Comment by 63stack
1 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.
I interpret "our policy doesn't allow it" as "I don't want to work here".
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.
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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