think you need to mtfu! if your boss sits there and tells you that the company would fold without you and you dont see that a youre oportunity to ask for a raise, theres not much hope for you. alternatively, if your that important, leave, set up on your own and contact/poach his customers. just a thought.

The director called me in for a meeting. Which went ok but not great, didn’t get me raise as I didn’t want to ask whilst I was being told off. Apparently I’m not happy enough in the office, and its creating negativity in the atmosphere. Though its a case of no sh*t sherlock, I’m not happy as I feel undervalued.

Since none of us know you, reading this I did wonder if this is about more than just you being unhappy with the lack of pay… Lots of IT people, often very good at the technical side of their job, are awful to work with… maybe you need to have a think about the way you deal with people.

Otherwise, that’s the real world. You will rarely get pay rises you don’t ask for. State exactly why you should get a pay rise (and the saleswoman is irrelevant unless they start giving you excuses that they can’t afford to pay more), about what value you give to the company and so on. And more importantly why YOU are the only person who can give them that (eg your knowledge of specific systems, your customers and so on). If you can’t do that then you’re probably not being underpaid…

Reading back that does sound a bit harsh – it’s not really meant to be – but I work in IT too and have often seen this the other way with people who think that they deserve to be paid much more than the reality dictates.

Several problems with being in IT:

1) There are many people who can do it, many young and hence cheap
2) We nerds tend not to be good at selling ourselves
3) People don’t realise how hard we work
4) If you do your job brilliantly people don’t think you’ve done anyting at all: Boss: “You are here to fix issues and yet we have not had any, you are useless” You: “Why-tf do you think there haven’t been any issues?”
5) Bosses do not understand what we do, and hence can’t tell a good worker from a poor one.

Bosses are often good at reading people, and if you are prepared to take his crap he will see this and continue to give it to you. Why wouldn’t he?

3) People don’t realise how hard we work
4) If you do your job brilliantly people don’t think you’ve done anyting at all: Boss: “You are here to fix issues and yet we have not had any, you are useless” You: “Why-tf do you think there haven’t been any issues?”
5) Bosses do not understand what we do, and hence can’t tell a good worker from a poor one.

These things are your fault if you do nothing to help people understand…

These things are your fault if you do nothing to help people understand…

6) We are often rubbish at communicating why we’re important.
7) People often don’t believe you when you try to explain, and shut off when the conversation gets technical saying ‘oh those geeks, always talking spaceman language!’ instead of actually making a frigging effort.

Ok, people are saying I need to MTFU.

However please understand that I do not particularily enjopy working in IT. I am a problem solver, I love problems/challenges almost as much as I love to solve them.

IT is something that tends to be logical/common sense and thats what I’m good at (contrary to popular belief). The reason I did not ask for a raise this time is that a) the company is struggling and I used to be its most expensive assest, now she is and has been here less than a year so shes now a good candidate for redundancy.

I want to get out of IT and retrain which I can do in Q3 this year as my financial circumstances will have chanced enough to permit me to do so. However Im sitll thinking about what to do my degree in, though thats another matter.

I think it was a toys out the pram moment by me, I’m reasonably happy here, just feeling generally undervalued and their excuse is that because they don’t see what I do therefore they don’t know I’ve done it. Which I can see being genuine. However I’ve never been good at selling myself nor being an attention whore by shouting “look at me, and bask in the glory of my success”.

I agree that I am not the most personable person in the world. But thats because Im a bit of a c*ck. Opinionated, like a debate and have the really bad habbit of going out my way to make a point when I think a point needs to be made. There are lots of good qualities too, honest.

If you’re that critical to the company then you should be fairly compensated. However if the company isn’t doing too well then it may not have the cash-flow to do that right now. I would argue for a future pay rise or a bonus scheme and if they agree then get it in writing so they can’t wriggle out of it.

Unfortunately people in sales should inherently be good at selling themselves – you may be the IT guy but if you don’t sell yourself as well as the other employees then you’re at risk of always being undervalued.

Sounds fairly typical in IT. I wasn’t trying to be critical in my post – it’s just the way we work unfortunately.

There are rewards to be had later in your career though.

IME in a small company it never pays to be the nice guy.