Look, you need to take charge of managing your own career. Also your “boss” isn’t the company. Unless you happen to have a really good boss who is willing to help you position yourself in the company, even if it means leaving his group (which you don’t) you typically have to take it upon yourself to speak to the mangers who you want to work for.
Your boss is unlikely to want to part with you because you’ve made yourself his personal application development team (in addition to your actual job). It’s great for him because he looks like a superhero creating all these apps without having to incur the actual costs of hiring developers or some IT firm like Cognizant to build them.
All the talk about taking a second job or trying to use other offers as leverage is fantasy. Managers tend to not respond well to employees trying to extort their way into better roles and it just makes you look unprofessional and mercenary. And even in cases where a company matches an offer, usually people leave anyway as the original source of their dissatisfaction doesn’t go away.
Honestly, if you have offers for freelance jobs paying $30-$40k more than your currenr salary, and your company (outside of your boss) won’t let you transition into a normal role, tell them to fuck off and take the freelance job. I mean what’s so great about your current job that you want to stay there?
You’ve had offers that pay $30-45K more and you haven’t quit yet??? Often the only way to get a pay raise is to change jobs especially if you have a skill set not appreciated by your current employer.
When you do give them the 2-week notice, be very careful about considering a counter-offer. If you are worth what they are offering, why aren’t they paying you that now? Because they are screwing you over OR they just came to realize how screwed they will be after you leave. Either way it’s their own damned fault.
Go ahead and do the meeting where you pitch that you should be promoted to full-time developer, and tell them what you think you should be paid. Give them the chance to say Yes.
If they say No, or “we can meet again in six months to evaluate the situation - in the meantime keep doing what you are doing” that means No. In that case, you accept one of the other offers, and quit.
If and when you do quit, do not accept a counter-offer from your current company. Even if the money is the same or comparable, or if they accept your original offer. That never works out.
Good luck to you. If I were you, I would have accepted one of the other offers already.
I disagree. It’s not extortion, it’s negotiation. It’s possible to love everything about your job except your salary.
Whether to bring up the other offers depends on your value to the company and how rock solid those offers really are. If either of those things is questionable, maybe just state that your current salary is not competitive.
“I believe I deserve a pay raise because the market pays X for people who do A, B and C and I’ve been doing A, B and C effectively for the past 2 years” is a negotiation strategy.
“I have another job offer for X. Meet that offer or I quit today” is attempting extortion and unprofessional.
mssmith537 has it right. You will do a lot better with your employer if you go in armed with Department of Labor pay statistics. They are much more likely to match market rate for your skills than they are to match a competitive offer, particularly if said competitive offer is quite a bit higher than what you are getting. They WILL call your bluff. So if you do this, be prepared to have them shake your hand and wish you good luck in your future endeavors.
Has an updated resume and a description of all the projects on which you’ve worked been documented in your annual reviews? Have you asked for a position doing the development work? If yes and yes, then you really do need to move on.
I worked in IT as a programmer from 1980 through 2011. I changed jobs five times. One time I was given a counter offer. I did not take it. The general feeling that I got from all my employers was that once an employee exhibits behavior that says he is likely to leave, he will leave. If not now, then soon. The one counteroffer I got was because they wanted me for a current project, not because they really valued me more. They just wanted to delay my leaving.
My advice: Just leave.
I will say that being underpaid can be an asset, in terms of job security. However, if you are in fact underpaid by 30-45K, then you need to leave. Your current company is not likely to make up that difference.
I agree with everyone saying you probably won’t get what you want from your current company. It doesn’t hurt to make the attempt if you really want to stay there, but I’m having trouble seeing the appeal from the few things you said. You work long hours with no extra reward, your hard work is unnoticed and unappreciated, and not only does your boss not try to help advance your career, he actively thwarts your advancement. You must have some amazing perks to make up for all that.
I’m not sure it is unprofessional if put in terms of the OP really loving the company and wanting to stay but being unable to because of low pay.
It will probably be ineffective, yes, short term or long term.
BTW this is a perfect example of why companies are able to get away with raising starting salaries much faster than salaries for current employees. Employment is sticky, and people would rather get less money than risk a new gig.
That’s really what this boils down to; if you’re going to play hardball and force the issue, you have to be prepared to actually accept one of those other offers in the case that your boss tells you to shove it.
That being said, some places have “no counter-offer” policies, in which case the decision boils down to better offer vs. nebulous chance for something better where you are.
I would not mention offers that have come from clients. Your employer has a relationship with those clients and could potentially get those offers rescinded. I’ve seen it happen. And if you conceal who the offers are from, your employer may be able to guess anyway.
In your place, I would just accept one of the offers and go. If your company wants you back, they can try to hire you back. I’ve seen this happen as well. It’s usually the only way that management and employees stay on good terms. An employee who uses outside offers to bargain for more money is often seen as disloyal and not invested in the company if they stay. It can be better to have a clean break and have them be in the position of wanting to woo you back. Then you have the chance to deliver a clear message: “I like working for you guys, but you have to value my work appropriately.”
Even if you get that meeting with the partners, whom you don’t know well, your boss is going to screw you over. He has zero incentive to change the status quo because he is personally looking good at bringing in lot of projects under budget.
You can’t expect him to back you to management. They know him, not you so if it’s his word against yours, who are they going to believe?
Then my suggestion is to lead with this – basically, you want what you were promised years ago, and you’re done waiting. Certainly clarify for the partners the full extent of what you’ve been doing for them already, and you believe your title/responsibilities/salary should reflect that. If boss resists, then you can mention that you’ve been looking elsewhere because your current job is not fulfilling your career goals. You’d like to have that fulfillment here, but you’re prepared to accept these other offers if that’s what it takes.
Of course, this goes along with what everyone else has said – get those other offers in writing, and be prepared to walk away (or get fired) if they refuse to work with you. In truth there’s nothing left for you at your current place if they won’t take any step to accommodate you; so while you need to be sure you’ve done the prep, you don’t really need to worry about the outcome, because they will tell you whether you’re better off staying or leaving. That makes it a pretty easy resolution – there’s no way for you to lose.
The other options – and I’m not saying they’re the best ones – besides quitting or threatening to quit, are to stop doing the extra work for the other groups. Either just tell your boss “Sorry, I can’t keep doing this extra work for no reward”, and let him deal with it, or, if you have a good relationship with one of the other boss/parters you work for, let them know you can’t keep doing two jobs, but would love to come work for them full-time (all kinds of office politics come in here, so be careful, but it could be the best outcome)
Reading between the lines I’m not 100% sure his immediate boss is the bad guy here. It sounds like the OP is leaping after taking on these projects and is (to some extent) being left to deliver these in whatever time is left over after his usual duties. His boss might get chewed out for letting him take on more than he could deliver in a 9-5 scenario but I don’t get the impression the OP is being coerced in his decision to undertake this absurd level of after hours work. He’s stepping up and taking these development tasks on himself because this is really the kind of work he wants to do.
Perhaps you’ve had better luck than me presenting market data as a benchmark.
I was told time after time by the HR department at my old job that market salary data is useless. “Those are just based on surveys. Very inaccurate.”
Other than below market pay, it was an awesome job. Everyone loved working there, and yet turnover sucked. It took losing some valuable employees for them to take a hard look at their pay structure.
And in the case of the OP, I don’t feel like he’s trying to give an ultimatum. He just wants to present data points in the form of (what I think are) unsolicited job offers to back up his case.
Also, the OP has almost deliberately constructed and compartmentalized this situation so virtually no one in the company beyond his immediate boss is aware of the huge amount of after hours time he is spending on delivering this work.
I get the OP feels he is unfairly compensated for the work he does, but in fairness he is (deliberately and secretly) doing way more than the company thinks they are paying him for. I get that he’s not being fairly paid, but through his decisions he’s kind of painted himself into this corner .