Psychological warfare

I once did an even more extreme version of this. I showed up with a contract for a new job that would give me a 30% raise and an opportunity to work from home as much as I want. I told my boss to match that offer or I would sign it.

He took a few days to decide and made me an offer that was significantly worse, so now I have a new job, more money and haven’t seen the inside of a corporate office in months. My old team has been completely dissolved because the old crew left faster than they could train replacements.

Suppose they did match it, you stayed, and then everything fell apart. Or worse, they resented your ultimatum and fired you the moment they had a replacement. I would just always take the new offer.
- Never accept a counteroffer, they’re just going to use it to buy time to find your replacement.

And then everyone clapped

This could definitely work if you are doing something that cant easily be replaced. Maybe tell some colleagues about your "interview" as well.
- I got laid off at the end of last year along with most of the company. It was less than 3 months before I had a contract in hand to return as an independent contractor at a noticeable increase in pay. The company has however been dragging their feet on extending me a job offer. I've been continuing to interview on the side for full time employment (and I've gotten super close to an offer a couple of times and I'm currently waiting on a recent interview) my plan is to present my job offer to the CTO who it sounds like wants to hire me but hasn't been pushing too hard on that aspect of the corporate politics and say "hey I'd love to stay and keep doing what I'm doing, but I need benefits and the level of commitment that Full Time Employment would provide to me. Can you get me a job offer or should I accept this one?" and see how that goes

The next week he got ~~the raise~~ replaced

In most of the developed world that would be blatantly illegal.
But yeah, unions are a scam, right?

I did this and it worked wonderfully. I was the only employee trained in performing the job I did and the only person with access to the system within which I worked. This is after 6+ months of begging someone else to be trained on these systems.

Plot twist: I actually had an interview to go to and received a call offering the position to me while my boss was talking with me about what was going on. I politely ended that conversation and put in my two weeks notice. They practically begged me to stay on for one month and train another employee in the data system I managed. I refused. 😊

No one clapped, though. They were actually really upset.

I did a similar thing except it was a real interview I went to and then I took that job.

LPT

I recently did the WFH version of this. It didn't work.

Kobayashi Maru

I don't even ask for raises anymore. My employer either just gives me regular raises or I just go elsewhere. If I have to ask then even if they do give me a raise it still means that they wanted to rip me off. I don't work for people that want to rip me off.

My job isn't to haggle, my job is to fix shit. If they want to make me haggle then I'll just go work for someone who doesn't.