Salary adjustment much lower than expected - where to go from here?
I’m a water resources engineer with 10 yoe living in a MCOL city. I’ve been at my current firm for 4 years, and overall love the flexibility, my coworkers, and projects. As with a lot of firms, you can see everyone’s bill rate which equates to salaries. I was looking through them the other day, and realized I had fallen behind pretty substantially compared to my peers.
Peer 1 - new hire at the company, 7-8 yoe, level below me, making 8% more
Peer 2 - 2 years at the company, 7-8 yoe, level below me, 8% more
Peer 3 - 14 yoe, been at company 5 years, same level, 35% more
I laid this out to my supervisor, and told them I felt I should be between peer 3 and 1/2. They ran it up the chain and came back with a 4% raise.
While more money is always nice, I’m really frustrated with this raise. I’m not sure how to move forward here, as I feel like I wasn’t heard and this was just a ‘how little can we do so he doesn’t leave’. Any thoughts on next steps? Has anyone been in a similar position?