> When it comes to pay, it’s an inherit property: you’re looking to max out your pay, and they’re looking to minimize.

While I can understand what drives this statement, I believe it's fundamentally flawed (from both perspectives).

A business is attempting to minimize and maximize many things simultaneously. One of those should be maximizing employee "happiness" for the purposes of retention, productivity, etc. Similarly, they are attempting to mimimize costs. The employee is also working to minimize and maximize many things at once. And, similarly, one area they work to also maximize is their own personal "happiness".

So, at a fundamental level, the employee and a good employer should both have they employee's happiness as a stated goal of something they'd like to maximize.

Happiness (personal and professional) can mean many things. And, an employer has many levers they can pull to help improve an employee's happiness. Sadly, one of the fundamental problems that exists in a typical employer/employee relationship is that there are very few things that an employee feels they can discuss with an employer in an attempt to maximize their own happiness; salary is typically at the top of that list.

When an employee finds their happiness tanking, it could be for many reasons. And, salary could be a cause of the unhappiness. For example, maybe the employee has taken on considerably more work in the past year and doesn't feel fairly compensated for it. But, it's quite often been my experience that the issue is actually something else entirely, and the employee is just grasping at one of the only levers they see available to pull on in the hopes it will make them happier (spoiler: it rarely does).

An example (true story) would be the Day Care provider used by the employee is no longer an option, forcing them to look for new Day Care options (highly stressful), and they are either farther away and/or cost considerably more.

An employee wouldn't typically feel comfortable bringing this (personal) problem with their employer, and instead simply ask for a raise without stating that it's to cover the increased costs (after all, this is the employee's problem). But, because they did bring up the root problem, the employer was able to discover it was an issue for many of the employees. They then found it was more cost effective to team up with a local Day Care provider within a few blocks and help provide subsidized Day Care for all the employees within walking distance. It had the benefit of dramatically improving the employees' quality of life, retention, peoductivity, etc. Likewise, it was cheaper than giving everyone raises and not actually solving the root problem.

To the OP, my recommendation would be to think through the fundamental reason why you want a higher salary. There's nothing wrong with wanting more money, and if that's what it is, go for it. But, it means you will likely need to switch jobs. If the raise, however, is a means of trying to fix something else and make you happier, think through what that is and be open to working with your employer to come up with solution together (which might be a raise!).

You may be pleasantly surprised.