Comment by 63stack

Comment by 63stack a day ago

>so I became an employee, but that turned out to be a massive step back in terms of income. Despite the fact that I worked closely with lots of stakeholders and solved complex problems for them, their internal rules didn't allow them to pay me as more than a code monkey.

Surely there was a negotiation step before signing contracts? What happened there? What was the blocker that did not "allow" them to change their own internal rules that they themselves control? Surely there is a way to do that.

>I left, they ruined the application (it's apparently slow as molasses now), and now I'm about to go back

Then state what you want before going back, if it's important for them they will find a way. Don't accept these kinds of zero effort "oh our policy doesn't allow us to pay you more" explanations.

jen20 a day ago

I interpret "our policy doesn't allow it" as "I don't want to work here".

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mcv a day ago

I normally do too, but in this case I did want to work there. And apparently I do again.
I negotiated my ass off, made a lot of good arguments, and everybody understood where I was coming from, but still wouldn't budge an inch. Maybe I should have walked away. In fact, I did, a couple of months later. But now I'm coming back again.
We'll see how it goes. Maybe I'll succeed at opening up higher pay scales for programmers, maybe I'll leave again after a year or so, or maybe I'll actually find happiness doing something I enjoy.

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- pdimitar a day ago
  
  I am saddened to read this. You are letting them get away with it and they'll extract completely the wrong idea out of your noble gesture.
  
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  mcv 12 hours ago
  
  You can never get everything you want. Most programming jobs in NL don't pay much more than this. If you want to get paid what you're really worth, you need to work as a freelancer, but the tax service has just ruined that market.
  And the advantage of this job is that I know I'll be working on things I love, they really want and appreciate me (if financially not quite as much as I'd like), and maybe I can push for change from the inside. Or maybe I'll leave once the freelance market picks up again. It's not like I'll be married to them.
  
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