Should I be paid equally for the same work

Question

I graduated with a MSc and now I'm working my first job. Everything was fine until this year when I asked to renegotiate my salary. I asked for 35% to compete with inflation and compensation for all the new responsibilities I picked up during my 18 months there. I had to settle for 25% which was fine back then but my costs keep rising and after some more market research I've come to the conclusion that I'm still quite underpaid.

We are a small team of four developers with a very complex domain with ancient legacy code. Training a new engineer (if you can find one) will take about a year to reach the domain knowledge I posses. While I was hired as a junior my current set of responsibilities puts me between medior and senior level for this company.

I also recently found out that I'm paid about 2000 euros per month less than my colleague (25y experience) and about 1000 euros compared to market rate for my area.

We do the same work I work without supervision and my work is not inferior to theirs when you compare code reviews.

So should I be paid equally compared to my colleagues?

P.S. I do really like my job but leaving this much money on the table is going to breed resentment.

EDIT: Because our team is so small it would likely affect plans for the following year as the one remaining senior would have to spend his time training staff.

Answer 1

So should I be paid equally compared to my colleagues?

Your pay is only relevant to what you have negotiated with the company and the value that the company sees in you.

If the company feels that your colleague is more valuable than you, then they will pay them more. It doesn't hurt that the colleague appears to have considerably more work experience than yourself.

While you did well in negotiating a 25% pay increase, if this is still not enough for you then you should look for a company that will pay what you are looking for. Keep in mind that prior work experience does factor in to how much a company in willing to pay you, even if you do the exact same work as someone else.

Answer 2

It's not really a surprise that your colleague, who has 23 years more experience than you do is paid more than you are. Frankly, I'd be astonished if they weren't, because that would suggest that either they were hugely underpaid, or that you were hugely overpaid.

If your pay is below the current market rate (and you need to do some proper research into this - not just a quick google search), then you should bring that up with your management, or look for another job with a higher salary. But that discussion should not involve trying to compare your salary to your much more experienced colleague.

There is much more to being a developer than the code you write, and just because you think that you're contribution to the company is just as valuable as theirs is, doesn't mean that management agrees with you.

Answer 3

I'm going to agree with @sf02. The question of "should" is irrelevant. There "should" be world peace, and there "should" be universal health care, but we have to deal with things as they are. It's great that you had enough negotiating power to achieve a 25% raise even though it wasn't what you wanted, but then again there's a secondary problem.

That secondary problem is that you're busy comparing yourself to your peer. So if you were initially getting paid the same, and they gave the other person a dollar raise per year, would you be fuming over it? That's how it's coming off in your post. Would you volunteer to lower your salary if someone else on your team was doing the same work and getting paid less? Or how would you respond if the company lowered your pay (without your permission) to make things fair for the lesser-paid staff member? I don't think either approach to creating fairness would sit well with you.

Life's not fair, my friend. In civil service and military occupations they have fixed pay scales just to counter the kind of argument you're raising and to keep the workers from being at each others' throats from playing the comparison game. This is also the reason HR departments don't like employees discussing salaries.

If this issue's causing you challenges with your self esteem, a raise is not going to fix things, but therapy might. Don't let this issue haunt you during your entire career, because there will be inequity wherever you go.

Answer 4

25% Salary increase in 2 years is not enough for you and you are irritates that somebody who has much more experience earns more?

Either

• you developed into a rock-star programmer since you started
• you were already a beyond the average programmer and negotiated bad starting salary
• or you are grossly overestimating your skills and importance.

I guess it's the latter and maybe it's better for you and for sure for the company if your ways part quickly.

Answer 5

Ah yes, all those new faces on the IT market. It's simple, really - they don't pay you a lot because they can afford to. Your analysis about your own employability and how much the company is willing to pay is heavily skewed. There is a lot more to it:

• "Market rate" is a deceptive term. Your either have an offer on your table or you don't. Odds are, with your CV you won't be offered as much as you think you would - companies know they can cut costs on that, and they will. Every point you make about how you might be paid more elsewhere is moot until you have at least one offer with that figure.
• There are many other factors at play when it comes to compensation - not only an experienced person provides value for business in more subtle ways, it is also not uncommon for people to be able to negotiate better salaries if they have families/kids, nearing retirement etc. Those are purely social reasons, but there are bosses who believe they should support their workers that way. Pure discrimination, but this does happen more than you probably think.
• There are companies where writing code is tightly coupled with the business itself, and those with a loose coupling. Your case is likely the latter: you think the company would spend a lot more retraining new staff. Perhaps, but not being able to write code is probably not as crucial for them, either - as long as the cogs get greased, it would be fine by them. (This point is pure speculation, of course, but many many companies would rather get a new hire and eat the costs of training the previous one than keep matching the compensation).
• You have been working on a legacy code for an year and a half, and this is not an easily transferrable experience. Ergo, your chances of getting a good offer are not as great as they might've been. Work experience per se is great, of course.

It's simple, really - they pay you less because they can. You have ambitious salary expectations; it would make sense to clarify what could you expect in e.g. 5 years from now if you keep this job and make your decisions accordingly. Again, it's called job market because if either side is unhappy with the arrangement, they are free to look elsewhere.

But as an anecdote, I hear the complaint about new hires and their unreasonable expectations fresh out of college all the time for the past 8+ years. And yes, there are developers of a similar skill level in different companies with 2x difference in the net salary. Not all of them took up on new offers, so the companies can get away with paying them "half of the market rate".

Answer 6

The problem with ancient legacy code is: It is not valued by the company, and therefore the people maintaining it are not valued. Even if problems with that code could be absolutely fatal for the company. In this situation it can be hard to get paid what you are worth.

Go and look for a position elsewhere that pays more. Once you signed a contract you give notice. Accepting a counter offer is usually a bad idea, but you may mention that you would consider coming back as a contractor if needed. At contractor rates, which are significantly higher than usual employee rates.

Often these rates get paid because they come from a different budget. A company cannot afford to pay X per year (because that is a fixed cost and companies hat fixed cost), but they can afford to pay 1.5X or 2X year after year (if they can stop paying anytime which makes it a variable cost).