I recently decided to resign and start work somewhere else. When my co-workers asked what I was going to do and how much I was going to earn I initially tried to give as little info as possible. I said I was going to earn 18% more than I earned now. Later they'd press me and ask what my current salary is. I thought fuck it, I'll just throw it out there and see what they'll say.
My salary, as a senior programmer, was 3.200 a month before tax. For this region in The Netherlands, it's not too bad but could be better. The “raise” I received last year almost covered inflation, but not entirely. Turns out that the 3 colleagues that I was talking to were earning way less. Other colleagues started questioning their salary and at least one former colleague (let's call them R), who worked 80% (by choice) on top of a much lower salary, was earning almost 1/3 less. I ran a quick mortgage check, since I've been doing that up until the day I finalized one, and unless R has 100k in the bank, or finds a partner so they can co-sign a mortgage, there is no way they could get a mortgage big enough to buy a decent house like I recently did, and in that price range almost everything is a fixer-upper.
R asked for a raise and got a lousy 100 per month extra (more like 80 extra due to their 80%) and said they'd look into the possibility for another raise later this year. They tried to offer R my former position/responsibility without additional pay (we're all just “programmers”, right?). R declined, saying that they weren't very enthusiastic about the project. My former team lead said, “you probably heard that from Delta4o, same as the salary”. At first, I thought “oh fuck” but then I thought you know what, I worked there for 1.5 years and never received any sort of support. Everything I did was important but always came last. I have statistics that showed that, as a single full-time employee, it would literally take 4 years (including weekends and holidays) to finish my work because the code it was such a fucking outdated mess. Can you blame R that they don't want to play code quality assurance for the next 4 years?
R has now handed in their 1 monthly notice as well. For me, it's my second time switching jobs, for R it's the first time (worked there since college). They REALLY took advantage of R with such a shitty salary for so long. The job was a lot less stressful than consultancy but holy damn. They are all super nice people but in this day and age of skilled IT shortage, they really have no idea how much they lean on their long-term employees and how absolutely fucked they are if any of them decide to leave. I guess they are lucky that most people started settling down or already have settled down with a partner and just want a stable 9 to 5 non-corporate job. With R leaving so soon after me I have no doubt that others will think twice about their career as well.