vu0tran

I want stock because I know the work I"m doing is adding tremendous value to the company. I also know that right now, I am underpaid. I do more than 40 hours a week and what to do more than 40 hours a week. I want that work to translate to something and ultimately, I feel that this company is in the position to take off. It was featured in Inc. 500 as one of the top startups in the industry.

Here's a little more of a background with where I'm at:

I was initially signed on as a contractor (startup obviously). My contract was for 9 months and there were 4 other devs there at the time including me.

Within a month, one of the devs changed workplaces because he got a better offer. After that, they took the initiative to sign me on full time as a "senior level" developer for 75k. I was expecting more of a 85-90k range, however, this was the start of the summer months and the work coming in is drastically reduced.

I approached the general manager anyways and pointed out that 85k-90k is where I want to be, but I am willing to be patient through summer. The feedback I got from him was that I was too "naive" the way I approached this and sounded too "greedy" and "arrogant". Big blow to my ego. I resolved that I would just work tremendously hard and prove my value otherwise.

Within another 3 months, another developer left, and the technical director left as well. Due to better opportunities or they just didn't get along with the people there anymore.

This leaves me in the position of doing all of their work, including the job of the Technical Director. Generating business strategy, implementing new technologies, overseeing research/development etc.

I had a chat with the general manager and my boss about a week ago. This was a midyear review. They raised my salary to 80k, but didn't really talk to much about whether I'd be the new Technical Director or not, but just deferred to December.

Unlike with the general manager, I have a pretty good work relationship with my boss so I gave him a call that night and asked him what's up. He told me that he was trying to push the general manager to increase my pay to 100k and push me to Technical Director right now given that my responsibilities to change. However, the general manager pushed back and said that this "wouldn't be fair" to the rest of the team as I was the only one that got a midyear review.

I'm grateful of my boss. He definitely understands me. However, because he's not a technical guy (nor anyone else at the company), he doesn't understand the grasp of how much I'm doing for the company, and more importantly, how much devs should get paid. 85-100k is a great salary for a lead developer. For technical director, I would be expecting more like 110-120k... Seeing that they're struggling so much to even bring me up to 100k, I imagine the fight to get 100k + 20k in equity is going to be pretty hard.

And yes, I understand what stock dilution is.

A couple more details: I'm 19, I don't have a degree. My work history as been with 2 other companies, but haven't lasted more than half a year. Maybe this has a huge factor as well?

I'm ready to leave. I know that if I leave, the company will be in shambles.

I know that if I dont' approach it right, I will strain my relationship with the general manager and that is not a good position to be in when you want a potential future partnership.

It's a marketing agency.

It's ridiculous. We have about 6 accounts. 4 creatives including me. 4 on the media team and 4-5 in operations.

I handle the bandwidth of anything HTML/CSS/JS/iOS/Android/LAMP

That's when my annual review is.

EOD tomorrow.

That's really low. After this survey is done, I can give you access to the excel sheet. If I were you, I'd print it out, show it to my boss and ask for a raise. If not, I'd walk away and find another job.

Frankly, 42k in SoCal does not cut it.

Thanks for pointing that out. I have updated my post.

I agree. But you know what they say, the grass is greener on the other side. I love my job. I love my boss, my coworkers, my commute, the culture, everything.

The only thing I don't like is my salary. Now if I were to get 110k at Microsoft and be miserable, is that worth the extra 30k a year? What about job opportunities in this startup and other factors?

I started to realize that I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I wasn't sure because I didn't have a good grasp of what's out there and how much I should / could be making. Hence the survey :)

80k is starting to look like it's on the lower side of average.

Out of everyone who submitted so far (13 people), the average for any type of developer is around 85k. For those that consider themselves "lead" or "senior" level, they were pushing about 105-110k on average / median. However, there is a large range. The lowest for a senior level so far is around 70k, whereas the highest is almost near 140k.

I've looked at glassdoor. I wanted to get a different dataset to compare. I don't trust glassdoor's figures all that much tbh

Thanks for the advice. My company is a startup, about 25 employees.

All my colleagues think I do a great job. I've only been working there for half a year, and I'm waiting on my annual review to settle issues with my salary. The last thing is that I don't want to come off as arrogant or impatient. I'm pretty sure my supervisors / colleagues would give me a 5 on their review according to their occasional feedback.

As far as benefits go, I get medical, pharmacy, dental, and vision. No 401k, no profit / stock options (yet).

I do about 35 hours a week in the office (20 minute commute) and about another 10 hours a week at home.

The company, as far as I know, is making money. I'm likely to be employed for the next years, I hope my company will grow, but I can't be sure.

Great working conditions... You know what they say though, the grass is always greener on the other side.

Should I ask for stock options? Is it too early? I feel like a lot of the technology I've produced for this company, has made them hundreds of thousands of dollars. :/ I've developed entire systems for them by myself.

I'll go ahead and enter that into the form so I can chart the data later.

Thanks a bunch!

I'm also very interested in this.

Can somebody else make a poll with ranges 50-59,60-69,70-79,80-89,90-100?

My karma's too low :(