Not sure if I can post this, as this isn't my story, but my colleagues, but thought I might share it.
I got this, soon to be ex, colleague, who I have thoroughly enjoyed working with, and unlike most people I've worked with, we were able to have some heart to heart conversations with one another, and one of the topics that came up was his pay and his overall role in the company. He was severely underpaid, and the role just felt like dead end.
At the end of the last year, he was offered a job where he would get close to 30% jump in the salary, but after a thought and a discussion with his manager, he decided to stay in put, in condition that he will be promoted and given a substantial raise.
The company had offered two separate roles. First one, he just wasn't interested in, and the second one, the company specifically made the role for him, which included a lot of additional responsibilities and travel commitments (a responsibility he hates), with bare minimal increase in the salary (less than 10%). After seeing the 2nd job offer, he kind of laughed at it and turned down, much to everyone else's dismay.
About a couple of weeks later, there was a company announcement stating that the 2nd role was filled up by another person who works in a different region, and when I went to see my colleague, he kind of laughed at the whole thing say that the company had to offer the guy a much larger salary than what they had offered him, because of the region, and he felt lowballed by the company.
As I was about to cheer him up, as no one likes being lowballed, he showed me something. It was a job offer, from another company, which will give him almost 50% raise + 6 figure worth of stock options over the next 4 years. And all he told me was that he had just sent the email back, accepting their job offer. We looked at each other, then had a big chuckle over that and i couldn't have been happier for him.
From that, I learned two things. First, you are worth so much more than what you may think you're worth. And second, simply because your current employer doesn't see your worth, doesn't mean that everyone else won't either.
I do apologize that this probably isn't exactly the kind of post that might be appropriate for the subreddit, but I wanted to share this to everyone who feels under appreciated right now, to give the courage to you all.