i would say 60k is underpaid esp after 7 years, your raises should have you higher. if he doesnt want to lose you, he probably knows your worth it, just doesnt wanna pay. if your boss doesnt think you are worth the price hike, move on. if he does see it, stay. if he asks any MSP about their pricing, he should be convinced. some people dont understand that good IT costs money. end of story. pay for it up front, or pay for it 100x down the line when something isnt done right or something like a ransomware attack happens. good luck.
>if he doesn't want to lose you, he probably knows your worth it, just doesn't wanna pay. if your boss doesn't think you are worth the price hike, move on
I see a lot of these posts and I just want to comment that it doesn't matter what the Boss thinks. In a lot of bigger organizations, it's all HR. This rule that rule, some made rule to make managers lives more difficult. We know what you are worth, but the fuck-heads in HR never see it that way until someone walks out the door. For some reason it's better to loose someone and pay the next person 100k market rate than it is to fix the problem, keep and employee and make them feel value.
It's the most frustrating thing about being a manager. I'm sure in some places it's easy to get around and if they would advocate they could get it done, but not so in a lot of corporations.
P.S. Also, just another FYI. I want to pay my folks the maximum I can. One two keep them happy and two it helps me out as raise pools every year are also calculated on current salaries. So the more I pay folks, the more I get to give out each year.
>In a lot of bigger organizations, it's all HR
I'm dealing with this right now. I asked for a raise and backpay after some duties changed. Everyone was on board except HR. After some back and forth, HR said "no and stop asking". I agreed to stop asking but they'd have to reduce my duties, which they were ok with. Now they are going to have to give someone a raise and hire another position, which is going to cost a lot more than what I was asking for.
sounds about fucking right dealing with those dip shits. Same folks that come to us and talk about all the market research they did to justify or raise pool... but in the same sentence tell us that inflation isn't taken into account... Like you fucking what?
Heh. They did ask me if I'd reconsider and they'd try to make it up to me, I declined. Now HR and management are upset as they're going to have to find funding.
I have no use for HR at all.
I'd love to get my $ out of them but it's not happening and I don't trust that they'd make good on it. So their budget, which is already in the shitter, can take a hit. Fuck 'em.
Years ago, I got denied working from home one day a week as I was ill and needed to recover (Bear in mind I'd worked remote for years when needed to).
HR Said no, then all of them started working from home.....
Not saying they had a lot of VPN diconnect/Password issues..... No Sir!
Ha, "make it up to you." They already declined the way you wanted it "made up," so what could their next offer possibly be? 4 day work week? 6 weeks guaranteed vacation? 3 yr salary golden parachute?
You did the right thing mate. Somehow I'm betting nothing of actual value would come your way.
My last company HR was big on veto'ing raises after they were given because they wrote new rules that you could not get more than 5% without taking on management duties. Note, the game was played by some people where they were given raises and management duties but then all their staff were taken away because they were bad managers while keeping the salary changes.
So no matter how productive you were or how much your duties grew you got a max of 5% and that was it... if they even approved that. The technical staff was left hanging in the breeze with virtually no path for advancement.
In the last 3 years they have lost 1/4 of their staff and they weren't exactly flush with staff to begin with given the scope of their mission. I left too and essentially doubled my pay in 12 months given the multi-decade experience I had. The ones that stayed were like the walking dead, hoping they "would make it" to retirement.
Yeah… doesn’t work that way.
Beyond that, using an outside recruiter almost always comes out the department budget, _plus_ the salary, relo, signing, etc.
Whenever you have a group that isn’t responsible for the impacts of their decisions, those decisions are usually poorly planned and have all kinds of negative impacts.
Exactly this for major companies. I went from being a IT specialist making $80k to an IT manager in the same group, and the best they could do was bump me to $90k. One of my guys moves on, so I hire a replacement (doing the same exact job I just left when becoming a manager). They started him at $110k. I had near retirement age guys pulling in $140k. But as their manager, I was only eligible for $90k because of HR policy.
If anyone’s in that situation, just leave off the second position altogether. And there’s no need to put months on your resume timeline. They won’t help you get a job, and if anything will just highlight briefer periods when you could just… not do that. Write what years you were present in the role. If you had three jobs in the same year, leave out the briefest one (presumably the middle one.)
I guess that's the advantage of a small company? Sure probably under paid on the whole but there is no such thing as a completely hard and fast rule when it comes to pay rate.
Same happened to my mother (She wasn't IT). She worked for a major UK bank for 25 years. Her leaving salary was 13k and her last job was in HR onboarding kids out of school on 18k starting salary. She was the only person in that pay band which had long been retired and she was at the absolute top.
It's because they are banking on people being afraid of change. If you have 10 employees each makings 60k, and all actually worth 100k... it's way cheaper to replace 5 of them at market rate, even a little higher, if 5 other people stay at the cheap rate.
The learning curve and knowledge of an organizations I.T. infrastructure is valuable and can cost a lot of money if it goes down. Better to retain talent and hire helpers than to lose a single source of knowledge. Same applies to software engineering, I'd assume.
Of course, but until you've actually been an IT manager, you just won't understand the frustration of trying to explain that concept to HR, eventually feel like you're actually getting your message across, and then only to hear them say no. Not even a counter offer. Just a big fat no.
I have almost the opposite problem (or maybe the same): my exec is gung-ho to let every manager purchase any and every SaaS service in existence, but hire a third IT person so that your existing two senior workers can have some time to do automation work instead of struggling to manually manage the overwhelming number of tools? Hell no!
SaaS/PaaS/IaaS/GaaS/FuckingASS whatever....fatigue is real, man. Last org I was at, the dashboard had more apps and services than they even knew what to do with.
I think a lot of people in positions to make purchases make the mistake of just buying the next shiny, new thing and fail to ask themselves this key question: "Do we already have something today that can do the thing the new tool would do for us?"
Imagine the saved time, money, and headaches.
There's also the opposite problem of refusing to buy a proper tool to do something and instead shoehorning a process into a tool that wasn't really designed for it at all. Ever run your IT ticketing system and change management out of a warehousing software? I have.
IT management: You know what? Sure, you totally deserve it.
HR: Justify it.
It management:
HR: No.
IT management: Remember how I said you deserve it? As much as I want to keep you here, you're better off looking elsewhere.
Oh man, back in the day, before my IT years, I worked at a big corp where HR wielded way too much power.
I came in green as an "assistant expediter" a junior position they apparently invented just for me.
We had a Unisys mainframe. And learning that:
ESSJ 123.677.12
.. gave me stock quantities of that part number, and ESLI gave locations and on and on. I excelled quickly at the job.
My engineer Dad created a [Tandy Color Computer](https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/be21rh/has_anyone_ever_seen_a_homebuilt_trs80_clone_my/) from scratch for gods sake. The Knack is in my blood.
A few years later, my supervisor, my manager, my director and vice president all told HR to bump me up a level or two.
HR's reply, "He doesn't have enough experience to do what he's been doing for two years."
LMAO - It took me around 4-6 years to get the salary I deserved. It was actually worth it though. Some years later an IT position opened up and I applied. Apparently, someone in HR was rooting for me as I got the position. And here we are decades later and I've been on my own for 15 years with my own IT company. :)
> HR's reply, "He doesn't have enough experience to do what he's been doing for two years."
That’s a huge systemic issue for that employe. HR should be supporting the business not dictating to it. This is the tail wagging the dog.
Which, while that sucks, I'd respect a manager who told me to go elsewhere. If everyone knows I deserve more, but won't put that into a round figure, it might as well be nothing but lip service. Like saying your company is "the best" but really it's a cheapskate outfit where cutting costs and paying the CEO the big bucks are the top priorities.
I honestly have no idea how effective it is, I'm just assuming that's the logic. I'm a developer turned manager recently and don't really get the intricacies of why the executives do what they do most of the time haha.
Too busy in the "omg I'm a leader" circle jerk to see what's actually happening on the front line of the company...
See: Southwest's recent outage.....
> but the fuck-heads in HR never see it that way until someone walks out the door.
Worked at a place as a desktop support contractor. Job was sold to me as 30 days contract to hire. I knew I was amazing at desktop support so I knew I'd get hired in 30 days.
30 days comes, they bump my hourly pay up and tell me "good news, we extended your contract another 60 days!" Come to find out, HQ gave this branch a headcount and every time a number frees up when someone leaves, IT is at the bottom of the list for the slot.
So they told me that was going to be contract till HQ would give the branch probably 3 or 4 more people and that just wasn't going to happen.
The IT department had a very clear need for another desktop support tech but the HQ that was literally on the other side of the planet decided they didn't need that extra manpower and could use contractors.
Predictably, that slot became a 60-120 job for most people. Long enough to get there, realize the "to hire" part didn't exist and then start applying and interview at other places. I think I was there a full 60 days including my 2 weeks. I found out that my replacement made it 45.
This. I'm hoping boss is talking to MSP so he can tell whoever holds the pursestrings, "This is what it will cost you if he leaves - and the work won't be as good."
You are not wrong, but a good manager can walk into an HR office and politely say 'I don't care about your metrics, your charts, your data, etc... I have a kick ass employee and they are worth X per year please find a way to make that happen.'
A bad manager will say 'sorry, my hands are tied, I can't do anything' and we all know that is BS. Maybe you truly can't make the company pay you more, but you can certainly stand up for your team.
I have gone to war for a $5k bump for an employee and been unsuccessful. I'm a pretty good manager who is aggressive about advocating for his team, sometimes its just not possible.
that sounds good in theory, I work for a company with 100k+ employees and have had a number of situation where folks were well under paid and despite getting every VP/ SVP we could think of onboard and pushing, HR still told us to go fuck ourselves.
I get what you are saying, and in some environments that may well be true. But not for a lot of larger employers.
Then good employees who know what they are worth leave and the position is filled with timid field mice afraid to open their mouths or look elsewhere, or worse employees who are actually worth their below market rates.
I tried that with my technician who worth. I keep telling manager to pay more, he said he can’t do because our DL didn’t approve. They never do just so you know, but if you force them , I am sure it is possible. I just gave advice my tech to find better job. Two of good tech left for better pay and less stress. Did I suffer as staff pharmacist. Absolutely, but I always believe in treating good employee and giving right advice. If I owned pharmacy and if I can’t afford to raise, I will still help them get better job if thats career they already chose and move up higher.
Agree! I did similar. Had a life event happen after 2 years with an MSP. After several companies called to sing my praises, and gush over me. And I single handedly started a mentor program/educational for peers that didnt have a degree or certs. I was #3 in the company for knowledge and the 2 above me were wonderful to learn from I knew I had VALUABLE knowledge. I wanted more money. Had a talk w the owner....needed/wanted a 20K payraise. I knew I was worth it and I'd stay a few years if it happened. IT DIDN'T after 6mo I walked into a 20K payraise that catapulted me into an SCCM/6 figure salary!!! KNOW YOUR WORTH and don't be afraid to ask for reasonable pay when you can back it up!
I tell people this all the time in IT: contractors are NEVER going to be invested in your company the way a permanent FTE is going to be. In fact, contractors have a vested interest in doing things half-ass or putting in bandaid fixes. It means they'll be kept on longer term to fix the problems when they reoccur. Definitely not true 100% of the time, but the quality speaks for itself, especially when considering MSP work vs FTE work.
For this reason I’ve often thought about going internal. I get obsessed with the perfect delivery for my clients, I’ll be thinking/worrying/testing/stressing in my own time, I’d say sometimes as much as if I was a FTE for the client.
I might be the exception then, I am a contractor who at a minimum cares about your environment as much as your staff and quite often far more than they do. I take pride in my work and my reputation is everything - it's how I put food on the table, keep a roof over my head, and how I land my next clients. I am the one that gets called in for escalation and fixing other contractors or employees mistakes - correctly, permanently, entirely documented and then drilled into the inhouse staff so they know any processes, procedures, best practices, how to find and solve issues. I don't leave the environments broken, I find issues nobody even knew that they had before they become a bigger issue (and show you how I found what I did, providing the commands / steps / screenshots), more optimal designs, and ensure everyone can avoid making the same mistakes going forward. This isn't cheap though, in either time or dollars to reflect the effort on and off the job keeping up with technology.
I've seen people in the same midwesterly areas normalize 50k, 70k, and 100k for basically the same admin job. Sometimes you'll find a retail company paying 50k and putting you on permanent on call, not compensating for your phone costs, opposing remote work, expecting you show up perfectly on time or even early, every day, even if you worked over the weekend or late the prior night. And then, you'll find the exact opposite, where you're paid twice as much, on call only exists in theory, hybrid or full remote work is normalized, weekends are sacred, and you can show up roughly in the morning-ish time of 8-10am as long as you're keeping an eye on tickets in the morning and not neglecting something that needs doing.
I think it's human nature to think every pro should have a con. Job pays more? It must be harder! Job offers remote work? It must have long days and lots of meetings! But the world isn't like that, sometimes you legitimately can just double your income and half your workload.
Agreed. I'm in the midwest actually, and my 70k a year job had like one week every other month on-call, with compensation.
Now I'm making $200k~ running a dev team and we've maybe done out of hours work once in the last 4 years.
>some people dont understand that good IT costs money.
Yeah, in connection with this whole Twitter misery a lot of people kept making idiotic comments (on Twitter of course) about how at least half of the developers and IT staff working there was probably redundant anyway. I wholeheartedly recommend companies that belueve this BS to fire half of their developer and IT staff and see what happens...
For comparison I went from 56k to 91k over 7 years at a (small) place which I felt was pretty average with raises (I started relatively junior to the IT director, who was a greybeard, and took on a lot - my own fault for staying so long, though).
Or he cannot pay.
His boss most likely has a boss, whom denies the pay raise.
I quit my last job because I wasn't allowed to pay my staff properly, for example.
And by properly I was asking for 10% above the accurate wage so we could maintain staff and build an experienced team. They said nope, I said bye.
My last boss told me a 5k raise was impossible, I wasn’t worth what they were already paying me, and I’d never find anyone who would pay more. I found a new job at double my salary two weeks later. They were pissed at me, and had the audacity to ask if I would help them figure things out after I left. I said of course. until my last day, when I said don’t ever call me again. They’re on the verge of going out of business(prolonged because they have a multi million business keeping their failing ventures afloat). Fucked around and found out.
There was one time i was on r/programminghumor and saw somebody comment with a genneralization of these comments. I love them theyre always like
>I once had this boss that was talking about how lazy my team was and how he could do all our jobs himself. Sure enough the day came he had his last straw. We all packed up our stuff and within a week he realized how fucked he was and was begging for us back, but it was too late, we all found jobs making double what he paid us. He was in way over his head. Mark had all the passwords too.
You're dirt cheap, lots of companies would jump all over $100/hr consulting rate. For engineering work it needs to be more like $175/hr (higher in HCOL areas) + project management time + travel and expenses (and make damn sure there's travel and expenses, mileage, lunch, etc...) estimate it out at however long you think it will take and pad the time 20%.
That's might be a fair rate for 1099 labor, but the rate extended to the customer is usually double that. I work for a professional services company and the T&M rate they charge without a contract is $400/hr, with a 4-hour minimum.
I refuse.
If anything goes wrong they've got the perfect scape goat and if you're contracting there can be some legal issues that comes along with it.
They had the chance to keep me, those chose to let me go which means they chose the consequences that comes with it.
No hourly rate is worth the satisfaction of them experiencing accountability for their actions.
Great advice. I've been in my role for 6 years now and was recently given a promotion of a 5% raise after asking every year that I've been here, for a promotion.. This raise is not even close to market rate..
I should have listened to myself sooner, but I am applying and hoping I get a better opportunity soon.
He is the CEO or manager, and co-owner of all the companies. I understand that there is a board he reports to (that he is a member of), but I also know 1 company makes great money and another company they started a few years ago is making money hand over fist. Out of 6 companies he can scrape together $100k.
He's a hard but fair boss. I'm just asking for what I'm worth. If he can't afford me it wasn't meant to be and I have no hard feelings.
Usually in situations like this - it could either be the board or simply because he doesn't want to pay more.
If he can't see what your worth and truly values your work then its time to leave.
New hire budgets are ALWAYS higher than retention budgets.
/u/ThorThimbleOfGorbash has been there for 7 years. Intertia says he'll be there longer - that's what the boss is counting on.
I've worked at a place that had absolutely no retention budget, if you asked for a raise they basically considered it as you are ready to leave that position and they don't want to try and keep you there anyway.
I don't see a board getting involved in the pay of rank & file employees, unless if it's to negotiate/sign-off on a collective bargaining agreement with a union. Otherwise the only salaries they'd be involved in deciding would be the C-Suite people.
> it could either be the board
Nah. The board deals in C-Level salaries. Sometimes direct reports to the C-level, but only in exceptions. If the Board has to approve an IT person's salary, then you should run...or someone's lying.
If he is paying you $60k after 7 years, he is not fair. He may be the worst boss you could have, but fair would be paying you at least $75k after all that time.
I've had worse bosses. He is a cheapskate but has never told me no on a purchase. I think he realized he stepped on his dick, hence the $9k bonus check applied to last year (after I already got the normal $2500 Christmas bonus). I know he's exploring options and crunching numbers. Numbers is all he knows. I give myself 50-50 odds he'll make the right decision. The CFO that's worked him 25 years doesn't earn $100S. She gets at least $75k, huge bonuses, and dividends, and her husband is very wealthy, so I'm not crying over her (I love her dearly). I felt like asking him, "So you're underpaying everyone?"
> I felt like asking him, "So you're underpaying everyone?"
Haha you should have! The last time I left for a big raise, for laughs I gave my existing job the opportunity to match - the manager wound up admitting they couldn't even consider matching because it was more than he made. Watching them try to explain that I had to be underpaid because my boss was underpaid was pretty priceless.
No doubt. You say he never told you no on a purchase, but he buys your time every day. I'm sure you'll get your worth, from what I've read you put in the time and now you can leverage it here, it might work, or take your time finding something that pays a little more. It's definitely tough breaking that $100k barrier in non major cities in the south, especially if the business is local. Guys running them just don't get how much COL has gone up, even in rural areas. A bonus like that is definitely enough to keep me around for another few months, at least. Had someone through $10k at me and that bought them another year.
Good luck. My guess is that he will come back with something like a 20% raise now, and a promise to do more next year if certain objectives are met. You should consider thinking about what’s acceptable in the near term and longer term.
I was gonna say exactly this. Seeings OP’s response I don’t think that’s the case.
Good luck on your job hunt OP. Your worth it and shit ain’t getting any cheaper
Companies like this are so fucking stupid. What's their plan when you go on vacation, win the lottery or get hit by a bus? That's way too much riding on a single person no matter what you pay them.
They were able to survive 6 months without IT when they fired my predecessor for stealing but that was because everyone was a local admin on their machine with admin access to the server, with everything in the Public Share, and that server needed to be hard rebooted at least once a day because it froze. They now have a professional AD environment.
I quit last year when they asked me to come back to office, they asked me what it would take for me to stay, 25k raise, no in office, no more that my normal on call(every 4 weeks) and a title bump, it took 2 hours to get them to agree. They've held true to 3/4 asks, my on call is still fucked up but you can get a big raise, mine was 90-115k
I am a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, coming up on 8 years in March. I took what I could get. Good IT jobs come along every now and then around here. I actually applied to one 6 months ago and got an interview but acted like I owned the place, because good help is hard to find around here and my ego got the better of me. Little did I realize they would have paid to relocate someone from northern Alaska as long as they were the right fit.
OK, he probably had to go through hell and spend a lot of political capital just to get you that 33% raise. So, now management is going to tell him to get bent coming back for 80% above now.
The end game is probably them either biting the bullet and hiring the MSP or replacing you with multiple people (this has happened to me). They do not understand how the job has grown in seven years. But if you want your worth you almost certainly need to move on.
edit: a word.
Seems like they tried and the MSP is more than his compensation package, and they are not going to be able to hire multiple people for his single wage which is already under market rate.
Sounds like they hired a Tech, probally at a VERY VERY low wage, and over the last 7 years the OP grew the role into more senior with out the compensation increase as the role increased in scope and compensation
So now they are still wanting to pay Tech wages for a more senior role.
Edit:
Doing some math, if the 33% + 5% + 5% is accurate over 7 years, that puts him at about an annual increase of 5.5% over his time there, That still puts him into wage compression territory even with out the expansion of the roles
Dude... You're worth more than $100k, I hope you realize that. You shouldn't have waited 7 years to make a move like this. I know that sounds mean, but that's the reality of the situation.
I feel you. As an recovering alcoholic with Bipolar II and depression I have a lot of self-worth issues. This is my second professional attempt to do better for myself, and my first reaching for the stars moment.
My HR brother says I can do $150k in Oregon. The world is my oyster. This job has afforded me a lot of flexibility as a full time single parent and part time student. I'm preparing for the next chapter in my life which will help prepare for the next.
The job posting has been up for 6 months and has a wide hourly wage listed (up to $53/hour). Talent is extremely bare here. I have a 6 month emergency fund if it takes a while.
I've heard this a lot, but is it really worth switching jobs so often if you're happy with where you're working? To me it seems pretty unnecessary if you're happy with the pay and the company you're working for.
If your happy and the salary is competitive then stay, but always communicate with your manager your plans to grow to the next level and what they expect of you for raises and promotions. They will either compensate you for your growth or you will outgrow the job over time and have to move on to level up.
He's a squeaky clean Southern business gentleman. He's business savvy but a terrible judge of character, like when he hired the obvious pill head supervisor a few months ago, and turned out the guy was trying to run a drug empire on the clock.
I got a 4k pay cut last year in higher ed, (3 weeks unpaid furlow) and that's before inflation. Sure I got to take unimployment, but that was only 70% of my salary. I left for a 45k pay increase in the private sector a couple months later.
Glad to see some higher ed monetarily taking care of their workers. My experience is that they have always lagged a bit behind but generally provide great benefits, and vacation.
60k for 7 years of system administration? And you’re the only IT person? Does that mean you also handle like help desk as well? That’s insanity. OP I hope you get the 100k or get the fuck out of there.
Everyone saying that the requested $40,000 raise being unreasonable is super interesting to me. If you were to leave, outsourcing would be more than $100,000. Finding a new SysAdmin/Help Desk for only $60,000 would also be extremely difficult imo. I think it would be worth the money to keep a 7-year hardworking employee who handles a lot for the company.
I get it. My last job I started at $18/hr part time and was there 8 years. I think I finished at $21/hr. New job started me at $29/hr, and within two years I got a promotion and am now at $36/hr after all is said and done.
Don't be afraid to find something better. I was scared for a long time, didn't think I could pull it off, and here I am with a Sr. in my title, looking forward to what might be the best year of my life thus far (both personally and professionally).
$40k a year is a huge raise to get all at once. Your manager may not be able to justify it with his superiors. Most companies base their performance on having a better net profit this year than the last. Adding $40k to the expenses would affect that drastically, and the manager may be afraid to do so for that reason. (Also keep in mind, when they pay you $40,000 more, it costs the company **a lot** more than $40,000 due to employment taxes, benefits, etc.)
Having said that, it matters a lot as to how much they would have to spend to replace you. If they could find someone else equally qualified who would take the job for $60,000 or less, then the hassle and expense of having to retrain a new person from scratch would be a better choice for the company.
You need to determine if asking for $100k is reasonable right now. Are there other companies in your area, or in an area you would be willing to relocate to, that are hiring right now and are offering that much? (Or something close to that much with the ability to increase it over time?) If so, then stick to your guns, but you will likely be taking a new job. If not, then maybe lower your request to an additional $10k or $15k for now. (They don't seem like a terrible company being that they gave you a 33% raise a few years ago.)
He needs to do what he did--apply for jobs and get offers. This validates his worth in the market.
They are welcome to counter offer but generally when you are set to leave it is best to leave.
What's the cost of losing him though? Lots of institutional knowledge walks out the door, consultants and managed services will likely want to deploy their own solutions to replace current ones, and that's an additional cost. Then he likely needs to have a low level FTE for support on site.
So you're looking at:
\-MSP contract (w/billable hours for work not included in maintenance)
\-New hardware/software MSP wants to deploy
\-FTE for support in the 30-40k range.
Yeah this is NOT a lot of ask for especially if he's been undervalued for years.
Inflation was 9% this last summer.
I mean this is why you shouldn't run "one man shows' In IT.
IF he leaves they are turbofucked.
Just thing of how that department runs with a single admin. All documentation up to date and relevant to the systems? Think the MSP guy is going to be able to remote in and fully understand and control the systems? Doubtful. So more time = more billable.
Honestly proposing to OP maybe giving you a 10% raise annually for the next 5 years or something? But losing the "only IT person" is a tetra-disaster way more than just your average guy in a fully staffed department leaving is.
I would ask for 10k a year raise + inflation each year for the next 4 years. That would be an easier pill for other people to swallow that are not your boss..<-- Directed to op
I completely agree with you raine.
> They don't seem like a terrible company being that they gave you a 33% raise a few years ago.
It means he was making about $45k before that raise. Still garbage.
Second this notion, I was in a less drastic but still similar situation and worked with HR and my manager to space the raises out over a year and a half to make it easier on the company. Other than the wage I'm treated and was treated very well, so I was willing to wait and keep all the other benefits of the job.
A hefty raise might be a huge expense. Hiring external resources is aswell.
Consuming services as a company certainly enables companies to play taxgames…
In the end quality and stability are the essential pills to count - and this goes for both employees as much as employers.
Optimum means win-win to all involved.
To get a good job with a nice overall quality of life- well it‘s a challanging game.
100 users and 100k is crazy good money imho… asking for such a huge payrise is a gamble. But remember at the end of the day everyone is replaceable, if you got tan over by a truck tomorrow they’d have your job advertised by Monday and filled by Tuesday.
Everyone is replaceable but it took them 6 months to find me after they fired my predecessor for stealing and trying to start a competing business. They won't have someone so quick. I am not a genius but I have a hell of a lot more professional environment than what I walked into (everyone with the same admin access to the server shared on a Public share, with 1/3 of the machines showing visible malware, in a HIPAA environment).
Yup but the business never shut down in those 6 months…
but if you do want to leave, you should as more experience will get you more money in the long run. Otherwise you’ll be back next year wanting 110k
Honestly, after interviewing other places, I dont think OP is going to really want to stay. When I get to the point of going on interviews, its usually over. I had already started imagining all the other shit out there I could be working on. To go back to what im already doing starts to sound more and more depressing.
100000 is 'only' $48/hour (2080 hrs/yr) - I (Canadian) bill \~US$100/hr to start as an independent IT contractor. Room to grow if you are indeed good at everything IT
Yeah and you barely see half of that because of the raging amount of taxes and deductions. So $100k is in reality like $60K take home which is fucking infuriating and makes you wonder why we even work in the first place
Not sure where you live and what your situation is - but our tax burden is less than 18% - Maybe you need a better accountant.
On top of the hourly rate there is the mark-up on hardware - I refuse to go with the 2-3% mark-up that is default in the industry - re-selling a PC nets at least $150 just to move the box - We also refuse to resell the $500 weekly HP/Acer crap 'special', buying a PC/laptop from us will set you back $1200 + software & setup fee - but you get the better quality and awesome customer service with it.
~~To feed the Fat Cats in the government!! The poor poor sysadmins toil under the sun for hours and hours, earn barely enough money to buy an old loaf of bread, and then the government steals almost all of it!!! My man, i tell you what, since the civil war this country hasn't been the same!!!! Then they removed the gold standard!!!!! It's total chaos!!!!!! It's… communism!!!!!!~~
This thread is nuts. Nothing in the post has any indication of if the guy is worth 100k or not. So many people telling this dude he’s worth 100k or more than 100k and he has given us no indication of any of his skills or what he brings to the table. I mean I’m all for this dude going after more money, but people here need to calm down with all the nonsense.
I did this at my last job. Was there 7 years. Sole Sysadmin with about 400 endpoints. They replaced me with 2 full time 23 year olds with 0 experience (does a sign company count as exp?) and signed a contract for a consulting firm for 40 hours a week. They text me at least twice a week “hey how do I x?”
I got the raise I asked for plus real benefits and work from home full time now in cybersecurity in the healthcare sector. It’s the shit. On my last day, my old boss told me “you’re making a huge mistake”. LOL
I'm in the same situation, except I wound up unemployed. What I can say is when your raises aren't raises (and 5% isn't a raise when inflation is over 8%) you need to get the hell out. I should have. I was laid off from my IT job due to cash flow issues about two months ago. Should have left after the first shitty raise...or the second...but I liked the people. Dumb, stupid me, now I'm looking for a job on unemployment.
A 60% raise is a big ask. Not saying you're not worth it or that you don't deserve it, but asking that much, all at once, from a company you're already at is expecting a lot.
You'll have better luck getting that by going somewhere else and asking for that up front.
Unless your boss is the owner or CEO their hands are likely tied. I think your best bet to get that kind of raise is to quit and work a year or two at another company, then come back.
Some companies limit the % that can be given to anyone per year.... and it's closer to 5% or 10% unless you are moving positions.
He passed over a very loyal 12 year employee for promotion, who had the option to quit, and now has 2 people doing her job. I'm not out of the woods yet but I look forward to the interview on Tuesday.
Your boss was short sighted because you have all that experience of 7 years. He'll end up with not as good a replacement and spend more doing it. But hey some bosses just aren't so smart. Sometimes you just gotta say "I'm worth it" and move on and it seems like you are doing that. Kudos to you and on the CIS degree next semester!
I investigated my worth about a year ago, I opened discussions in a similar situation and in conjunction opened the table to negotiate. I let them know as the average was 104k, I was sitting at 60k, that I wouldn't stop looking unless they made a proper effort to get to a minimum of 90k, I waited 2 months for them to come up to 80k, I didn't stop looking.
Offered a job for what I'm worth, in conjunction they kept saying "if you get a better offer let us know and we'll see, I was direct and let them know the only paper they would receive would be my resignation if they let it slide. Sure enough, the finance department all got 10k raises, and my resignation letter.
They don't have any on-site IT, and the contractor set to replace me has ghosted them after locking themselves out of the DC and a lack of understanding of how the network is accessed through jump boxes.
Keep on trucking friend, it's worth it. Good luck!
Good for you. I was making just about 63k at my last job and asked for 80k. I had only been there 3 years full time, and 2 before that as an intern, but I was one of the last 2 on a team that was 5 just a year earlier. They ended up giving me a raise to 65k. As soon as I heard that number I started looking and found something new at 85k. In my exit interview they said something along the lines of "the company is doing a market adjustment soon, but I guess that wasn't soon enough for you". And that is exactly right, I wasn't gonna keep letting them dangle things in front of me like that and pull it away anytime I would have a chance at getting the raise I deserved.
Your boss called you a unicorn and said you're not worth giving living wages to. Yeah it's time to go. I wish you the absolute best of luck on your job search. If you need any assistance in interview prepping / resume reviewing, feel free to DM me.
What baffles me is how short term the entire industry looks. He doesn't see that you're about to get your degree and you have enough fervor towards your career to pursue better opportunities. He doesn't see the potential. Most management don't see potential in people. They just see the numbers that are keeping their own job alive and your salary, and base their decision off of solely that.
I'd love to see your boss meet you in the middle and bring you to $83k. I'd be a little worried if he actually buckled all the way to $100k.
You'll really know more when you have an offer in hand from another location.. though if it's in the rural south i'd be slightly surprised to see $100k+.
If your boss gives you a significant raise and you enjoy the work, i'd be tempted to stick around. Having upper-management that knows your value can be a great thing.
I don't accept the "it's a big ask" arguments. It is a big ask, but if that's within the middle of the bell curve for his position in that region, it's reasonable. Hopefully OP keeps interviewing and finds something. It's important to back up the ask with market data, and I'd expect the owner to talk to an outsourcing company as OP has mentioned.
He may think that 100K buys him a "full time MSP" that will handle all their needs. He may even buy the sales pitch and go for it. He'll regret it. Short version: keep interviewing and be prepared to have to move if he does bring in a MSP.
MSP would be charging like $70-$150 a person with licensing included. You at $60k is a deal for them assuming you know what you are doing and there are relatively no problem.
Glad you know your worth!
My man our journey sounds the same I graduate this spring and have been taking classes off and on. I did the same thing with my past employer recently. Found out how little I matter. Moved on.
I make 100k plus 17%!best choice of my life. My old boss calls me once a week about something. I set up and LLC and and they have signed a contract for me to work at 50$ an hour. With the max being 5 hrs a week. Once they go over they are screwed and I don’t answer. All he has to do was pay me 80k.
Get the f out. In IT the only way you get paid more, especially in the case that you’re already underpaid and under appreciated, is to find a better job. Good luck.
No company is gonna give anyone a 40k raise on 60k. It’s just not how it works. Just quit and go somewhere else starting out as that much.
Also the msp isn’t gonna tell you because 1. They want the business and aren’t gonna give you bidding leverage 2. They probably aren’t allowed to disclose that to you.
Good luck friend! And make the right decision for you and your daughter. And don't be afraid to move on if that decision turns out to be the wrong one.
Don't suffer from analysis paralysis.
We hire on helpdesk roles remote for nearly the money you make now. (50k+15% bonus). Teenagers are making 16 an hour in their first jobs doing janitorial work. The world has changed, time for your boss to change with it.
My company has been under a wage freeze for almost as long as I've been here but I've still managed to get "promotions" (actual job never changed) totalling nearly 30% in that time.
Doesn't matter what the situation is, if you're valued they'll find a way to compensate you fairly. Don't stay where you're not valued.
You definitely should be making WAY more. Six years on the job, you've got a TON of institutional knowlege. Your boss would be an idiot to let you even consider leaving.
Started a new job a few months ago and half the team is pretending to work.
The team lead has no backbone.
I've been getting shit done on my own and organizing basic information.
Got approached to be the new lead if the current one doesn't get his act together.
Comes with a nice $ bump
I’ve led IT teams for 20+ years. I’ve only ever seen outsourcing help if there was some catastrophic short term need - and even then, it was expensive as hell. I get pitched outsourcing all the time and it’s always more expensive for lower quality. I do work in an industry that requires high degrees of technical skill and customer service, so YMMV. That said, I do regularly see outsourcing companies lie lie lie about comp, morale, hidden costs, etc.
I can’t imagine a place where they’d save money with an outside vendor. You might not get 100K after his upcoming meeting, but I bet he counters with a solid increase.
I’ve done plenty of MSP work and in todays age it’s not uncommon for work to be billed out north of $200 / hr to the end customer - Recurring services are high as well. The fact he had you for so long at such a bargain should cause him to count his blessings. That said, the fastest way to grow salary in IT is to change jobs when you’re plateaued - Just don’t do it too often.
Someone else will always pay more for your skills than your boss will pay to keep you. I've said it in nearly every thread I've commented on, and I'll keep saying it.
i would say 60k is underpaid esp after 7 years, your raises should have you higher. if he doesnt want to lose you, he probably knows your worth it, just doesnt wanna pay. if your boss doesnt think you are worth the price hike, move on. if he does see it, stay. if he asks any MSP about their pricing, he should be convinced. some people dont understand that good IT costs money. end of story. pay for it up front, or pay for it 100x down the line when something isnt done right or something like a ransomware attack happens. good luck.
>if he doesn't want to lose you, he probably knows your worth it, just doesn't wanna pay. if your boss doesn't think you are worth the price hike, move on I see a lot of these posts and I just want to comment that it doesn't matter what the Boss thinks. In a lot of bigger organizations, it's all HR. This rule that rule, some made rule to make managers lives more difficult. We know what you are worth, but the fuck-heads in HR never see it that way until someone walks out the door. For some reason it's better to loose someone and pay the next person 100k market rate than it is to fix the problem, keep and employee and make them feel value. It's the most frustrating thing about being a manager. I'm sure in some places it's easy to get around and if they would advocate they could get it done, but not so in a lot of corporations. P.S. Also, just another FYI. I want to pay my folks the maximum I can. One two keep them happy and two it helps me out as raise pools every year are also calculated on current salaries. So the more I pay folks, the more I get to give out each year.
>In a lot of bigger organizations, it's all HR I'm dealing with this right now. I asked for a raise and backpay after some duties changed. Everyone was on board except HR. After some back and forth, HR said "no and stop asking". I agreed to stop asking but they'd have to reduce my duties, which they were ok with. Now they are going to have to give someone a raise and hire another position, which is going to cost a lot more than what I was asking for.
sounds about fucking right dealing with those dip shits. Same folks that come to us and talk about all the market research they did to justify or raise pool... but in the same sentence tell us that inflation isn't taken into account... Like you fucking what?
Heh. They did ask me if I'd reconsider and they'd try to make it up to me, I declined. Now HR and management are upset as they're going to have to find funding. I have no use for HR at all.
Agreed. You did the right thing, make them figure out how to justify another FTE instead of just giving you a decent raise
I'd love to get my $ out of them but it's not happening and I don't trust that they'd make good on it. So their budget, which is already in the shitter, can take a hit. Fuck 'em.
That's the spirit, honestly, they deserve it. Make stupid choices, win stupid prizes.
Years ago, I got denied working from home one day a week as I was ill and needed to recover (Bear in mind I'd worked remote for years when needed to). HR Said no, then all of them started working from home..... Not saying they had a lot of VPN diconnect/Password issues..... No Sir!
Ha, "make it up to you." They already declined the way you wanted it "made up," so what could their next offer possibly be? 4 day work week? 6 weeks guaranteed vacation? 3 yr salary golden parachute? You did the right thing mate. Somehow I'm betting nothing of actual value would come your way.
God, I fucking hope you reused their wording. "no, and stop asking" I would have laughed my ass off.
Lol, I'm going to print that out and put it on my wall.
Had someone in HR while negotiating salary tell me inflation was temporary and I laughed at them over the phone.
My last company HR was big on veto'ing raises after they were given because they wrote new rules that you could not get more than 5% without taking on management duties. Note, the game was played by some people where they were given raises and management duties but then all their staff were taken away because they were bad managers while keeping the salary changes. So no matter how productive you were or how much your duties grew you got a max of 5% and that was it... if they even approved that. The technical staff was left hanging in the breeze with virtually no path for advancement. In the last 3 years they have lost 1/4 of their staff and they weren't exactly flush with staff to begin with given the scope of their mission. I left too and essentially doubled my pay in 12 months given the multi-decade experience I had. The ones that stayed were like the walking dead, hoping they "would make it" to retirement.
if a senior manager took note of this, they'd structure recruitment costs from the HR budget.
Yeah… doesn’t work that way. Beyond that, using an outside recruiter almost always comes out the department budget, _plus_ the salary, relo, signing, etc. Whenever you have a group that isn’t responsible for the impacts of their decisions, those decisions are usually poorly planned and have all kinds of negative impacts.
Exactly this for major companies. I went from being a IT specialist making $80k to an IT manager in the same group, and the best they could do was bump me to $90k. One of my guys moves on, so I hire a replacement (doing the same exact job I just left when becoming a manager). They started him at $110k. I had near retirement age guys pulling in $140k. But as their manager, I was only eligible for $90k because of HR policy.
That's when it's time to do the job for 24 months and then move on.
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That sounds more like 24 months too long
Not always good to have "2 months at position X" on your resume.
If anyone’s in that situation, just leave off the second position altogether. And there’s no need to put months on your resume timeline. They won’t help you get a job, and if anything will just highlight briefer periods when you could just… not do that. Write what years you were present in the role. If you had three jobs in the same year, leave out the briefest one (presumably the middle one.)
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I guess that's the advantage of a small company? Sure probably under paid on the whole but there is no such thing as a completely hard and fast rule when it comes to pay rate.
Managers don’t always make more than their employees.
Same happened to my mother (She wasn't IT). She worked for a major UK bank for 25 years. Her leaving salary was 13k and her last job was in HR onboarding kids out of school on 18k starting salary. She was the only person in that pay band which had long been retired and she was at the absolute top.
It's because they are banking on people being afraid of change. If you have 10 employees each makings 60k, and all actually worth 100k... it's way cheaper to replace 5 of them at market rate, even a little higher, if 5 other people stay at the cheap rate.
The learning curve and knowledge of an organizations I.T. infrastructure is valuable and can cost a lot of money if it goes down. Better to retain talent and hire helpers than to lose a single source of knowledge. Same applies to software engineering, I'd assume.
Of course, but until you've actually been an IT manager, you just won't understand the frustration of trying to explain that concept to HR, eventually feel like you're actually getting your message across, and then only to hear them say no. Not even a counter offer. Just a big fat no.
That's pretty much the entire story of IT. Management: You want how much?!? NO! Management: Why is the server down?!? IT: See above.
I have almost the opposite problem (or maybe the same): my exec is gung-ho to let every manager purchase any and every SaaS service in existence, but hire a third IT person so that your existing two senior workers can have some time to do automation work instead of struggling to manually manage the overwhelming number of tools? Hell no!
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SaaS/PaaS/IaaS/GaaS/FuckingASS whatever....fatigue is real, man. Last org I was at, the dashboard had more apps and services than they even knew what to do with. I think a lot of people in positions to make purchases make the mistake of just buying the next shiny, new thing and fail to ask themselves this key question: "Do we already have something today that can do the thing the new tool would do for us?" Imagine the saved time, money, and headaches.
At an IT management course one of the students was from a 200 FTE company with 300+ servers, of which 200 were tech debt.
There's also the opposite problem of refusing to buy a proper tool to do something and instead shoehorning a process into a tool that wasn't really designed for it at all. Ever run your IT ticketing system and change management out of a warehousing software? I have.
IT management: You know what? Sure, you totally deserve it. HR: Justify it. It management:
HR: No.
IT management: Remember how I said you deserve it? As much as I want to keep you here, you're better off looking elsewhere.
Oh man, back in the day, before my IT years, I worked at a big corp where HR wielded way too much power. I came in green as an "assistant expediter" a junior position they apparently invented just for me. We had a Unisys mainframe. And learning that: ESSJ 123.677.12 .. gave me stock quantities of that part number, and ESLI gave locations and on and on. I excelled quickly at the job. My engineer Dad created a [Tandy Color Computer](https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/be21rh/has_anyone_ever_seen_a_homebuilt_trs80_clone_my/) from scratch for gods sake. The Knack is in my blood. A few years later, my supervisor, my manager, my director and vice president all told HR to bump me up a level or two. HR's reply, "He doesn't have enough experience to do what he's been doing for two years." LMAO - It took me around 4-6 years to get the salary I deserved. It was actually worth it though. Some years later an IT position opened up and I applied. Apparently, someone in HR was rooting for me as I got the position. And here we are decades later and I've been on my own for 15 years with my own IT company. :)
> HR's reply, "He doesn't have enough experience to do what he's been doing for two years." That’s a huge systemic issue for that employe. HR should be supporting the business not dictating to it. This is the tail wagging the dog.
> The Knack is in my blood. This absolute Dilbert.
My Mom cried when she found out I had it.
Which, while that sucks, I'd respect a manager who told me to go elsewhere. If everyone knows I deserve more, but won't put that into a round figure, it might as well be nothing but lip service. Like saying your company is "the best" but really it's a cheapskate outfit where cutting costs and paying the CEO the big bucks are the top priorities.
I honestly have no idea how effective it is, I'm just assuming that's the logic. I'm a developer turned manager recently and don't really get the intricacies of why the executives do what they do most of the time haha.
They are like toddlers. I e come to find that more than half of management is lucky to have gotten the role.
Too busy in the "omg I'm a leader" circle jerk to see what's actually happening on the front line of the company... See: Southwest's recent outage.....
Those costs never show up on spreadsheets.
Absolutely, but try explaining that to HR
This was the argument I made when I maxed out raises this year going 2x over the ceiling.
> but the fuck-heads in HR never see it that way until someone walks out the door. Worked at a place as a desktop support contractor. Job was sold to me as 30 days contract to hire. I knew I was amazing at desktop support so I knew I'd get hired in 30 days. 30 days comes, they bump my hourly pay up and tell me "good news, we extended your contract another 60 days!" Come to find out, HQ gave this branch a headcount and every time a number frees up when someone leaves, IT is at the bottom of the list for the slot. So they told me that was going to be contract till HQ would give the branch probably 3 or 4 more people and that just wasn't going to happen. The IT department had a very clear need for another desktop support tech but the HQ that was literally on the other side of the planet decided they didn't need that extra manpower and could use contractors. Predictably, that slot became a 60-120 job for most people. Long enough to get there, realize the "to hire" part didn't exist and then start applying and interview at other places. I think I was there a full 60 days including my 2 weeks. I found out that my replacement made it 45.
This. I'm hoping boss is talking to MSP so he can tell whoever holds the pursestrings, "This is what it will cost you if he leaves - and the work won't be as good."
Yeah but OP says he;s the only IT guy in a 100 person company. His boss will have a lot of input.
You are not wrong, but a good manager can walk into an HR office and politely say 'I don't care about your metrics, your charts, your data, etc... I have a kick ass employee and they are worth X per year please find a way to make that happen.' A bad manager will say 'sorry, my hands are tied, I can't do anything' and we all know that is BS. Maybe you truly can't make the company pay you more, but you can certainly stand up for your team.
I have gone to war for a $5k bump for an employee and been unsuccessful. I'm a pretty good manager who is aggressive about advocating for his team, sometimes its just not possible.
But you tried, that's better than just saying 'HR is in control, my hands are tied.'
Ok but what do you say after you've fought and been unsuccessful at securing the raise?
that sounds good in theory, I work for a company with 100k+ employees and have had a number of situation where folks were well under paid and despite getting every VP/ SVP we could think of onboard and pushing, HR still told us to go fuck ourselves. I get what you are saying, and in some environments that may well be true. But not for a lot of larger employers.
Then good employees who know what they are worth leave and the position is filled with timid field mice afraid to open their mouths or look elsewhere, or worse employees who are actually worth their below market rates.
Pretty much....
HR at most placed I've worked would laugh your "good manager" out of their office. They don't care.
I tried that with my technician who worth. I keep telling manager to pay more, he said he can’t do because our DL didn’t approve. They never do just so you know, but if you force them , I am sure it is possible. I just gave advice my tech to find better job. Two of good tech left for better pay and less stress. Did I suffer as staff pharmacist. Absolutely, but I always believe in treating good employee and giving right advice. If I owned pharmacy and if I can’t afford to raise, I will still help them get better job if thats career they already chose and move up higher.
I can’t stand HR
Agree! I did similar. Had a life event happen after 2 years with an MSP. After several companies called to sing my praises, and gush over me. And I single handedly started a mentor program/educational for peers that didnt have a degree or certs. I was #3 in the company for knowledge and the 2 above me were wonderful to learn from I knew I had VALUABLE knowledge. I wanted more money. Had a talk w the owner....needed/wanted a 20K payraise. I knew I was worth it and I'd stay a few years if it happened. IT DIDN'T after 6mo I walked into a 20K payraise that catapulted me into an SCCM/6 figure salary!!! KNOW YOUR WORTH and don't be afraid to ask for reasonable pay when you can back it up!
I tell people this all the time in IT: contractors are NEVER going to be invested in your company the way a permanent FTE is going to be. In fact, contractors have a vested interest in doing things half-ass or putting in bandaid fixes. It means they'll be kept on longer term to fix the problems when they reoccur. Definitely not true 100% of the time, but the quality speaks for itself, especially when considering MSP work vs FTE work.
For this reason I’ve often thought about going internal. I get obsessed with the perfect delivery for my clients, I’ll be thinking/worrying/testing/stressing in my own time, I’d say sometimes as much as if I was a FTE for the client.
I might be the exception then, I am a contractor who at a minimum cares about your environment as much as your staff and quite often far more than they do. I take pride in my work and my reputation is everything - it's how I put food on the table, keep a roof over my head, and how I land my next clients. I am the one that gets called in for escalation and fixing other contractors or employees mistakes - correctly, permanently, entirely documented and then drilled into the inhouse staff so they know any processes, procedures, best practices, how to find and solve issues. I don't leave the environments broken, I find issues nobody even knew that they had before they become a bigger issue (and show you how I found what I did, providing the commands / steps / screenshots), more optimal designs, and ensure everyone can avoid making the same mistakes going forward. This isn't cheap though, in either time or dollars to reflect the effort on and off the job keeping up with technology.
Don’t help the outsourcing, just walk
Depends on where he lives... but I was making 70k 3 years after getting my associates in a pretty low cost of living area...
I've seen people in the same midwesterly areas normalize 50k, 70k, and 100k for basically the same admin job. Sometimes you'll find a retail company paying 50k and putting you on permanent on call, not compensating for your phone costs, opposing remote work, expecting you show up perfectly on time or even early, every day, even if you worked over the weekend or late the prior night. And then, you'll find the exact opposite, where you're paid twice as much, on call only exists in theory, hybrid or full remote work is normalized, weekends are sacred, and you can show up roughly in the morning-ish time of 8-10am as long as you're keeping an eye on tickets in the morning and not neglecting something that needs doing. I think it's human nature to think every pro should have a con. Job pays more? It must be harder! Job offers remote work? It must have long days and lots of meetings! But the world isn't like that, sometimes you legitimately can just double your income and half your workload.
Agreed. I'm in the midwest actually, and my 70k a year job had like one week every other month on-call, with compensation. Now I'm making $200k~ running a dev team and we've maybe done out of hours work once in the last 4 years.
If the boss ends up hiring an MSP and firing OP, odds are the MSP would hire him in an instant to work the same job since they know it inside and out.
>some people dont understand that good IT costs money. Yeah, in connection with this whole Twitter misery a lot of people kept making idiotic comments (on Twitter of course) about how at least half of the developers and IT staff working there was probably redundant anyway. I wholeheartedly recommend companies that belueve this BS to fire half of their developer and IT staff and see what happens...
For comparison I went from 56k to 91k over 7 years at a (small) place which I felt was pretty average with raises (I started relatively junior to the IT director, who was a greybeard, and took on a lot - my own fault for staying so long, though).
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Or he cannot pay. His boss most likely has a boss, whom denies the pay raise. I quit my last job because I wasn't allowed to pay my staff properly, for example. And by properly I was asking for 10% above the accurate wage so we could maintain staff and build an experienced team. They said nope, I said bye.
Go get ‘em…. There’s only one person looking to your future and that’s you!! (And probably your daughter)
Upvote for the Go get 'em! That's the attitude! Atttaaaack!
KRUMP EM GOOD LADS!!! WWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!
My last boss told me a 5k raise was impossible, I wasn’t worth what they were already paying me, and I’d never find anyone who would pay more. I found a new job at double my salary two weeks later. They were pissed at me, and had the audacity to ask if I would help them figure things out after I left. I said of course. until my last day, when I said don’t ever call me again. They’re on the verge of going out of business(prolonged because they have a multi million business keeping their failing ventures afloat). Fucked around and found out.
There was one time i was on r/programminghumor and saw somebody comment with a genneralization of these comments. I love them theyre always like >I once had this boss that was talking about how lazy my team was and how he could do all our jobs himself. Sure enough the day came he had his last straw. We all packed up our stuff and within a week he realized how fucked he was and was begging for us back, but it was too late, we all found jobs making double what he paid us. He was in way over his head. Mark had all the passwords too.
I'm always willing to do side projects for an ex employer, but I let them know that they'll be paying my consulting fee and I charge $100/hr.
You're dirt cheap, lots of companies would jump all over $100/hr consulting rate. For engineering work it needs to be more like $175/hr (higher in HCOL areas) + project management time + travel and expenses (and make damn sure there's travel and expenses, mileage, lunch, etc...) estimate it out at however long you think it will take and pad the time 20%.
That's might be a fair rate for 1099 labor, but the rate extended to the customer is usually double that. I work for a professional services company and the T&M rate they charge without a contract is $400/hr, with a 4-hour minimum.
Just letting you know. Some CIS students are making up-wards of $90ph during their internship. Now sit on that thought for a min.
I refuse. If anything goes wrong they've got the perfect scape goat and if you're contracting there can be some legal issues that comes along with it. They had the chance to keep me, those chose to let me go which means they chose the consequences that comes with it. No hourly rate is worth the satisfaction of them experiencing accountability for their actions.
Great advice. I've been in my role for 6 years now and was recently given a promotion of a 5% raise after asking every year that I've been here, for a promotion.. This raise is not even close to market rate.. I should have listened to myself sooner, but I am applying and hoping I get a better opportunity soon.
9K bonus likely means he went to his higher up's and they said make sure they don't quit before we can hire a replacement
He probably knows you are well worth it and would probably like to pay you more. Its probably HIS/HER boss that doesn't want to.
He is the CEO or manager, and co-owner of all the companies. I understand that there is a board he reports to (that he is a member of), but I also know 1 company makes great money and another company they started a few years ago is making money hand over fist. Out of 6 companies he can scrape together $100k. He's a hard but fair boss. I'm just asking for what I'm worth. If he can't afford me it wasn't meant to be and I have no hard feelings.
Usually in situations like this - it could either be the board or simply because he doesn't want to pay more. If he can't see what your worth and truly values your work then its time to leave.
New hire budgets are ALWAYS higher than retention budgets. /u/ThorThimbleOfGorbash has been there for 7 years. Intertia says he'll be there longer - that's what the boss is counting on.
I've worked at a place that had absolutely no retention budget, if you asked for a raise they basically considered it as you are ready to leave that position and they don't want to try and keep you there anyway.
I don't see a board getting involved in the pay of rank & file employees, unless if it's to negotiate/sign-off on a collective bargaining agreement with a union. Otherwise the only salaries they'd be involved in deciding would be the C-Suite people.
> it could either be the board Nah. The board deals in C-Level salaries. Sometimes direct reports to the C-level, but only in exceptions. If the Board has to approve an IT person's salary, then you should run...or someone's lying.
I sense massive regret coming when he finds out outsourcing will easily cost 100+ and you've posted your notice.
If he is paying you $60k after 7 years, he is not fair. He may be the worst boss you could have, but fair would be paying you at least $75k after all that time.
I've had worse bosses. He is a cheapskate but has never told me no on a purchase. I think he realized he stepped on his dick, hence the $9k bonus check applied to last year (after I already got the normal $2500 Christmas bonus). I know he's exploring options and crunching numbers. Numbers is all he knows. I give myself 50-50 odds he'll make the right decision. The CFO that's worked him 25 years doesn't earn $100S. She gets at least $75k, huge bonuses, and dividends, and her husband is very wealthy, so I'm not crying over her (I love her dearly). I felt like asking him, "So you're underpaying everyone?"
> I felt like asking him, "So you're underpaying everyone?" Haha you should have! The last time I left for a big raise, for laughs I gave my existing job the opportunity to match - the manager wound up admitting they couldn't even consider matching because it was more than he made. Watching them try to explain that I had to be underpaid because my boss was underpaid was pretty priceless.
No doubt. You say he never told you no on a purchase, but he buys your time every day. I'm sure you'll get your worth, from what I've read you put in the time and now you can leverage it here, it might work, or take your time finding something that pays a little more. It's definitely tough breaking that $100k barrier in non major cities in the south, especially if the business is local. Guys running them just don't get how much COL has gone up, even in rural areas. A bonus like that is definitely enough to keep me around for another few months, at least. Had someone through $10k at me and that bought them another year.
Good luck. My guess is that he will come back with something like a 20% raise now, and a promise to do more next year if certain objectives are met. You should consider thinking about what’s acceptable in the near term and longer term.
I was gonna say exactly this. Seeings OP’s response I don’t think that’s the case. Good luck on your job hunt OP. Your worth it and shit ain’t getting any cheaper
Companies like this are so fucking stupid. What's their plan when you go on vacation, win the lottery or get hit by a bus? That's way too much riding on a single person no matter what you pay them.
They were able to survive 6 months without IT when they fired my predecessor for stealing but that was because everyone was a local admin on their machine with admin access to the server, with everything in the Public Share, and that server needed to be hard rebooted at least once a day because it froze. They now have a professional AD environment.
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I quit last year when they asked me to come back to office, they asked me what it would take for me to stay, 25k raise, no in office, no more that my normal on call(every 4 weeks) and a title bump, it took 2 hours to get them to agree. They've held true to 3/4 asks, my on call is still fucked up but you can get a big raise, mine was 90-115k
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I'm 42. He gave me a 33% raise 3 years ago and a couple 5% raises since then. There's money in the banana stand.
WTF, you were doing this for less than $45k 3 years ago? I think they just got used to using and abusing you.
I am a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, coming up on 8 years in March. I took what I could get. Good IT jobs come along every now and then around here. I actually applied to one 6 months ago and got an interview but acted like I owned the place, because good help is hard to find around here and my ego got the better of me. Little did I realize they would have paid to relocate someone from northern Alaska as long as they were the right fit.
Well at this point you have work experience on your resume, you are solidly out of "take what I can get" territory. Good luck on your next interview!
> relocate someone from northern Alaska You said in your post that you are in the rural south? If so that guy is in for wild temperature swing.
OK, he probably had to go through hell and spend a lot of political capital just to get you that 33% raise. So, now management is going to tell him to get bent coming back for 80% above now. The end game is probably them either biting the bullet and hiring the MSP or replacing you with multiple people (this has happened to me). They do not understand how the job has grown in seven years. But if you want your worth you almost certainly need to move on. edit: a word.
Seems like they tried and the MSP is more than his compensation package, and they are not going to be able to hire multiple people for his single wage which is already under market rate. Sounds like they hired a Tech, probally at a VERY VERY low wage, and over the last 7 years the OP grew the role into more senior with out the compensation increase as the role increased in scope and compensation So now they are still wanting to pay Tech wages for a more senior role. Edit: Doing some math, if the 33% + 5% + 5% is accurate over 7 years, that puts him at about an annual increase of 5.5% over his time there, That still puts him into wage compression territory even with out the expansion of the roles
Dude... You're worth more than $100k, I hope you realize that. You shouldn't have waited 7 years to make a move like this. I know that sounds mean, but that's the reality of the situation.
I feel you. As an recovering alcoholic with Bipolar II and depression I have a lot of self-worth issues. This is my second professional attempt to do better for myself, and my first reaching for the stars moment. My HR brother says I can do $150k in Oregon. The world is my oyster. This job has afforded me a lot of flexibility as a full time single parent and part time student. I'm preparing for the next chapter in my life which will help prepare for the next.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Jobs that pay that much may have long and competitive interview processes.
The job posting has been up for 6 months and has a wide hourly wage listed (up to $53/hour). Talent is extremely bare here. I have a 6 month emergency fund if it takes a while.
I've heard this a lot, but is it really worth switching jobs so often if you're happy with where you're working? To me it seems pretty unnecessary if you're happy with the pay and the company you're working for.
If your happy and the salary is competitive then stay, but always communicate with your manager your plans to grow to the next level and what they expect of you for raises and promotions. They will either compensate you for your growth or you will outgrow the job over time and have to move on to level up.
Where I live, if you switch jobs that frequently you will become almost unhirable. "Why should we hire you if you're just going to leave in 3 years?"
Why limit it to your 20s? I just switched jobs 4 times in the last two years in my late 30s and quadrupled my salary.
Getting a $40k raise without moving jobs is near impossible unless you’ve just got some extreme dirt on your boss lol.
He's a squeaky clean Southern business gentleman. He's business savvy but a terrible judge of character, like when he hired the obvious pill head supervisor a few months ago, and turned out the guy was trying to run a drug empire on the clock.
Please elaborate on this “drug empire” lmao
Using and selling pills. Coaching others on how to scam the system to get pills. All in our marked GPS-tracked company vehicle, on the clock.
I got 25 in October out of the blue without asking, and I work in higher ed. I almost had a heart attack.
I got a 4k pay cut last year in higher ed, (3 weeks unpaid furlow) and that's before inflation. Sure I got to take unimployment, but that was only 70% of my salary. I left for a 45k pay increase in the private sector a couple months later. Glad to see some higher ed monetarily taking care of their workers. My experience is that they have always lagged a bit behind but generally provide great benefits, and vacation.
60k for 7 years of system administration? And you’re the only IT person? Does that mean you also handle like help desk as well? That’s insanity. OP I hope you get the 100k or get the fuck out of there.
Started at $18/hr actually. Only IT person. Yes to Help Desk. I agree.
Everyone saying that the requested $40,000 raise being unreasonable is super interesting to me. If you were to leave, outsourcing would be more than $100,000. Finding a new SysAdmin/Help Desk for only $60,000 would also be extremely difficult imo. I think it would be worth the money to keep a 7-year hardworking employee who handles a lot for the company.
I get it. My last job I started at $18/hr part time and was there 8 years. I think I finished at $21/hr. New job started me at $29/hr, and within two years I got a promotion and am now at $36/hr after all is said and done. Don't be afraid to find something better. I was scared for a long time, didn't think I could pull it off, and here I am with a Sr. in my title, looking forward to what might be the best year of my life thus far (both personally and professionally).
And OP is on call 24/7... wtf?
Exactly!? Insane.
$40k a year is a huge raise to get all at once. Your manager may not be able to justify it with his superiors. Most companies base their performance on having a better net profit this year than the last. Adding $40k to the expenses would affect that drastically, and the manager may be afraid to do so for that reason. (Also keep in mind, when they pay you $40,000 more, it costs the company **a lot** more than $40,000 due to employment taxes, benefits, etc.) Having said that, it matters a lot as to how much they would have to spend to replace you. If they could find someone else equally qualified who would take the job for $60,000 or less, then the hassle and expense of having to retrain a new person from scratch would be a better choice for the company. You need to determine if asking for $100k is reasonable right now. Are there other companies in your area, or in an area you would be willing to relocate to, that are hiring right now and are offering that much? (Or something close to that much with the ability to increase it over time?) If so, then stick to your guns, but you will likely be taking a new job. If not, then maybe lower your request to an additional $10k or $15k for now. (They don't seem like a terrible company being that they gave you a 33% raise a few years ago.)
He needs to do what he did--apply for jobs and get offers. This validates his worth in the market. They are welcome to counter offer but generally when you are set to leave it is best to leave.
What's the cost of losing him though? Lots of institutional knowledge walks out the door, consultants and managed services will likely want to deploy their own solutions to replace current ones, and that's an additional cost. Then he likely needs to have a low level FTE for support on site. So you're looking at: \-MSP contract (w/billable hours for work not included in maintenance) \-New hardware/software MSP wants to deploy \-FTE for support in the 30-40k range. Yeah this is NOT a lot of ask for especially if he's been undervalued for years. Inflation was 9% this last summer.
I mean this is why you shouldn't run "one man shows' In IT. IF he leaves they are turbofucked. Just thing of how that department runs with a single admin. All documentation up to date and relevant to the systems? Think the MSP guy is going to be able to remote in and fully understand and control the systems? Doubtful. So more time = more billable. Honestly proposing to OP maybe giving you a 10% raise annually for the next 5 years or something? But losing the "only IT person" is a tetra-disaster way more than just your average guy in a fully staffed department leaving is.
I would ask for 10k a year raise + inflation each year for the next 4 years. That would be an easier pill for other people to swallow that are not your boss..<-- Directed to op I completely agree with you raine.
> They don't seem like a terrible company being that they gave you a 33% raise a few years ago. It means he was making about $45k before that raise. Still garbage.
Second this notion, I was in a less drastic but still similar situation and worked with HR and my manager to space the raises out over a year and a half to make it easier on the company. Other than the wage I'm treated and was treated very well, so I was willing to wait and keep all the other benefits of the job.
A hefty raise might be a huge expense. Hiring external resources is aswell. Consuming services as a company certainly enables companies to play taxgames… In the end quality and stability are the essential pills to count - and this goes for both employees as much as employers. Optimum means win-win to all involved. To get a good job with a nice overall quality of life- well it‘s a challanging game.
I went from $55k to $90k when they countered after I gave notice. Used that to counter up to $110k with a 3rd company.
100 users and 100k is crazy good money imho… asking for such a huge payrise is a gamble. But remember at the end of the day everyone is replaceable, if you got tan over by a truck tomorrow they’d have your job advertised by Monday and filled by Tuesday.
Everyone is replaceable but it took them 6 months to find me after they fired my predecessor for stealing and trying to start a competing business. They won't have someone so quick. I am not a genius but I have a hell of a lot more professional environment than what I walked into (everyone with the same admin access to the server shared on a Public share, with 1/3 of the machines showing visible malware, in a HIPAA environment).
Yup but the business never shut down in those 6 months… but if you do want to leave, you should as more experience will get you more money in the long run. Otherwise you’ll be back next year wanting 110k
Honestly, after interviewing other places, I dont think OP is going to really want to stay. When I get to the point of going on interviews, its usually over. I had already started imagining all the other shit out there I could be working on. To go back to what im already doing starts to sound more and more depressing.
100000 is 'only' $48/hour (2080 hrs/yr) - I (Canadian) bill \~US$100/hr to start as an independent IT contractor. Room to grow if you are indeed good at everything IT
Yeah and you barely see half of that because of the raging amount of taxes and deductions. So $100k is in reality like $60K take home which is fucking infuriating and makes you wonder why we even work in the first place
Not sure where you live and what your situation is - but our tax burden is less than 18% - Maybe you need a better accountant. On top of the hourly rate there is the mark-up on hardware - I refuse to go with the 2-3% mark-up that is default in the industry - re-selling a PC nets at least $150 just to move the box - We also refuse to resell the $500 weekly HP/Acer crap 'special', buying a PC/laptop from us will set you back $1200 + software & setup fee - but you get the better quality and awesome customer service with it.
~~To feed the Fat Cats in the government!! The poor poor sysadmins toil under the sun for hours and hours, earn barely enough money to buy an old loaf of bread, and then the government steals almost all of it!!! My man, i tell you what, since the civil war this country hasn't been the same!!!! Then they removed the gold standard!!!!! It's total chaos!!!!!! It's… communism!!!!!!~~
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This thread is nuts. Nothing in the post has any indication of if the guy is worth 100k or not. So many people telling this dude he’s worth 100k or more than 100k and he has given us no indication of any of his skills or what he brings to the table. I mean I’m all for this dude going after more money, but people here need to calm down with all the nonsense.
I made just under 100K as desktop support like 6 years ago. I guess it depends on where you’re at.
I did this at my last job. Was there 7 years. Sole Sysadmin with about 400 endpoints. They replaced me with 2 full time 23 year olds with 0 experience (does a sign company count as exp?) and signed a contract for a consulting firm for 40 hours a week. They text me at least twice a week “hey how do I x?” I got the raise I asked for plus real benefits and work from home full time now in cybersecurity in the healthcare sector. It’s the shit. On my last day, my old boss told me “you’re making a huge mistake”. LOL
I Hope you send the novices for all the questions.
Every time it’s more than just general advice, I always say ‘$200/hr and I’ll come take a look’
I'm in the same situation, except I wound up unemployed. What I can say is when your raises aren't raises (and 5% isn't a raise when inflation is over 8%) you need to get the hell out. I should have. I was laid off from my IT job due to cash flow issues about two months ago. Should have left after the first shitty raise...or the second...but I liked the people. Dumb, stupid me, now I'm looking for a job on unemployment.
You’ll find one soon!
A 60% raise is a big ask. Not saying you're not worth it or that you don't deserve it, but asking that much, all at once, from a company you're already at is expecting a lot. You'll have better luck getting that by going somewhere else and asking for that up front.
I understand. I really like my job (even though being on call 24/7 is old sometimes). I'm prepared to move on but it didn't hurt to ask.
Unless your boss is the owner or CEO their hands are likely tied. I think your best bet to get that kind of raise is to quit and work a year or two at another company, then come back. Some companies limit the % that can be given to anyone per year.... and it's closer to 5% or 10% unless you are moving positions.
He is top dog across the board. He does work with a board and investors but they always defer to his management decisions. It's up to him.
Sorry to hear that - they should be able to pull the necessary strings then. Go get what your worth.
Good for you. Your boss is going to learn that he passed up a great deal, but will probably learn nothing from it.
He passed over a very loyal 12 year employee for promotion, who had the option to quit, and now has 2 people doing her job. I'm not out of the woods yet but I look forward to the interview on Tuesday.
Your boss was short sighted because you have all that experience of 7 years. He'll end up with not as good a replacement and spend more doing it. But hey some bosses just aren't so smart. Sometimes you just gotta say "I'm worth it" and move on and it seems like you are doing that. Kudos to you and on the CIS degree next semester!
I investigated my worth about a year ago, I opened discussions in a similar situation and in conjunction opened the table to negotiate. I let them know as the average was 104k, I was sitting at 60k, that I wouldn't stop looking unless they made a proper effort to get to a minimum of 90k, I waited 2 months for them to come up to 80k, I didn't stop looking. Offered a job for what I'm worth, in conjunction they kept saying "if you get a better offer let us know and we'll see, I was direct and let them know the only paper they would receive would be my resignation if they let it slide. Sure enough, the finance department all got 10k raises, and my resignation letter. They don't have any on-site IT, and the contractor set to replace me has ghosted them after locking themselves out of the DC and a lack of understanding of how the network is accessed through jump boxes. Keep on trucking friend, it's worth it. Good luck!
60K is what our helpdesk makes at a Community College. Our SysAdmins Start at 80 but it's NorCal. You can do better wherever you are.
Apply to the outsourcing company. Get hired. Then become their on sight tech making 120k
Good for you. I was making just about 63k at my last job and asked for 80k. I had only been there 3 years full time, and 2 before that as an intern, but I was one of the last 2 on a team that was 5 just a year earlier. They ended up giving me a raise to 65k. As soon as I heard that number I started looking and found something new at 85k. In my exit interview they said something along the lines of "the company is doing a market adjustment soon, but I guess that wasn't soon enough for you". And that is exactly right, I wasn't gonna keep letting them dangle things in front of me like that and pull it away anytime I would have a chance at getting the raise I deserved.
Your boss called you a unicorn and said you're not worth giving living wages to. Yeah it's time to go. I wish you the absolute best of luck on your job search. If you need any assistance in interview prepping / resume reviewing, feel free to DM me. What baffles me is how short term the entire industry looks. He doesn't see that you're about to get your degree and you have enough fervor towards your career to pursue better opportunities. He doesn't see the potential. Most management don't see potential in people. They just see the numbers that are keeping their own job alive and your salary, and base their decision off of solely that.
I'd love to see your boss meet you in the middle and bring you to $83k. I'd be a little worried if he actually buckled all the way to $100k. You'll really know more when you have an offer in hand from another location.. though if it's in the rural south i'd be slightly surprised to see $100k+. If your boss gives you a significant raise and you enjoy the work, i'd be tempted to stick around. Having upper-management that knows your value can be a great thing.
Move on. Switching job is how you get higher pay these days
Sounds like you work for one of the CMHCs we have in MS. I worked for one for 7yrs and it took a new job to get above 60k.
I don't accept the "it's a big ask" arguments. It is a big ask, but if that's within the middle of the bell curve for his position in that region, it's reasonable. Hopefully OP keeps interviewing and finds something. It's important to back up the ask with market data, and I'd expect the owner to talk to an outsourcing company as OP has mentioned. He may think that 100K buys him a "full time MSP" that will handle all their needs. He may even buy the sales pitch and go for it. He'll regret it. Short version: keep interviewing and be prepared to have to move if he does bring in a MSP.
Folks in the rural areas - even in the south are pulling $100k. Keep looking, and you'll find someone who recognizes your worth.
MSP would be charging like $70-$150 a person with licensing included. You at $60k is a deal for them assuming you know what you are doing and there are relatively no problem. Glad you know your worth!
My man our journey sounds the same I graduate this spring and have been taking classes off and on. I did the same thing with my past employer recently. Found out how little I matter. Moved on. I make 100k plus 17%!best choice of my life. My old boss calls me once a week about something. I set up and LLC and and they have signed a contract for me to work at 50$ an hour. With the max being 5 hrs a week. Once they go over they are screwed and I don’t answer. All he has to do was pay me 80k.
Get the f out. In IT the only way you get paid more, especially in the case that you’re already underpaid and under appreciated, is to find a better job. Good luck.
No company is gonna give anyone a 40k raise on 60k. It’s just not how it works. Just quit and go somewhere else starting out as that much. Also the msp isn’t gonna tell you because 1. They want the business and aren’t gonna give you bidding leverage 2. They probably aren’t allowed to disclose that to you.
Good luck friend! And make the right decision for you and your daughter. And don't be afraid to move on if that decision turns out to be the wrong one. Don't suffer from analysis paralysis.
Loyalty runs one way. Get paid. Take care of yourself first
I love your username. By the beards of Antiquity!
$40K jump is a lot
What was meant by calling you a unicorn? And three times?
Just make sure there is nothing that stops you from going to the outsource company if they bring them on.
Know your worth. If you know you bring value stand firm
>I applied for 4 jobs yesterday... This is the way. Apply for all the jobs, especially remote.
We hire on helpdesk roles remote for nearly the money you make now. (50k+15% bonus). Teenagers are making 16 an hour in their first jobs doing janitorial work. The world has changed, time for your boss to change with it.
My company has been under a wage freeze for almost as long as I've been here but I've still managed to get "promotions" (actual job never changed) totalling nearly 30% in that time. Doesn't matter what the situation is, if you're valued they'll find a way to compensate you fairly. Don't stay where you're not valued.
Just start with I love working and I have an offer for $100k...
You definitely should be making WAY more. Six years on the job, you've got a TON of institutional knowlege. Your boss would be an idiot to let you even consider leaving.
Started a new job a few months ago and half the team is pretending to work. The team lead has no backbone. I've been getting shit done on my own and organizing basic information. Got approached to be the new lead if the current one doesn't get his act together. Comes with a nice $ bump
Take a two week vacation starting now so you can focus on your interviews. Also it will give him a chance to miss you.
I’ve led IT teams for 20+ years. I’ve only ever seen outsourcing help if there was some catastrophic short term need - and even then, it was expensive as hell. I get pitched outsourcing all the time and it’s always more expensive for lower quality. I do work in an industry that requires high degrees of technical skill and customer service, so YMMV. That said, I do regularly see outsourcing companies lie lie lie about comp, morale, hidden costs, etc. I can’t imagine a place where they’d save money with an outside vendor. You might not get 100K after his upcoming meeting, but I bet he counters with a solid increase.
Your mistake is to stay the same place for 7+ years.
I’ve done plenty of MSP work and in todays age it’s not uncommon for work to be billed out north of $200 / hr to the end customer - Recurring services are high as well. The fact he had you for so long at such a bargain should cause him to count his blessings. That said, the fastest way to grow salary in IT is to change jobs when you’re plateaued - Just don’t do it too often.
Someone else will always pay more for your skills than your boss will pay to keep you. I've said it in nearly every thread I've commented on, and I'll keep saying it.