So this will be a bit of a lengthy post. You may remember me from the time I made this post here in the sub. I'm happy to report that the situation has changed for the better, but let's wind the clocks back a bit to when shit started going sideways.
PART 1: A shitty situation
So, this was my first gig in my field of work (web development). When I first got a job, I received a salary I roughly expected based on friends' starting salaries in the area and the current market, and it was plenty to get me by in my area (DFW). I learned a lot in my first few years, but I began to detect a shift in the way my company was doing things, and I also began to notice that my manager was a shitty manager. He actively discouraged us from talking about salaries (we never listened) and would tell different people different things to try and keep us happy. I kept up to speed on everyone's salaries, positions, and YOEs though, and it didn't take long to realize that we were all significantly underpaid relative to our market.
How significant? We weren't even on the fucking Bell Curve for our YOE, our skillset, and our area. No, we weren't just in that 1% outliers category, that 1% outliers category started above what we were making.
So yeah, from the year I was hired to January of this year, my salary rose a grand total of $16,000/year. An average of $4,000 a year. Barely a COLA increase, especially with inflation starting to rear its head this year. Well, he noped out back in October of last year, and we were faced with a merger with the parent company back in Michigan. Merger went badly, we were kept in the dark until the week before it went through despite repeatedly asking for information. Eventually, it went through, and signs initially appeared promising, but things soured quickly.
Bear in mind, from about Y2 on, I am looking for a job, but a combination of bad interviews, my company keeping me irrelevant to the market with proprietary tech, and companies lowballing me kept me looking this whole time.
PART 2: Meet the new boss, somehow worse than the old one
It is January 2022. My salary is 58k/yr on 5 YOEs. There are less than ten of us in the office. This is where shit goes sideways.
Their first act as the new(ish) guys in charge was going to be my end-of-year raise. That was the litmus test for all of us for how things were going to change. Well, their proposed raise for me was only 5%. Inflation had recently been announced to be 6.1%, so this was a pay cut. I hung up on my supervisor and went home, telling my coworkers what was up on the way out. They reached out to the parent company boss sat down and chatted with me about the raise I wanted. I explained to them that I was doing more and more work as time went on, but the salary being paid did not match the work expected, so I demanded much more. They only met me at 65k and piled even more work on top of me, which I just resigned myself to and started redoubling the job hunt.
A few interviews come and go, a company wants me but lowballs me, we move. My coworkers are all looking for jobs now too. One of them gets a job and leaves, thus inspiring the post made above and the reaction from a shitty and tone-deaf exec at the company.
A second coworker gets a new job (with a pay cut, imagine that), and now the company realizes they fucked up, so they reach out to him. Somehow they get him to agree to contract work for them on weekends.
A third coworker, my su[pervisor that I hung up on earlier (he was the unfortunate bearer of bad news, it wasn't his fault), gets another job with double the pay he was making. Company straight panics and tries to counter-offer to keep him around. They then do the big brain move of rescinding their first counter-offer in favor of a much worse second counter-offer that gets laughed out of the room. Three people gone in the span of two months.
So that's where we were not too long ago. An office of only a few people, all of us barely holding on because this entire time, all of us doing way more than we're being paid for because there's no one else to do it, and they're not making any effort to fix the fact that there are less than 10 people working on 8 clients.
Our new manager, one of us whom leadership fell to after the old manager left, was able to use this to our advantage to get us hefty raises. I went from 58k to 65k to 85k in the span of 6 months, but it was still not enough for what I was expected to do. The job hunt continues.
PART 3: So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu…
So I finally manage to land a job, and through a combination of interviewing extremely well, negotiating well, explaining my reasons for wanting certain things, and having a company willing to meet me in the middle (closer to me), I was finally able to get myself a new job that starts next Monday. The benefits are about the same, but with better healthcare options, but as mentioned up in the title, it is more than double my salary from the start of the year. I'm not asking for this salary just because gimme all the money. I want to move out of DFW. I don't know how many of you are following the news, but I feel like this state is racing Florida in speedrunning a return to the 1820s, so I'm looking to move elsewhere. The new company was willing to let me have that money (well within reach of a 1-year raise that puts me where I was asking), and they're willing to let me work fully remote once I move. In addition to all of this, I will not be a project manager, which is something I'm glad not to be. I'll be going back to working on non-proprietary stuff, thus making me a better developer, while also having a lot less on my plate than I had at my old company.
Shared my new job news with the old company and got… absolutely fucking nothing.
Farewells from my coworkers, I'm gonna miss them, but the parent company in Michigan had nothing from me. No counter offer, no well wishes, just radio silence. And to be fair, I didn't share any details about the new job, I just put in my two weeks and left. But honestly, I needed that confirmation. I wanted either the satisfaction of watching them try to keep me around, only to either deny them, or confirmation that they never did care about me. I got one of those things. So I got what I needed.
Last day was this past Friday. Currently having a week off, early paperwork to get into the new system for my job aside. New job starts Monday. I'm ready to get started. I'm not a workaholic or career-driven guy by any stretch (I am adamant that my job pays for my actual life, and that the two are separate things), but it's at least good to know that it feels like my career is getting back on track in a field I enjoy.