djmill

In short I work for a start up who underpays me. This company is ~5 years old and every time I bring this up, they throw a small amount of money at me to shut me up and remind me that the company is "not yet profitable".

Well, Amazon isn't profitable (maybe they are now..? last I heard they were not), but they still pay their employees market value. Why the guilt? Why not give an employee a raise (which I deserve) without reminding me that they're "doing me this favor"? No, I'm doing them the favor by continuing to work for them... I've seen their applicants, I've seen how no one wants to work here... I know exactly what's going on here...

Just curious what people's thoughts are on this. My personal feeling is that I won't get the pay that I'm looking for without finding a job that will pay it - and THEN my employers will try to keep me from leaving by giving me what I was looking for initially.

How does profitability weigh in on paying employees market value?

Edit: equity is extremely small. Tech lead position for bottom 35 percentile pay in the area.

This is probably a very simple question that a simple Google query can answer, but I'd like to get some opinions on the matter.

About me: - 3 year exp software engineer - 84k/year salary - Ruby on Rails, JS, CoffeeScript, MySQL, HTML/CSS (currently the UI guru..) - Oversee 2 folks on the US side (we also have offshore folks) and we all work under 1 App Architect - Company is based out of Boston - I live and work remotely outside of Boston.

The company has always been fast-paced. I work on everything for the front end. This means: 7 different Rails apps (internal & external), 5 different Rails engines, ~10 in-house built gems, and I also delegate work to 2 folks under me as a tech lead for a new project.

According to Payscale.com (including perks, etc): - Boston rankings: 38th percentile @ 84k/year - Where I live/work remotely: 75th percentile @ 84k/year

I continue to pick up more and more responsibilities, yet the 'cap' for raises is 10%. I'm at a point where I know I can find work that pays more, yet I do not have another offer. I'm currently interviewing with Google though, so maybe that gives me a leg-up?

Anyway, what merits do I have for a raise? Where I live/work vs. where the company is based, my ranking is drastically different. Yet, it'd still be cheaper for the company to give me a hefty raise rather than finding someone with my skill sets in Boston (RoR devs in Boston are super expensive and hard to find, so I feel like I've been taken advantage of).

How can I go about asking for a raise? My plan is to gather different estimates from different websites for both areas and then come up with a solid middle-ground for the pay that I'm looking for. Without another job offer on the table, it's hard to demand anything; however, I know that my company needs me more than I need them (not going into details here).

Just looking for some opinions and thanks in advance for any advice given here :)