My manager's calendar invite said "Quick chat, 15 min" and nothing else. It was for 2 p.m. on Thursday, August 13, and I spent the 38 minutes into Huntsville that morning deciding it was either very good news or a reorganization. It was the first one.
On September 1, I became a senior project manager. My salary went from $91,960 to $104,700, about a 13.9% raise. After my 401(k) contribution and taxes, it comes to about $640 more a month. Here's how the eight months before that meeting went, what was said in it, what the offer letter said and the one part I negotiated.
Eight months of groundwork
It started in January, when I sent my manager a one-page summary ahead of my annual review, and in February I asked her, "What does senior project manager look like here, on paper?" Two weeks later she sent four criteria. Paraphrased: lead a larger project, own its budget as well as its schedule, develop someone on the team and improve a process the whole team uses.
I pasted those four lines at the top of the green folder, my running brag document, and on the first Friday of every month I added evidence under each one. By August it looked like this:
- Larger project: took over a bigger project in April, with roughly twice the team of my old one.
- Budget: owned that project's budget from April on, after months of sitting in on our director's monthly budget review.
- Developing someone: monthly mentoring walks with the new PM on our team since January.
- Process: wrote the written-update template that replaced half of our status meeting. Six projects use it now.
None of that was dramatic. It was a page that got a little longer every month. From the HR side, that's what a promotion case is supposed to be: when your manager has to defend you to a director and to HR, she needs evidence she can forward, not a feeling she has to describe.
The conversation
The quick chat took 25 minutes. My manager said, "We'd like to put you up for senior project manager in the January cycle." I'd thought about this moment on a lot of commutes, so here's what I said: "Thank you. I'd like to say yes, and I'd like to talk about timing. I've been doing most of this job since spring, and the new project phase starts September 1. Could the change be effective then instead of January?"
She said, "That's off-cycle. I'll have to ask." Then I added the second half of the request: "And I'd like the professional development budget written into the letter, with a number on it." She wrote both down.
Why timing and not a bigger salary? The number she described was a solid jump, and I'd already checked where it would sit in the senior range. Four months of the new salary, September through December, comes to about $4,250 before taxes. That was worth more to me this year than pushing on the base and being told to wait for January anyway.
From the HR side: off-cycle promotions aren't magic, but they do need someone to find money outside the normal merit pool and sign an exception. The easiest exception to approve is one with a clean business reason attached. "The new phase starts September 1" is a date. "I feel ready" is not.
The offer letter
It arrived the following Thursday. I read it twice and checked five things against my notes:
- The title: senior project manager.
- The salary: $104,700.
- The effective date: September 1, not January.
- Professional development: $2,000 a year, in writing.
- Everything else unchanged, including benefits and my Tuesday-through-Thursday office schedule.
All five were there. I signed it that Friday morning at my desk at home, with Moose asleep on my feet.
In 2023 I accepted a job offer without asking a single question about the number. This time I asked, and the answer was yes. That isn't a promise it will go the same way for anyone else; it's what happened to me, at my company, with a manager who was willing to go ask.
Ben's reaction was, "So we're getting pizza," and we did. Harper wanted to know whether "senior" meant I was old. I turn 40 in ten days, so I let that one go.
