I work in a software outsourcing company.
Recently, my manager pulled me out of my project to work on a system design document for a new application from scratch. The client is from a very well-known manufacturing company. Now, the business unit leaders' decision to make someone with less than 2 years of experience do the task garnered me some unwanted attention. I was of course happy with it but apparently not those people who worked in the company for more than 4 years. I did not really care. I'm sort of infamous for being the quiet one, I do not really speak unless I'm spoken to and I do not not have many friends as well. I'm just good at what I'm tasked to do and I always try to be very polite and professional to everyone.
Weeks went on with me working on the system design. My manager praised me for being quick with it without sacrificing quality. She also told me that we will then present it to the clients, but it won't be me who will be presenting the design but one of our super PMOs. I agreed with that, I suck at speaking in front of people and this is a huge thing as well, the company cannot afford to mess up.
On the proposal day, I went to the meeting room but my manager had a bothered, uneasy face when she saw me. I ignored it and sat on the corner. She later then told me to keep quiet and that I do not exist for now, let them answer the questions if ever the clients has any. I was a offended by how she said that to me but I sat unbothered.
The meeting started and they projected the presentation that I made with utmost pride, but my heart sank when my name on the revision history page on the document were replaced by the name of the Super PMO who was presenting it then. He was talking like he was the one who spent hours making it, only using 'me', 'I'. I've never felt very violated in my whole life and I had to watch it through the end. My manager noticed this but did not want me to leave in case there were questions the Super PMO could not answer. I stayed there even if I really wanted to cry, over 50% of the questions were directed to me and I had to send the answers to the Super PMO via an instant messaging app.
They won the proposal. My manager told me I would not even be a lead when the project materializes, I'll be just one of the devs. They took every credit of my hard work. Nobody knew I existed.
After that sad experience, I went to the bathroom and cried. Then I went back to my table where my teammate was angry about what happened to me. They were full on warfreaks about it, saying I need to sue and complain. I was not about to do that, but I went on to check the contract I was in, turns out that system design and architecture is not specifically on it and the company has specialized people with that title.
Later on my manager had the guts to eat lunch with me and told me I got promoted two steps further, I am now an Associate Development Engineer. I acted happy. I received an email with the details about my promotion, the company praising me for having my fourth SS (highest) rating in last quarter's employee evaluation and also a tidbit about my raise. 30 effing dollars. Yay, I'm getting paid $430 monthly now. Oh joy. At this point they're blatantly just taking advantage of me.
Do I have every right to complain and make a case about the injustice that happened to me? I truly do not know what to do but I know that starting a fight is very troublesome, would it be worth it? Or should I just quit and find a better company? Does this happen often in this industry? Is that even legal, is there a law protecting small time employees from this kind of situation?
Thing is I'm very new in the industry, 22 years old and only about 1.5 years in, I don't know if companies will hire me with that little time and I admit I can be very naive.
Thanks for reading til the end and excuse my wrong grammar if I had any. English is not my first language. It feels good just writing this out and venting to strangers. Thank you very much.