Context
I work at a small IT company in Eastern Europe for a relatively good salary, but still undercompensated if we take big IT corps in the sector into consideration. Boss (CEO) uses every cliché such as “We are a family.” and “Team building activities!” and can be quite cringe. Boss directly controls every branch at the company. We are about 13 people separated into 4 branches.
My position
I am doing around 3-4 people's job and I feel indispensable, so much so that if I go on vacation, the branch I “lead” pretty much stops working due to how a project's life cycle is setup. Due to my “position”, I have a pretty good levarage in salary negotiations and in other benefits. So far, I have negotiated a company car for 100% personal use (I use it as if it was my own but the company pays for the maintenance, fuel not included though), a 34% salary raise this year and 50% in 2020. I got into a position where if I tell my boss that I'd be late due to running some errands, I don't even have to work that time off as we are not micromanaged nor monitored whether we actually do work (however, I almost never slack it off… almost.)
Even though I am doing so many things, my work is hardly quantifiable, thus there are days when I barely do any work, just the bare minimum when the boss comes by to look at an email together and solve some stuff. But then sometimes I'm literally working 8 hours non-stop and I like it.
How?
I've been at this company for 6 years now and the main reason I got to this point is mainly incompetence… from my boss' part that is. Relying on 1 person as a business is a huge risk it should never been taken. The company was struggling month by month when I got in, it was hiring so many fresh out-of-college people in order to keep down upkeep prices and increase “productivity”. After like 2 years of constantly telling my boss that this isn't a viable solution, he finally listened and fired most of the people who underperformed. Which was mostly all of them. Of course that meant that I had to fix all the problems they have created (that took me 1,5-2 years btw).
In the meantime we got some government funding for a new company management system and I was “chosen” to develop it. Of course boss wrote a huge document of features (which was necessary for the funding), some of them were not even possible, nevertheless we went through with it and this is where I really got myself “deep”ly rooted. You see, the new system is so big and of course has no documentation because that's “unnecessary”, I am the only one who knows how it works and I am the only one developing it.
I was never a “Yes man”, more like someone who critiques everything. So if I followed my boss' instructions regarding the management system, we'd be still in the stone ages. Luckily I had my own ideas which, coincidentally, drilled me deeper. Boss made so many bad choices over the years and it feels like I am the only one trying to pull up a burning airplane's stick while the others are constantly working on getting the airplane kamikazed into an oil rig.
Recruiting
We had a temporary phase where we needed some workforce after he laid off most of the people to do some job while I worked on the management system to keep us above water until it launches. We were recruiting fresh blood, however, this time I was tasked to lead the technical part of it. Thank god for that. If he deemed an applicant viable, he sent them to me for a pen-and-paper quiz which I assambled (the old one was so deprecated, it wasn't even relevant anymore…). I gave them an hour or so for it and 90% failed at that point. The remaining 10% was given a chance at another test which was done on a computer, they had to write a software which read a file's content and done some stuff with it. I let them use the internet etc because this is not a school.
Needless to say, I was an asshole because the file's name started with double underscore. Most didn't realize and fail. There was like 3 guys out of like 50 who got through and only 1 remained at the company for longterm, but needless to say, my recruiting process was top notch as these people turned out to be competent.
The good
I am not stressed at all, my position like I said is indispensable, they depend on me a ton. I get almost everything I want. (I have failed to negotiate my own office, I share a big room with 2 other people… I will have my own office…) I will be negotiating further salary increase, see how high I can drive it, I am not a passive guy in this regard.
The bad
I enjoy my job, but I hardly find any challenge anymore. I got to a point where I've done everything to make the company more efficient, but in the process, I have eradicated every challenge possibility and now I'm in more of a backburner mode.
There are two owners, one has 33%, the other has 66% ownership of the company. I have yet to talk about the smaller portion owner, who married one of the coworkers who's doing jackshit ever since. Hurts so bad to see it.
Conclusion
I might have developed a stockholm syndrome over the years.
LinkedIn lol
I have been getting tons of LinkedIn messages from random recruiters saying I'm the perfect fit for their client due to my experiences, then they proceed to list a bunch of skills that are requirements for the job and I don't have them. I usually just type a bunch of dollar signs and if they don't reply with the salary, I don't even bother (they almost never do).
I had one recruiter who replied with the salary range, it was higher than my current, however, I told them even if it was quadruple of my current salary, I wouldn't take it because I'm too comfortable at my current job. I like to waste their time though!
Side note
Yes I made a fresh account for this post.