TL;DR: I am making half as much as my coworkers and doing more than twice the work as them. We have a new VP and I need to know how to best influence them to see what's really going on. Or prepare for the ultimate leave.
I've been with the company for about 10 years now. My department has been through so many reorganizations and lay offs, and I'm one of only a handful of people that have made it through each one and is still here. Because of this, I've been tasked with training all new hires–I'm the only one that can do it. 90% of my area has been trained in me, included managers well above my pay level. I've become the SME, of Subject Matter Expert: when crap hits the fan and goes everywhere, they come to me to put out the fire. And I do.
They completely nixed my old area, but the work still has to be done, so I've been pulling the weight of 5 people for over a year now, on top of what I already should be doing. I've told management and attempted to train others on the legacy systems that only I know, but they are very complicated and take time to learn, and no one is staying long enough to learn it. This legacy program protects the company from millions and possibly billions of dollars every year.
I make about $60K/yr. Last week I figured out that my coworkers make at least $100K, and they don't do half the shit I do. I'm fucking PISSED, y'all. Forget making 75% or whatever of what your male coworkers make–I'm at like 50% at best. The two of them I'm told this too were genuinely appalled on my behalf and told me I should ask for more. I will.
Moral is very low in the department due to a lack of clarity in roles. People across different pay bands were hired to do certain things after the last reorg, and they aren't doing what they were hired for because other things I've been complaining about for years are still unfixed and taking priority.
We just got a new VP, and given the circumstances around how it happened I'd say a reorg is about to happen again. This is the perfect opportunity for me to jump in and say, “I'm one of the few that have stuck around. Can I put some time on your calendar to discuss what I've observed over the years with previous reorganizations and how they worked or didn't work, and suggest some potential solutions?” I imagine it would be an easy yes, but we'll see. What is the overall flow of what I should tell her? I don't want to sound complainy, but she needs to understand what's really going on before we lose more people (and I train more later as a result).
Busy season is a month out for my old department. Even with a team of 5 fully trained people they still worked 50 hrs/week with no PTO and it is very stressful work. I'm not doing this alone again this year, I'm just not. And not for $60K/yr. If things don't go my way, I could open up a consulting firm and do the work for them for $200K, having my own team of people I hire and train to do it, which I know how to do from an entrepreneur standpoint, but I don't know if it would be possible given whatever NDAs or other paperwork I'll have to sign during the exit interview. Does anyone know how that works? Would I just have to start the consulting firm under someone else's name?