was panicking til I opened that sheet and was reminded of everything I do/did,” one viewer added.
“This is so helpful. I did my boss’ job for an entire year, he was let go but I didn’t get promoted, need to document all my work!” another person commented.
However, some commenters feel the strategy isn’t foolproof.
“I used to document everything and no bonus. when I quit I ‘earned’ only money of untaken vacations and a nervous breakdown to heal,” one person shared.
Another wrote, “Yes you get handed 15-20 accounts from your coworkers monthly and save the company time but all we can give you is 1,700 annual bonus.”
Avni is on the right track, according to several career advice resources—providing quantifiable results of your actions often is a great way to prove value to your company.
The popular career platform Indeed advises: “Be sure to document the details of the specific accomplishment(s) you’ll reference in your conversation about a raise. Even though your manager may be aware of your work broadly, they may not be up to date on precisely how impressive it was.”
Several workers have posted TikToks sharing less positive experiences trying to secure raises than Avni’s. One worker said her workplace begged her to stay after refusing to give her a raise. Another person said they put in a fake two-weeks’ notice to get a pay bump.
The Daily Dot contacted Avni for comment via email and did not receive an immediate response.
Update June 22, 3:47pm CT: In an email, Avni tells the Daily Dot:
In Big Tech, voices and contributions, especially those of women, can easily go unnoticed. It’s disheartening that women often have to put in extra effort to advocate for themselves. I’ve been there and had to learn the hard way. Thankfully, platforms like TikTok now provide us with the means to effortlessly exchange strategies that make it easier and faster for women to effectively self-advocate. This is also the driving force behind why I founded my company Gen She and why I’m fiercely passionate about helping break the barriers for women in the workplace.
I’ve also made a FREE guide if people want to download it here: https://bit.ly/dailydot-gen-she
