No salary increase after an internal job transfer
Employers frequently offer the exact same salary or base the new pay rate on the employee's previous, lower-wage role rather than the new job's requirements. This traps workers in their old pay band and prevents normal salary progression, even when successfully moving into a more specialized or demanding department.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- People have been saying this in most months since September 2026.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
No salary increase after an internal job transfer
- 1Asking peers on online forums about their experiences and whether they received salary increases.Did this help you?
- 2Accepting the lowball offer to build experience and get the job title, with the plan to leave the company entirely in a few years to secure a market-rate raise.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I didn’t even get a chance to throw an offer out there because I was told that the Employee Compensation team had a note on my file that my rate was decided based upon it being a substantial increase from my scribing role.”source ↗
“I feel like it’s unfair to base my new salary off of that rate, which is barely over minimum wage.”source ↗
“I was so excited to take a role that let me stay within the same system that I never thought about the flaw in terms of salary progression.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 6How to negotiate a salary for the first time
- 4How to renegotiate pay when given extra work
- 2Can I ask for a cost of living raise after moving?
- 10Should I take an internal job transfer for more pay?
- 2Should I quit a low paying job with a long commute?
- 2New employer changed my job duties right after hiring me