[thelist] a weird question

Wed Jan 17 18:20:31 CST 2001

The way I see it from what you have written, you have two choices:

1) You can use a salary as your prioroty.

2) Or, you can use your enjoyment and satisfaction as your priority.

Once you determine your priority, the rest will fall into place smoother.
does that cryptic response help? ;-)

-----Original Message-----
From: sarah [mailto:disaster7 at yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2001 5:31 PM
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: RE: [thelist] a weird question

Alright I'm going to explain a lot here and ask a few
questions. I could really use the help.

I was hired 10+ months ago as a "HTML coder," and
basically the position was a lot more than that and my
title is officially now "Web Developer." There were
two of us working on the internal site, but the other
left, leaving me as the person who does "everything"
for our intranet: graphics, applications, everything.
After a while I researched my salary to see if it was
"fitting" and found that it wasn't and complained.
They gave me a hefty raise, but not all my boss wish
he could (and not all I wish either). 

Right before I was hired, they contracted with a firm
to do our internet site. The price they paid was well
over 10 times what they pay me now (or so I've heard)
and the site was horrible. I could have done something
better in an afternoon. Things were expected to go
find with the company, but they did not. They know
that they got ripped off. Now they want a redesign and
are exploring options. 

I offered to do it and I want to do it, but I have
other things I do there too. My boss wants me to come
up with some ideas and thinks it would be great if I
was the hero who saved them a ton of money. But it's a
lot of work and I don't want to do it for what they
pay me now, on top of what I already do, because I
already feel I'm being ripped off. I don't necessarily
have a "job description." I just do our website stuff,
but I haven't done this before for them, but I have
for other people and they know it.

This leads me to my second question, what a reasonable
salary for me might be. Basically I'm 20 years old and
haven't finished college yet, so I don't have a
degree. I work full time and my official title is Web
Developer and I'm the only one. Basically from the
tasks I do, I could be a DBA, Web Designer, Web
Developer, Systems Administrator, and more. Point is,
I do everything. I'm a quick learner and learn new
things all the time. From the web standpoint though, I
have 5 years of design experience and a few years of
application experience, one of those being web based. 
According to the monster.com salary survey, it says I
should make 60-90k a year (US). Does this sound
realistic, if not, what does?

Thanks so much everyone,
Sarah

--- McCreath_David
<McCreath_David at xmail.asd.k12.ak.us> wrote:
> Hi, Sarah --
> 
> >Well, they got payed a pretty pretty price to do
> and
> >did a horrible job. I know that on my own I could
> do a
> >much better job and I offered to redesign and I'm
> >going to work on that. The question is, they pay me
> >less than I probably should get and I'm doing them
> a
> >huge favour by doing this. Do you think I'm
> entilted
> >to some sort of raise or bonus? 
> 
> What did they hire you to do? I mean, is the purpose
> of your employment the
> redesign? If they hired you to do x and you offer to
> do y, and the value of
> y is higher than x, then you should make that part
> of your offer. "Hi, you
> just hired me to do x, but I'm really good at y. I'd
> be happy to help out
> with y, but I'll need some recompense for it."
> 
> Does the company feel that they got schtoinked by
> the developers? Were they
> bemoaning the fact that they didn't get what they
> paid for? If so, then you
> have great leverage.
> 
> Do you have a portfolio that you can show them? More
> leverage.
> 
> Aardvark's idea of having it added to your job desc
> is a good one, too. Some
> companies love that attitude, and some don't. It
> usually depends on how
> iron-clad the heirarchy is.
> 
> If they see it as a temporary gig, then you should
> negotiate a bonus of some
> sort. Whatever you do, don't underprice yourself
> just to get the work. If
> they already feel like they got ripped off, they're
> going to be extra
> sensitive which could get sticky, and you don't want
> an underpaid, sticky
> job. Yech.
> 
> >I'm a lot cheaper than
> >the company they used before. What do you all
> think?
> 
> Good luck,
> 
> David
> -----
> home: http://home.gci.net/~mccreath/
> work: http://www.asd.k12.ak.us/ 
> 
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