I work for a local school in their internal IT department. Because this is the education sector, pay is piss poor. However, it wasn't until a few months ago I realised how under payed we all were. My job title is second line support, which in the UK has an average pay of around £27,000 per year. Not great but not terrible. I am currently getting paid far far less than that. I have asked twice for a raise in the last few months, but nothing has come about it.
My direct boss isn't a bad person, can be a bit difficult to work with. When I asked for a raise he said “We'll start an interim employee review soon and get this going for you”. I emailed the following week to say shall we get this started. No reply.
On top of this they provide me with no basic training, no qualifications (which you need to be able to apply for other jobs. They won't take you without basic certifications) and are generally unsupportive of their employees. I have taken on more responsibility by supporting the first line techs, supporting systems on my own while writing documentation on it for other techs, developing our ticketing system and asset management system from scratch and learning basic JavaScript/php in my own time to create systems for us to use on site.
I have been lucky enough to find another job (after 2 years of searching) that is willing to employ me simply on word of mouth and trust that I understand IT without having the qualifications to back me. The pay is far better, above the national average, the work is more what I enjoy (cloud computing), it's outside of education which means no more dealing with students and teachers, and they are going to pay for me to get my qualifications which I otherwise would've had to buy myself (exams are expensive).
I got the call no less than 15 minutes ago offering me the position. I will look over my contract over the weekend and write my resignation letter. It feels like a weight is off my shoulders and the world is starting to look up. 100's of applications, 10s of interviews and rejections have finally been worth it!
If anyone is interested in my boss's response to my resignation letter I will update the post Monday.