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I am a web developer with about 4 years of relevant work experience in my field. Recently, I went from making $30/hr working from home contracting for large companies to a full time job that only pays 40k/yr. The company I work for now is great, nice people, but a little behind the times.

I joined on with very little experience in development but they put me in charge of some important tasks right away, so I had to go in head first and pick up skills right away. Which is great, I'm happy I learned more of that, and really make good time when doing these tasks now. However, I'm now doing most of their advanced SQL stuff.

The day I started, another employee who was running another project based in an uncommon programming language put in his two weeks. Two weeks later, I'm the only one who knows how to use, access, modify, or update this project. It's quite a large responsibility for an "entry level dev", no?

I am doing highly advanced development for them to modernize their forms, webpages, amongst other things, a skill that I would most entry level developers would not be able to do as well.

I may be wrong, but I feel that what I'm making now is not acceptable. We don't have reviews, ever, so I can't just wait for that. I want to be paid more and I'm not sure how to bring it up; how can I make this happen?

Rarity
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Jacob
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  • It's hard to gauge how much different in your current/past job's pay there is without at least a rough break out of your benefits (if any). Are the pay rates about the same with benefits included? – Rarity Jun 12 '12 at 13:54
  • I've edited your question to make it more generally applicable to workplace issues while leaving in (I hope) enough info to judge your current situation. – Rarity Jun 12 '12 at 13:59
  • I did not want the benefits so I am making an even fourty before taxes. Other job did not offer benefits, and I could work as much as I wanted. – Jacob Jun 12 '12 at 14:02
  • uncommon != lucrative, in many cases it could mean the exact opposite. Also "advanced" is a subjective thing, what you think is advanced there, could be dead simple in the grand scheme of things. "Behind the times" will always pay "behind the times" as well. –  Jun 12 '12 at 14:06
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    You declined benefits that were offered? Might be a good bargaining chip when asking for higher pay if you didn't already get higher pay when you declined. – Rarity Jun 12 '12 at 14:07
  • Well I mean its not necessarily beyond an entry level programmer in terms of skill, but its the broadness of what I'm doing (full stack) on multiple projects. I write custom jquery plugins and stuff, I'm the only one who knows how to manage their drupal sites, only one with knowledge of their floating MVC project and am the sole person responsible for that project.

    I don't know how it goes at other places but I just get the feeling that I'm being shortchanged

     – Jacob Jun 12 '12 at 14:13
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    There are 10s of thousands of people that know how to manage Drupal sites, same with JQuery plugins, they aren't magic, as for the MVC thing, I can't believe it is dark magic either. PHP is a low payer, plain and simple. I think you are over estimating your criticalness, only way know is ask them. Use this as a learning exercise, learn how to recognize this type of company and not get in this situation in the future. –  Jun 12 '12 at 14:19
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    @LagWagon: How big is the company? In some companies it's not unusual for the few programmers there are to do EVERYTHING. Not all companies can justify a full team of IT staff with clearly separated roles such as Programmer, DBA, QA Tester, Analyst, UI Designer, Build & Deployment Manager, etc... If they have a small shop, be prepared to wear many hats! This could be a good thing for you though, as it will expose you to many more technologies and activities than if you were in an isolated role in a much larger department. – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner Jun 12 '12 at 14:21
  • Company has made a 3 year growth of somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 million with just one of their subdivisions, which is the least profitable one they have. So I imagine that money isn't a problem here. Its a major ISP. – Jacob Jun 12 '12 at 14:38
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    @JarrodRoberson That is true and I'm not doubting this. What I'm saying is this feels beyond the expectations of an entry level dev w/ no experience in any field. – Jacob Jun 12 '12 at 14:39
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    Unfortunately i am in the other group of "being paid more than I would like" so can't help. – Michael Durrant Jun 12 '12 at 15:02
  • @LagWagon - It sounds like you made a mistake accepting such a low wage based on your experience and their ability to make money. – Donald Jun 12 '12 at 15:11
  • Ask for a payrise. Look for a new job. – NimChimpsky Jun 12 '12 at 15:38
  • I worked for a "major ISP" 7 million was a rounding error for them, they did revenue in the Billions, and their business is 90% dialup. "Behind the times" means just that, technology, salary and management wise. If their major front line web properties are PHP that doesn't mean they are high volume combined with the "Behind the times" criteria. Chalk it up to a learning experience and move on. 7 million sounds like a lot of money when you make $40K, but for a business with that kind of overhead today, that isn't much money. –  Jun 13 '12 at 00:30
  • @LagWagon, You have not stated your country. Where are you from? Pay depends alot more on location than on skillset. – Pacerier Jul 02 '15 at 00:52

3 Answers3

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Make a case to them that your skill set has expanded and that you are now taking on additional repsonsibilities and thus deserve a raise. Right after someone else has left is often a good time to do this because they have money available in the budget.

HLGEM
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    The thing is, I haven't been there very long. Going on four months soon, but all of the responsibility I can handle, its the fact that I know I'm doing above entry-level stuff and I'm getting paid low entry level rates that gets me – Jacob Jun 12 '12 at 14:05
  • @LagWagon: You're right, 4 months isn't very long. In some places that's less than the probationary period. They might not want to discuss it until your first official performance review (which I would guess might be at the 6 month mark), but if you think things are changing so quickly as to warrant raising the discussion sooner than that, you might want to bring up the subject sooner. – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner Jun 12 '12 at 14:13
  • @FrustratedWithFormsDesigner They don't do performance reviews. Also, when they gave me the job offer, the owner of the company was very apologetic for the low offering salary, and said it would be no problem to "bump me up to 60" in the future... I think he was blowing smoke up my ass, but who knows – Jacob Jun 12 '12 at 14:40
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    @LagWagon: They have no performance review process? I guess they like to keep things very informal, which probably means that it's up to the employer or employee to open up such conversations when they feel it is appropriate. Good luck! – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner Jun 12 '12 at 15:03
  • I know it is frustrating to feel underpaid, but you shoudl stay there at least a year and then move on if they don't increase the salary when you ask (you don't have to wait a yaer to ask since you have taken on additional responsibilities). Remeber though that you are as much to blame for the low salry as they are. After all you accepted the job at that salary. You may just make this a learning excperience and hold out for better the next time you look for a job. – HLGEM Jun 12 '12 at 15:06
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    @LagWagon - Well it is the future now. I personal feel you should ask for the increase in wage. I would also look for a different job since they seem to have a problem with paying people to low and are losing employees ( perhaps because they are not paying them enough ). You have a great deal of the power at this point, because you could walk, and they would lose all their internal knowlege. – Donald Jun 12 '12 at 15:13
  • @Ramhound That's true I guess I'm just afraid of pissing off the owners. Its a private company so they can just boot me to the curb if I do anger them. There's also a power struggle with the bosses where one of them thinks their special marketing guy who designs websites in Powerpoint can do my job, so that particular boss just treats me like a disposable worker. – Jacob Jun 12 '12 at 15:23
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    @HLGEM: no, he shouldn't stay a year. If he gets a better offer, then his short tenure didn't matter. – kevin cline Jun 12 '12 at 15:25
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    If you think they would fire you for asking politely for a pay raise, then don't stay a year, start looking right now. – HLGEM Jun 12 '12 at 15:25
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A company will very rarely volunteer a raise if they don't have some kind of standard process to give raises, so if you want one you have to ask for one

I was in a similar situation a few years ago, where I felt like I was being underpaid and wanted a raise, but really didn't know how to go about it. After a bit of research and getting some advice, here is what I ended up doing:

  • First, research what the current salary rate is for your location, job position, and level of experience

    There are many different salary websites out there that can help you out with that, however keep in mind that some of them include benefits in the salary shown, so the actual dollar amount you'll want to ask for is probably less

  • Next, determined what salary you want to ask for. This is often different than the figure found in the first step depending on your benefits, position in the company, and the company itself.

    I have a related question on this site which may help you out: How can I determine a reasonable salary to ask for?

  • Once you know what you want, contact your supervisor and asked for a brief meeting to discuss your salary.

    The reason for asking for a meeting instead of asking directly for a raise is because it gives your supervisor time to think it over and do any research he/she may want to do first.

  • When you do sit down to talk with your supervisor, be concise and tell him up front what your research revealed, and what you want.

    When I sat down to talk with my supervisor, the first question he asked was how much I wanted, so I gave him a very brief summary of my research and told him what I wanted. I think it was something like "I did some research and most .Net developers in this area with X years of experience make between A and B a year, so I was hoping you would raise my salary to C"

    I was very nervous since I had never done something like this before, but it worked out great and I got what I was looking for :)

In your specific case, you can also bring up the added responsibilities you have as an extra bargaining chip. Perhaps your original salary was good for an entry-level programmer, however if you're taking on the full programming workload then you should not be getting paid as an entry-level programmer.

One other thing to keep in mind is the company may be looking to hire another developer to replace the one that just left, and a salary raise for you may impact the quality of developer they hire.

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Rachel
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I'd ask my superior if they're replacing the experienced employee.

Work tends to ebb and flow in software development and you wouldn't expect less money during a slow period, would you?

As long as you're not getting put under pressure to do a lot of unpaid overtime, I'd give them a chance to reform their team to meet your original expectations.

They might be hoping to lean on you for the rest of the life of the business, but you'll never know unless you ask.