When you're asking for a raise, you can't do it in a vacuum, you have to look at other factors your timing is critical. If your company is going through radical downsizing and other people are losing their jobs, now is not the time to ask for a raise. If you work for a government agency and the legislature or the Congress has just cut your organization's budget by 10%. Now is not the time to ask for a raise. If you've just gone through a performance evaluation, and they were less than stellar in their praise for you, your managers. Now is not the time to ask for a raise.
If your stock price has gone down and you can see senior managers are a little bit antsy, or if revenues are down or if your organization has lost its number one client. These are all good reasons not to ask for a raise. However, if profits are up, if people are being hired in your company, those good reasons where the timing might be right for you to ask for a raise doesn't mean you're going to get it. But the purse strings are likely to not be quite as tight as there are other good news around is a major new client been hired? Is there a chance there'll be more responsibilities, if you're in the nonprofit or government sector, has some new additional problem in society resulted in political leaders putting more responsibility and more revenues in the direction of your agency? All of these are factors, no one gets huge salary increases and a vacuum you have to look at all the other issues surrounding it.
And you've got to look at your timing. You can ask for a 20% raise in one quarter and it'd be laughed out of the room. You can be asked for a 30% raise in another quarter and your bosses might say yes. So before you go in for that meeting and ask for the raise, ask yourself Is this a good time? Have I done something that warrants attention people realize is adding value is my stock high in the company right now is the if it's a public company is the stock literally high our revenues up or profits up? These are all things you want to look for when asking for a raise.