[liquidcool]

You mention a couple times that your work has a significant impact on the company's sales/revenue. If you can actually quantify the value of your work, you are in a much stronger negotiating position with your employer and others. It is rarely done by engineers and sets you apart.

In addition to fair compensation, you mention "stressing over issues." I've noticed more than once that I've been stressed over problems my clients didn't really care about. It's not easy, but it's important to keep your stress levels in line with management's (or lower).

[amiuba]

Value provided to my employer is more or less known: they sell my time for about 5x what they pay me (software consultancy).

The stress is over issues that the client is pressuring us to solve before a deadline, that usually requires overtime. I always refuse to do overtime, and try to work less rather than more. This creates a situation where my colleagues resent me because it feels like I'm not doing my share since they roll over and do whatever it takes to meet the deadline. And the client never learns, expecting overtime.

As a result, my last performance review wasn't great because my employer would prefer that I worked as much or more than my colleagues while only paying me 40h (clients are billed by the week, not by the hour.) I'm not in the top performers at my job either, I'd say I'm average at best. I don't feel like my bargaining position is particularly strong at the moment with this employer, and I negotiated my initial salary well from what I gather from colleagues I've discussed comp with.

[liquidcool]

Wow, 5X! I have a small consultancy and most engineers are surprised to learn that 2X is typical. I do know some of the large management consulting firms have very high margins, especially on junior programmers, which you're clearly not. Specialist knowledge will also raise rates. But I suspect they have high churn with abuse like that.

Do they have an awesome sales/marketing team, or are those rates typical for your industry? If it's typical, you might consider freelancing. Or finding a small consultancy that will treat you better and take care of sales for you.

I'll say I was once unhappy and asked to be laid off. They told me no, essentially because I was a cash cow. You think your bargaining position is tough, but if your utilization rate is 100% and their margin is 80%, if you leave they are guaranteed to lose at least 160 billable hours (up to 480) while they replace you. I'm assuming you're not in gaming or a glamour industry where there is a line out the door to replace you.

[amiuba]

I'm far from an expert, I'd say intermediate. There are people I work with who know far more than I do.

The company specializes in a couple of frameworks so yes they sell expertise in that sense, and they've done a lot of work developing the brand.

But yes, there are more jobs than people to fill them, which is pretty much any software development job that isn't gaming related or movie related. My company always has open software dev positions and they can't fill them fast enough despite being very well known in the industry.

What domain is your consultancy in?

[liquidcool]

Traditionally it's been Java web application development and ecommerce, and I've subcontracted a few times when friends needed help.

But now I'm currently focusing more on staffing, since almost nobody technical is in recruiting, hence I'm a no brainer to hiring managers. Long term, I'll funnel recruiting revenue into products.

[beckler]

I believe there is a reason why it's rarely done by engineers, and that is because most management types view engineers as easily replaceable. Asking for a raise can put a target on your back when things get tight.