can I ask for half an extra salary if I take on someone else’s job plus mine?

A reader writes:

I make a technically reasonable but low salary at my entry-level job, and while I’m not slacking, I’m also definitely not pushing as hard as I could. I do above my quota easily as it is, and I’m confident I could do more — even the work of two people — without overburdening myself. I like the work and I’m extremely good at it, but I’ve been feeling pressured to look for a new job because that salary just isn’t sustainable.

Our team is short-staffed at the moment, like everyone else, and it takes some time for a new employee to get up to speed. If I could make, let’s say, half of another person’s salary on top of my current pay, I’d be making the amount of money I want and I feel (though I could be wrong here) that’d they be getting a bargain. Let’s say I make $35,000 a year, and so hiring a new person would be another $35,000 plus their hypothetical benefits. If they gave me half that plus my current salary, I could do the work of two people for $52,500, and this would meet my needs.

It’s the sort of thing that feels like it could be mutually advantageous except for social conventions and the defined salary range. Is there any way to propose this gracefully, or should I well and truly let go of the idea?

Also, I totally understand if there are questions regarding the wisdom of taking on such a workload. I know the job and my skill level, but I’d do some more specific assessment before reaching out about anything, if it would indeed be acceptable to do so.

What you want to propose sounds extremely logical, and yet companies will almost never do it.

Some of that is skepticism that you’d really be taking on the work of a whole other person’s job. Sometimes that skepticism is warranted, because in practice it can end up meaning that you do the basics the other person would do but none of the extras and they miss out on the advantages of having two brains looking at problems (and coming up with ideas, taking initiative, etc.) rather than one. You might think that’s a reasonable trade-off to make if it saves them from having to hire an entire other person, but there are legitimate reasons for managers to be uneasy about that.

Sometimes, too, they can have worries about coverage: right now if you’re out, there are X other people who can do the work, but under what you’re proposing it would be X-1.

They also might worry about your capacity. Maybe you’re right that you could easily field both jobs now, but they don’t know if it will be sustainable long-term — if, for example, the workload of either position changes, or if something changes on your end (like a new commitment that takes a lot of your energy outside of work and leaves you less bandwidth).

And, crucially, a manager might figure that what you’re proposing would work fine as long as you’re still employed there, but if you leave, they’d need to hire two people to replace you and it would be a battle for them to get that headcount back if they give it up now.

Other times, none of those concerns are in play and they just object to the idea of structuring pay the way you describe, figuring that they’re paying for your time and if you can do X job and Y job in 40 hours, that’s what your existing salary covers. In that case, they’re more likely to be open to a raise, but not one that’s structured as half the salary of another position.

Ultimately, that’s likely the most effective way to propose it: to say that you think you could take on much of the work of the other role, saving them from having to hire another person and, if you did, would they consider increasing your salary to reflect that? You might propose a one-month experiment so both sides can see if it works. The risk in doing that, of course, is that they could decide to add most/all of that position’s work to your role without a sufficient pay increase. But if you’d otherwise be planning to leave over pay at some point regardless, that might be a risk you’re willing to take on.

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