Hello all.
I have a question about what you all get paid, and what I should expect
in my situation. I googled quite a bit, but not come up with any
benchmarks definite enough that I would want to approach my employer
with, so I figured I would check with you, since presumably at least
some of you do this for money.
I have been with a small company in Laguna Hills, CA for almost two
years now. I am the only programmer here (effectively anyway--my boss
knows a bit of ASP and minor scripting stuff). I'm currently only 20
and not even halfway through college yet. The company shows great
promise, and I absolutely love working with the rest of the people in
the company, including my boss. They are extremely flexible with me
when it comes to getting hours in, and fitting in classes each
semester. We are on very good terms. There is no reason on earth I
would want to leave right now, or in the forseeable future.
That said, know that I am currently in a salaried position, 24 hours
(effectively 3 days) per week, at $20 per hour. I don't feel like I'm
being exploited in any way; my boss is not the type who would take
advantage of me because I'm just some young college student and I still
live at home. But I'm also fairly confident I could ask for more.
Now, I'm not an absolute guru, but I am completely confident that I
*don't* suck. I've been programming in various languages since I was 8
(starting with copying GW-BASIC program listings out of the back of
Usborne science books), and have worked extensively with many
implementations of BASIC (DOS and Windows), C/C++, PERL, ASP, and now
PHP and MySQL. My strongest language used to be C++, since I spent
most of my teenage years working and playing with that. However, I've
now been working with PHP for a very solid two years, and I've gotten
quite proficient with it. I write easy-to-read, structured code. I
comment. I divide files logically so that all related functions are
grouped together.
Now, to give you an idea of the level of code that I'm working with.
I'm not still in the GET-based ugly HTML form submission stage. No.
The project I've been working on is a complete customer management
web-app, using PHP and MySQL. This contains oodles of DHTML and
javascript in addition to the server-side code. It provides network
component logging, contact management, documentation (for every single
visit they make to clients), full calendar/scheduling, task lists,
alerting (even so far as automatically sending text message reminders
to phones). This is one huge and awesome project. They used to use
Exchange and Outlook, but have since dropped that to use this instead.
Everyone who uses it thinks it's awesome, so it's not like they're
being forced into a crappy system because it's company policy.
Keep in mind, I'm the ONLY programmer on this project. Granted, other
people do most of the conceptual design, but I'm the guy who has to
make it happen. This also means I'm the only guy who can fix problems
if they show up on some random weekend. I'm also the guy handling the
SSH-based maintenance (though it is very low) of the virtual private
server this thing is hosted on.
So to sum up:
My 2-year review is coming in a couple weeks, and I want to know what I
can ask for. I realize my station in life (live-at-home college
student) *should* have absolutely no bearing on my wages; I know the
quality of work should be the only thing that affects that. So, based
on the above information, what should I ask for?
I don't want to screw the pooch, so to speak. I'm willing to make a
sacrifice in the money side of things in order to keep a really good
relationship with my boss. All the flexibility and totally great work
atmosphere are worth something to me. Though, my boss isn't the type
who would get all indignant just because I ask for more, as long as I'm
not a jerk about it.
So folks, what's reasonable? I appreciate any and all input. Thanks.
I have a question about what you all get paid, and what I should expect
in my situation. I googled quite a bit, but not come up with any
benchmarks definite enough that I would want to approach my employer
with, so I figured I would check with you, since presumably at least
some of you do this for money.
I have been with a small company in Laguna Hills, CA for almost two
years now. I am the only programmer here (effectively anyway--my boss
knows a bit of ASP and minor scripting stuff). I'm currently only 20
and not even halfway through college yet. The company shows great
promise, and I absolutely love working with the rest of the people in
the company, including my boss. They are extremely flexible with me
when it comes to getting hours in, and fitting in classes each
semester. We are on very good terms. There is no reason on earth I
would want to leave right now, or in the forseeable future.
That said, know that I am currently in a salaried position, 24 hours
(effectively 3 days) per week, at $20 per hour. I don't feel like I'm
being exploited in any way; my boss is not the type who would take
advantage of me because I'm just some young college student and I still
live at home. But I'm also fairly confident I could ask for more.
Now, I'm not an absolute guru, but I am completely confident that I
*don't* suck. I've been programming in various languages since I was 8
(starting with copying GW-BASIC program listings out of the back of
Usborne science books), and have worked extensively with many
implementations of BASIC (DOS and Windows), C/C++, PERL, ASP, and now
PHP and MySQL. My strongest language used to be C++, since I spent
most of my teenage years working and playing with that. However, I've
now been working with PHP for a very solid two years, and I've gotten
quite proficient with it. I write easy-to-read, structured code. I
comment. I divide files logically so that all related functions are
grouped together.
Now, to give you an idea of the level of code that I'm working with.
I'm not still in the GET-based ugly HTML form submission stage. No.
The project I've been working on is a complete customer management
web-app, using PHP and MySQL. This contains oodles of DHTML and
javascript in addition to the server-side code. It provides network
component logging, contact management, documentation (for every single
visit they make to clients), full calendar/scheduling, task lists,
alerting (even so far as automatically sending text message reminders
to phones). This is one huge and awesome project. They used to use
Exchange and Outlook, but have since dropped that to use this instead.
Everyone who uses it thinks it's awesome, so it's not like they're
being forced into a crappy system because it's company policy.
Keep in mind, I'm the ONLY programmer on this project. Granted, other
people do most of the conceptual design, but I'm the guy who has to
make it happen. This also means I'm the only guy who can fix problems
if they show up on some random weekend. I'm also the guy handling the
SSH-based maintenance (though it is very low) of the virtual private
server this thing is hosted on.
So to sum up:
My 2-year review is coming in a couple weeks, and I want to know what I
can ask for. I realize my station in life (live-at-home college
student) *should* have absolutely no bearing on my wages; I know the
quality of work should be the only thing that affects that. So, based
on the above information, what should I ask for?
I don't want to screw the pooch, so to speak. I'm willing to make a
sacrifice in the money side of things in order to keep a really good
relationship with my boss. All the flexibility and totally great work
atmosphere are worth something to me. Though, my boss isn't the type
who would get all indignant just because I ask for more, as long as I'm
not a jerk about it.
So folks, what's reasonable? I appreciate any and all input. Thanks.
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