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Comment by pyrodactyl | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for this, helps me that people understand me and I'm not being very unreasonable.

From what I've gotten from my discussions on my post is

1) I will start looking for contract work. Not going to be easy, but the best way forward.

2) Use some of the negotiation techniques mentioned like bringing up the fact I'm not competing locally, but internationally

3) Negotiate with my company and threaten to leave? Not fully sure of this. More alligend to leaving anyway as I find the excuses for location based pay pathetic. Will be leaving as soon as I can.

4) Always talk compensation with co-workers

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> Negotiate with my company and threaten to leave? Not fully sure of this. More alligend to leaving anyway as I find the excuses for location based pay pathetic.

You should negotiate, but do so from a position of strength and leave emotion out of it. The reality is that location-based pay is standard. This reason for this is labor market incentives. Whatever your manager says is not reality, it's just a story to try to placate you. How defensible the story is or how angry and demotivated you are about it is absolutely meaningless in terms of outcomes, and the sooner you come to terms with that and look at the situation from a purely rational perspective the better.

What matters here is how much leverage you have. The best leverage is having an offer in hand for more money. Short of that, if you are perceived as a top performer, that could confer some leverage, but keep in mind that location-based pay is probably baked into the cost structure of the entire office. You are likely better served by a strategy to demonstrate your individual value so that your raise isn't seen as precedent for why the entire location pay scale needs to increase.

5) Become indispensable in the role you're (before #3). This is true even locally - why should I as an employer pay you more when I can get someone cheaper to do what you can do.

6) While contract work sometimes calls for a generalist (#1 above)... try to be a specialist by becoming an expert in a high demand field(s). At that point you can charge whatever you want regardless of your location.

7) Don't exchange your time for money - get paid for your skillset (related to #1 & #6)

one way is to be good at integrating some common but specialized open source, for example helping companies who've adopted prosemirror (for features but maybe not their whole platform justifying an internal team)

I would not go with option 1 until:

1. You have more experience (why would someone pick you as a contractor?)

2. Get better at negotiation.

Your concerns are valid, but that you didn't have the answers is a signal you're not wise enough to go into the contracting world.

btw - drop me a msg on twitter (throwaway is fine), @aehlke if you'd like to connect on resources for going independent with dev work, I'm starting a full stack resource for this soon and would be happy to share. good luck

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