When I was at Amazon I had an incredible direct report that was being grossly underpaid when I joined ($116k).

I told him that even though I’d love to keep him on my team in the long run, it wasn’t beneficial for his career and that I was going to help him 4x his salary in 2 years by teaching him the game.

The first thing I did was write a letter to another manager who had an open product management role (so he could get out of the lower paying business analyst job family).

The letter was so convincing, that he got the job.

I was sad as hell to have him leave, but my role as a manager was to lift him up and teach him the game.

Then, 1.5 years later I checked in and told him it was time to seek Senior titles outside of Amazon to maximize his salary.

When a recruiter from a competing company asked his salary range he scrambled to call me for advice...

My response: “tell them you won’t leave Amazon for anything less than $450k it’s time to make what I said to you 2 years ago a reality”

He got the job at $450k.

Key takeaway: Most managers will never expose whether you are getting underpaid or not so it’s up to you to always pressure test what you’re worth it’s all a game

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