Time to ask for a raise?

I'm not sure who needs to hear this but....

In our business we talk to all stakeholders. Owners, management executives, supervisors, employees, vendors, brokers, you name it. Part of our value is being plugged into the whole eco-system of several industries from many vantage points.

Anyone surfing Linkedin comments, Reddit or any number of other community boards recently, will see a fair number of people out of work and a considerable amount of anger for the state of their industry if it's related to digital production.

Several clients have started to backfill select vacancies but the road ahead is still very unpredictable and this isn't the digital goldrush of 2021-2022.

Many companies didn't make it through 2023 or are still on tender hooks right now in 2024. The work has not returned on any normal or typical flow. Movies and streaming shows are being shot now but the Post-Production won't roll in until later this year. Animation is still slow as studios and their advertisers adjust to a moving audience. Gaming has also hit a plateau and many titles are on ice while management teams try to read the market. There will be more casualties ahead.

Studios still have to hang on which means more loans, refinancing, cutting back on perks and people where possible, delaying infrastructure upgrades. We will probably see a few more companies close and others potentially get acquired by larger firms.

If you're an employee and you've gotten an offer and returned to work recently, remember that the company you're entering probably has incurred considerable loans to stay afloat. Their monthly burn has risen as they finance this new debt.

If it's an owner-run studio that owner has probably gone through a fair number of cuts that were uncomfortable for everyone involved. In some cases, smaller studios have used personal assets and their actual homes to secure loans. If it's a publicly traded company, those still standing are having to do a lot with very few resources. The road ahead is still very uncertain.

So, if you're re-entering the workforce after a layoff or a break in work, try to read the room. This is not 2021 where there was an abundance of work and salaries climbed due to the scarcity of people available to perform the work.

Every company is different but the majority of them aren't going to be able to provide much in the way of monetary rewards this year while they try to ride out a second challenging year in a row. This might be unpopular to say in some circles but much of what has happened to the industry was not the fault of your employer. They have been caught in this huge reset as well and are working hard to get through it.

A conversation about a raise or a promotion might have to wait for awhile. A diplomatic question or two around timing would be better than any type of statement, demand or entitlement. Now is not the time to say, "When I left 10 months ago we were talking about a promotion and a raise and...." We've heard a few doozies between HR and returning employees recently where the returning employee got very assertive asking for X,Y and Z now that they were back and a defined timeline of expectations. None of this was well received by the employer or the management team. While they may wish to help and the employee might be deserving of a promotion, the tsunami started in 2023 isn't over yet. To coin a phrase from Hill Street Blues, "Let's be careful out there !" Or a more recent reference, "Cousin" Richie in The Bear saying "This is a delicate F***ing Ecosystem" Hopefully in time, our industries return to being more like The Bear and not The Beef.