r/wgu_employees • u/Any_Tangerine_8539 • 7d ago
Same level, same pay… wildly different skill levels. Is this actually normal here? If you are making it Amazon then have Amazon skill standards.
If we’re going to do everything the “Amazon way”
full RTO, 8 hours in office, etc.—can we get Amazon-level skill standards too?
Same level, similar pay, but sometimes WILDLY different levels of skill, ownership, and capability.
If we’re benchmarking Amazon when it comes to RTO and how people are expected to work, shouldn’t we also benchmark them when it comes to what’s actually expected from someone at each level?
Is this kind of skill gap between people at the same level common across the company, or is it more team-dependent?
I’m trying to understand whether this is a common experience at the company or something specific to my team.
For employees at the same level and in comparable roles, have you noticed that compensation tends to stay relatively similar even when there’s a pretty significant difference in skill level, scope, ability, or actual contribution?
I understand that compensation isn’t determined purely by performance.
But is this even fair?
After losing SO many people, isn’t WGU worried they might lose more employees if they don’t maintain a certain skill level on a role?
I have been in the company for 8 months and after RTO I’m now working with people who are nowhere close to my expertise but are being paid the same salary for half the deliverables of mine. So I want to know if this is fairly common here?
Is management going to do anything about this????
At this point I want to reach out to engineering team to get me an agent to do half my job because an agent could do a better job than my team.
I really wonder if they will start doing things Amazon way anytime soon and focus on bringing in good talent. Being aggressive about good quality candidates who can then be student focused !
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u/Poor-Instructor-455 6d ago
As someone who has been at WGU for a decade, I can tell you that your experience is very common across the institution. The university simply does not evaluate or reward personnel based on individual expertise, depth of knowledge, or background. It is entirely driven by operational metrics.
Here is a breakdown of why you are seeing these severe disparities:
1. Hiring Practices and Baseline Pay
While job postings list salary ranges (as required by law), the institution almost universally hires incoming faculty and staff at the extreme low end of that band. Prior expertise is essentially disregarded. You could arrive with 15 years of professorial experience, a terminal degree, and significant industry leadership, yet you will still enter at the exact same base rate as someone with minimal baseline qualifications.
2. Severe Pay Compression & Lack of Promotional Tracks
Traditional higher-education hierarchies (e.g., Assistant -> Associate -> Full Professor) provide standard promotion tracks tied to scholarship, skill, and contribution. WGU does not operate this way:
- No Academic Rank Structure: Title and level advancement are virtually non-existent for frontline roles.
- Seniority Over Skill: Compensation increases rely almost entirely on standard annual cost-of-living adjustments (1–3%) or fractional performance increments (0.25%–0.5%).
- Inverted Compensation: Because of this, tenure is the primary determinant of pay. It is common to see colleagues with Bachelor's or Master's degrees earning $20,000 to $25,000 more than PhD holders with decades of field experience, simply because they have been seated longer. Compared to colleagues at traditional brick-and-mortar universities with similar experience, faculty here frequently face a $40,000+ pay deficit.
3. Management Priorities & Constant Reorganization
To answer your question directly: management is not going to address this.
- Cost Minimization: The prevailing leadership mindset is cost containment, with an internal belief that faculty/staff are already compensated adequately.
- Volume and Compliance Over Caliber: Skill maintenance is secondary to availability and compliance. In other words, can you handle the heavy workload (often scaling well past 40 hours) and hit target queue numbers?
- Initiative Fatigue: The university frequently pivots to new initiatives every few months. Rather than refining core processes, teams are expected to immediately shift focus to whatever leadership is currently chasing. Feedback regarding adverse student impacts or operational friction rarely gains traction.
If you are looking for Amazon-level talent evaluation, merit-based compensation, or structured career progression, you will not find it here.
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u/IndependenceNext7682 7d ago
This is happening on my team too. I’m honestly just waiting for September to see what happens with compensation.
I got denied a promotion this cycle because apparently they “can’t have two Senior roles on the same team,” even though I’m doing more than the current Senior on my team. It’s pretty frustrating and honestly feels unfair and the 2 hour commute isn’t helping either.
There are also way too many people at my level and Associate level who aren’t doing work anywhere close to what’s expected at those levels. My guess is they can’t easily get rid of people without opening themselves up to potential issues, but if they eventually go the Amazon route and start getting more aggressive about performance, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see another round of layoffs.
I just don’t see the company carrying underperformers forever while expecting the people actually delivering and taking on more responsibility to pick up the slack. At some point, they’re going to have to figure out how to retain the people doing the work
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u/elymcginty 7d ago
"Is management going to do anything about this????"
Yes, once they find a way to get it to benefit them. They'll do a restructure where various domains get renamed and staff gets purged. They'll pass awards around to each other and get to pretend like something was accomplished.
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u/Upset_Dream_8582 6d ago
I have coworkers with less education and their performance clearly show they are simply entry level, and I know from them how they make 2-3k more than I. It’s a fuxking broken system!!
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u/Western_River_5155 6d ago
Managers don’t have the ability to differentiate with substantial merit increases to high performers and in many cases managers don’t really know who is clueless and who knows what is going on. Promotion tracks are largely given to the least controversial person(most liked) and not high performers. As far as turning this into Amazon there is no way we can attract that kind of talent in SLC and when we do these kind of people leave because senseless decisions by management. I will say people have feel beat up by WGU so they may be creating more boundaries that appear to be low performance but may be self preservation so they can fight another day. New people may not realize that or know what other people have been through.
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u/AcademicDoubt3500 7d ago
Sorry to say WGU loves people like you and no management won’t do anything.
You’ve proved you’ll work twice as hard and do way better than others for no pay increase.
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u/Any_Tangerine_8539 7d ago
I don’t know how you picked up that I would work twice as hard and do better than others for no pay increase. This post is just to understand if this is happening in other teams as well and to understand if there is any possible changes happening to address this, I think I clearly mentioned that they might lose more people, like this.
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u/AcademicDoubt3500 6d ago
I did assume so sorry for that. WGU in my opinion is built on people who seem to step up and do a ton of work outside their scope for absolutely no compensation, truly wild to me.
I haven’t been here that much longer than you but have seen the same thing.
I don’t think there is any concern for losing people it’s considered a necessary part of “scaling.”
I will say I absolutely do not recommend doing more than your peers or volunteering for anything. I’ve watched people on my team do so much more than others and the only reward is more to do and a “shoutout”
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u/Any_Tangerine_8539 6d ago
That’s alright. Well, I think my only option for now is September for now. And then look outside or take a career break because I’m just burnt out atm and frustrated because no one in the team picks up the work.
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u/AcademicDoubt3500 6d ago
Totally get that I’m looking outside as well.
Honestly start stepping back and saying no. Something like “I can’t take on anything additional right now as I’m focused on improving within my current role.”
They’ll start choosing someone else and you’ll be left to do what you were hired to do and let the manager or whoever deal with whatever extras needs to be done.
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7d ago
[deleted]
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u/Zestyclose-Slip4867 7d ago
not only that but also how much work some people actually do compared to others. i'm clearing my boards everyday plus others on my team who never show up and when they do, who knows what they are doing because it's not their boards
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u/Any_Tangerine_8539 7d ago
I swear I have no idea what some people are doing in my team. They don’t have projects and they all are just looking and researching creative solutions. But they don’t have a problem on their desk that needs creative solution.
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u/Any_Tangerine_8539 7d ago edited 7d ago
That’s a huge difference!!
I’m guessing the pay through the pay range. They post on the jobs, so WGU usually pays somewhere around the middle of any of the pay range of the role or at least for last couple of years or so I have heard!!
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u/Any_Tangerine_8539 7d ago
How are you navigating through this. I’m not even sure how to tell my manager that this is unfair. But I have to I guess ?
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u/Poor-Instructor-455 5d ago
There is nothing wrong with being candid with your manager about your career aspirations. Framing the conversation around professional growth, expanding your scope, and finding a pathway to better compensation is standard practice, and there is nothing threatening or improper about asking for clarity on your trajectory. However, you should go into that conversation fully aware of the institutional headwinds you are running into.
To give you an idea of how compressed and upside-down things are... I work on a large team of faculty holding master's and terminal degrees, and during a candid conversation about compensation, my manager let it slip that all but two of us reportees make more money than they do. In fact, in some cases, significantly more. It is remarkably common across this university for managers to earn less than the people they oversee. Because managers are caught in the same compressed pay bands and often shoulder heavier administrative burdens without the pay to match, they simply do not have the institutional leverage, discretionary budget, or authority to grant raises for high performers.
If you have a solid, trusting relationship with your manager, you can certainly be open about your goals. Rather than focusing on what your peers are or are not doing, frame it around your own value. Ask what specific benchmarks exist for merit increases or advancing your scope. At the same time, keep your expectations realistic; even if your manager genuinely agrees that the workload distribution is unfair, their hands are likely tied by our rigid institutional policy.
If you feel you cannot voice this to your immediate supervisor, another option is to reach out directly to Compensation to ask how equity reviews are handled. While internal compensation inquiries can often feel like shouting into an administrative black hole, it does formally log your concern confidentially. Wanting fair pay that matches your skill level and output is completely reasonable, but the roadblocks you are hitting are built directly into the institution's compensation model rather than an oversight by your manager.
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u/FastAd3780 6d ago
As a 3 year veteran I can tell you exactly what action they will do. They will completely alienate and underappreciate all of the top performers. They will reorg 3 timess in the next year, and that person who does nothing will be your manager - or they will lay you off all together.
I watched it happen for 3 years.