So I am a recent graduate with a biochemistry degree. I live in Ohio which has a brand new medical market so I jumped at the opportunity to get into this field as I am a consumer myself and wanted a job where I would be excited to go to work everyday. I am just over 4 months into my company and have been doing everything I can to help the company(currently still a startup which has selling products for only about two months). So far I have been optimizing everything I can and have helped get our CO2 extraction yields upped from 10-12% to 16-19%. I have helped increased our winterized crude THC % from an average of 60% to around 75-80%. I have also set up our entire refinement system with no training and got the distillation up and running and have been achieving 90%+ distillate on just 2 passes.
I am currently making 18$/Hr and working on average 5-10 hours of overtime each week. I was recently asked if I would be interested for a promotion to formulation manager but I have no clue how much money to ask for as it seems to be a bit of a niche position. I was told by my mentor that with my background and the numbers I have been increasing that when my review came I should be asking for somewhere in the 50-55K a year salary range but that was before I was asked If I would be interested in the promotion. So now I am stuck wondering how much I should ask for because I donāt want to give an unreasonably high number but I donāt want to low ball myself because I am putting in an incredible amount of work to help the company succeed.
Any thoughts, suggestions, or opinions on this matter would be greatly appreciated!
what is your time worth? I wouldnt take anything less than 60k with bonus or stock options, 100k shouldnt be too unrealistic for what it sounds like you would be doing for them. Just be sure to get a good contract with severance options incase they self destruct themselves.
It sounds like you bring quite a bit of value to the table and have proven that with your performance thus far. I donāt think six figures are out of the question by any means but thatās gonna be a tough sell at a startup with only two months of sales. Iād be asking for $75k with a re-evaluation of my salary at the end of Q1 2020. +1 for an airtight contract, if itās not in writing it doesnāt mean anything.
How replaceable are you? In your opinion would there business suffer if you left?
Also what sort of sales are they doing? If they have good cash flow I donāt think $100k is out of range, you did say they are newer though so maybe a smaller salary with bonuses or raises when the business grows would be more ideal
Good solid improvements there. Want to really make a case? Put that data to $. As in $ of additional revenue with $0 increase in material cost. Multiply that over a month of production. Quantifiy the value youāve brought to their operation, those changes will continue to pay dividends for months/years to come. Put a $ value on that and let the numbers do the talking for you. āIn 4 months weāve gone from x to y in yield, which brings in an extra $/month in gross revenue with only marginal cost increments. Our cost/g of finished product has decreased from x to y in that timeframe, further improving the bottom line. Iāve brought value to the business, and I would like to be adequately compensated for my work.ā
Sure theres overhead and other people in the operation, but thatās your best case for getting a slice of the pieā¦ you made it bigger.
Iām pretty familiar with the ohio medical cannabis market . They have the top prices on every single product in the whole country . With all of these things put together and what you bring to the table you should request 60-100k especially with your educational background! Congratulations man you have an amazing wonderful opportunity in a fresh clean market ! Do not cut your end of the stick short and as stated above get the numbers behind everything to prove the statistics and your worth !
Thanks for all the input guys! I have been keeping a list of all the improvements I have been making but havenāt quantified the revenue impact so that is next on my to do list! I appreciate you guys taking the time to help out!
A lot of guys are throwing out 100k. I think thatās a joke considering your at 18$ an hour right now.
Your wayyyy better off asking for that 50-55k a year range and then having them institute a production bonus structure. So you get paid directly from the profits you bring them.
This way you can easily make it into 100k a year while not making your owners head spin by such a large ask.
Find out how you would like that set up. Find a metric that can be tracked that you directly influence and can show you yield. Then place a number on it and a monthly bonus should you hit or exceed your numbers. Submit this plan to your boss and go from there. If you over ask your boss is going to become concerned youāve over valued yourself and could begin looking to soak your knowledge out and look for a cheaper replacement
$60,000 a year is within a standard deviation of the average starting pay for someone with no experience other than a chemistry bachelorās degree. So to have already brought serious value to the company and still not be making well above that is not very cool.
This is false. I had a dozen plus candidates apply with chemistry degrees. They are no use to me if I have to train them. They have to show their worth before Iām paying them 60k when I can get someone with years of extraction experience who have run labs before for 80-90k why would I pay someone who knows nothing 60?
Chemistry degree means really nothing. Just means they are hopefully intelligent. Now maybe a masters in organic chemistry or something along those lines may be justifiable for 60k If theyāve had applicable experience in other fields.
Yāall forget how many people there out there willing to work for way less to just get experience. Or those without degrees with tons of experience that will happily work for 60k.
Slot of people way over valuing themselves and job hunting for ever
If you have a college degree you from a real college not a for profit college, you deserve to make at least $20 a hr. If you have an actual college degree and are using in the field you went to school. You should earn at least $25 an hour.
There isnt a job on this plant āin real corporate americaā where the candidate doesnt go threw training. Its almost absurd hearing that people are expected to come into a new company and not be properly trained. Most people exagerate on their applications and im suppose to use that information and let you run hog wild in the companyā¦no! Real companies have structure and spend lots of money figuring out how to properly maximize a candidates potential. Yes a college degree only indicates a persons abilitlity to learnā¦its the companies duty to maximize those abilities.
I think if you been happy making $18 and overtime. 60K isnt bad. your young. You have lots of time for real earning. its time to build more skills to make you even more indispensable. 60K should be deceit pay outta school. Should have graduated in the early 2000s with a computer science degree, they gave every magna cum laude 100k right outta collegeā¦then the tech bubble broke! hahaha
Well I am not sure what you consider a for profit college cause my experience in the education world led me to believe that most if not all are for profit. The cost of education seems to not justify what you are given for the money in return. But I graduated from Ohio State with my Biochemistry Bachelorās and then jumped into this field. I was happy with $18/Hr when I started because I was fresh out of school but with it being a start up, I feel I have worked well beyond the job description I was hired for, and excelled beyond expectations while doing it.
I also have been thinking the 70-100K range was a bit high as I do not have a lot of experience. I do feel I have shown my worth and just touched the tip of the iceberg in terms of my true potential as I am extremely passionate about this industry and also love chemistry which has lead me to spending many hours unpaid outside of work researching ways to improve just for my own interests, and the company has benefited from that and will continue to if they keep me on. I personally was thinking in the range of 60-65K as I do not think that is low balling myself for what I have done and my experience level but is also not unreasonable. With everyoneās input, I now feel confident bringing that number to them and letting them counter offer. To me the worst case scenario is them telling me no and giving me a lower number and getting a years of managerial experience before finding a new company that will see my worth, but who knows maybe they will see my worth and pay for it, allowing me to grow with the company!
To be honest, $100k is pretty unrealistic for the current industry with just a BS and no experience. $60k is definitely much more in your ballpark.
Thereās always going to be the guys who say āset your value and accept nothing lessā, but the plain old truth is that itās only typical for $100k+ in most of the industry if youāre going to be the lab director.
In a lot of these cannabis startups even the executives are generally only pulling $130k-200. Sure some of the bigger companies pay that and there are guys out there pulling $100k+ in niche jobs, but thatās by far not the standard.
The fact of the matter is, guys with a 4 year chemistry degree are a dime in a dozen in America. We currently have an abundance of highly skilled workers, we donāt have an abundance of people with 3-5+ years of experience working in cannabis labs. I would never expect more than $70-80k with no experience without at least a masters degree. Many here would say thatās harsh, but its just how it tends to work.
If you want to work for a company with huge budgets and room for growth and stability, then Iād go into biotech or pharmaceuticals, and even those jobs are very competitive.
Lets also not forget that most cannabis chemistry and formulating is at the low end of difficulty in the world of chemistry. If you want to work on more advanced stuff then take a pay cut and go work in the research field, if you discover something big then cash in on it.
Or, you could try to seek funding and try to start a company of your own, high risk/high reward.
TLDR: A BS in chemistry and no experience will not earn you $100k+ in legal cannabis fresh out of college MOST of the time. If you can achieve that then hats off to ya and Iām happy for you .
I second @Siosis with all the 100k fantasies. Your really canāt expect to go from 40k a year to 100k especially If there is another guy willing to do the same job for 50k a year. What they failed to teach you at the U you graduated from was how to get the most out of the hand you were dealt.
Being a startup you should have come in looking for a share(%) or a bonus pay based on productivity. I look for employees like this that are willing to work hard for a bonus.
How many employees in this company get paid 100k a year?
Would you be the head of this lab or is there someone above you that deals with management/ownership? If youāre the top guy then donāt take less than $60,000. Are you expected to take on employees and train them in this time? If yes, that puts you closer to $75-80k. Youāre in a good spot because not many skilled operators want to move into the Ohio market. And if you walk, they wait 3-4 weeks to replace you while they get interviews and state employment badges together. Youāre in a good spot.
Always ask for too much. Always. Margins are insane especially in Ohio. Theyāre asking too much for an 8th, right? But your company likely has a lot of debt still so theyāre going to talk you down no matter the number you put out there.
Iād ask for $30-40 per hour or about $75,000 per year. When they talk you down ask for bonuses based on production. Meaning, if you produce x amount of grams they will give you a bonus. Bring a list of options to the meeting for them to decide on and be proactive about it. Get the bonus in writing before you sign your new contract. In the eyes of the owner, you want the bonus money to come out of the customer pocket, meaning based on sales. Iād also recommend you getting equity of a part of the growth in any way shape or form. Ask for 1-5% and be happy with any. Donāt sign vesting periods longer than a year. If they say no to equity, ask for the same percentage of gross sales over a period of time. Had a buddy get 5% gross sales from a cultivator/processor over 5 years. Heās working another job now and still raking in that bonus money.
Edit: $75,000/$25 per gram wholesale = 3000. You need to make 3000 grams of dab a year to earn back your salary. This is to prove that $75k plus bonues/growth is reasonable.
