I’m a web developer. Last summer, I was offered a senior promotion that began this year. The first few months were more of a “training” period as i was the first to be in this senior role. My work has always been well received and get praised so it felt good.
Basically I was going to work on higher level projects and get a decreased project count, while also managing/training new hires and people who are more junior.
Fast forward to now. My project count has been nearly double of the juniors all year. I don’t decide who gets what project and how many, someone else decides that. I’m at the point where my quality is decreasing because my volume is so high.
On top of that, I’m being asked “why isn’t so and so following procedures?” Or “why aren’t you spending more time training and helping the juniors?”
I’m close friends with another dev who i manage and we chat about all sorts of things. Today we talked about pay because they haven’t gotten a raise and were asking if a promotion was worth it. I said how much I made and they replied “I’m making that much right now”
When I got hired, I negotiated to start at the top end of their offering range. My friend was offered $10k above that.
Maybe it’s partially my fault because i didn’t negotiate for more than they were offering, but to get a promotion, plus more work, only to match the salary of those I’m responsible for is a bit disheartening.
I was already feeling burnt out. This just extinguished my fire and motivation to try harder.
My goal is to become a full time freelancer and I’m working on that right now. Maybe it’s time to speed that up and take my own pay raises into my own hands.
TLDR: I got a promotion and raise, only to find out my raise brings me up to the compensation of those I’m responsible for while doing more/complicated work than them.