How To Ask For A Raise Amid Soaring Inflation | A Top Venture Capitalist On Not Underestimating Yourself | Layoffs Are Really, Really Low

Plus: Meet The Startups That Amazon’s New $1 Billion Industrial Innovation Fund Is Backing

Happy Tuesday, everyone. If you had a crazy day at work yesterday, imagine what it was like to be a Twitter employee the day the board said it would accept Elon Musk’s offer and take the company private. This week in Forbes Careers:

–The right way to ask for a raise amid soaring inflation

–The most entrepreneurial CMOs

–Layoffs hit historic lows

Has there ever been a better time to ask for a raise? 

You’ve surely read guides for salary negotiation before. How to ask for a raise, how to respond to a counter-offer, how to do your research about how much to ask. 

But with inflation hitting near-record, 40-year highs, a labor shortage escalating and a reawakened labor movement forcing employers to be more responsive to workers’ demands, the conditions are historically favorable for negotiating a boost to your pay.  

That’s why we put together a new guide for touting your own accomplishments, navigating tricky gender norms and figuring out how much to ask for at a time when there’s more transparency about pay ranges and data than perhaps ever before. As so many things become more expensive, these questions are more critical than ever, and having the right words to say, the clearest research-backed strategies and the smartest ideas for informing yourself are more important than ever. (Turns out it’s actually best to put out the first number in a raise negotiation, an effect known as “anchoring.”)

Linda Babcock, the Carnegie Mellon professor known for the books she’s co-authored on women and negotiating, suggested asking people in your network who manage jobs like yours what’s a fair rate. Kathryn Valentine, who counsels executive women about negotiations, says a simple formula is to highlight past performance, combine it with future potential and follow it up with a direct request. (Then stop talking.) And Ben Cook, CEO of negotiation startup Riva, recommends knowing what other ways you can get paid—whether in time off, greater responsibilities that will lead to a future promotion or stock-based compensation. For more on our latest guide to asking for a raise, read more here.

Work Smarter

How to look attractive to recruiters—and make headhunters contact you.

The best way to fuel your career progress is to take a self-assessment.

How LinkedIn profiles and resumes differ—and what you need to know about them both.

Don’t wait: Why right now is the best time to start your job search.

Ask these questions to avoid regretting your next career move.

On Our Agenda

Subscribe to Forbes? Listen in when I speak with Backstage Capital founder and venture capitalist Arlan Hamilton Thursday at 2 p.m. ET about how to stop underestimating yourself in your career, as well as her book, It’s About Damn Time: How To Turn Being Underestimated Into Your Greatest Advantage. 

RTO’s introvert impact: As more companies return to working from the office, certain groups worry more than others about its impact on their well-being—and their careers. Senior contributor Dana Brownlee writes about how introverted Black women are a demographic particularly dreading the move.

The office suck-up is back: Back to the office means back to office politics, with the people who managed to succeed without really trying—kowtowing to the boss, flattering higher-ups—yet again getting an upper hand, reminds the Washington Post.

Twitter employees wonder what’s next: What do employees inside Twitter think as the world’s richest man buys the social media platform for which they work? They “said they worried that Mr. Musk would undo the years of work they had put into cleaning up the toxic corners of the platform,” the New York Times reported, as well as “upend their stock compensation in the process of taking the company private and disrupt Twitter’s culture with his unpredictable management style and abrupt proclamations.” 

Good news about layoffs: Take a breather. According to the Wall Street Journal, the “layoffs-per-worker rate is significantly lower today than even the 1960s,” with only about 1.1 jobless claims per 1,000 people in the labor force in March, according to an analysis of Labor Department data.

Book Club

Well-known corporate adviser and former University of Toronto business school dean Roger Martin’s new book, A New Way To Think, is derived from his Harvard Business Review articles over the years, he acknowledges. But “it is none the worse for that,” writes contributor Roger Trapp in his review of Martin’s new book. “Martin offers succinct examples of how challenging the received wisdom and taking a different approach might be more worthwhile than continually trying the same thing and failing to see the results they expect.” 

Key quote: Meanwhile, Forbes contributors David Benjamin and David Komlos spoke with Martin, who said “what I'm trying to guard against is you being owned by your models. I want to help people view them as tools that must deliver on specific performance standards, and when they don’t deliver, to be able to question whether the problem is with the model or their use of it.”