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darkwulph03on Ask HN: Hired to write, but mostly code, what to do?

I was worried about it since I only have my Associates (no plans to go back), but I code A LOT in my free time. I didn't realize it at the time, but I have the benefit of living in an area that has high demand and low supply of good developers. That helps a lot and I had 2 offers off the bat. I didn't even know the language i was hired to use, just had to show i knew how to code and solve problems.

If they can't offer what you want long term, take what they are willing to give. Having a dev title for a year or so will help, but there isn't anything stopping you from searching shortly after you take what your current company offers. Then once you get an offer from somewhere else, you can see what your current company will do to keep you, but make sure you are willing to take the other job before you do that (doesn't always end well).

darkwulph03on Ask HN: Hired to write, but mostly code, what to do?

I was in a similar boat with my last job doing Support/QA/Custom Development for 2 years while the "official" devs went off and made a new version of the product. About a year and a half in i brought it up and they agreed to move me out of support, but the pay raise wasn't nearly adequate for the duties expected. And I regretfully agreed to half raise now, half a raise later... (24k to 32k total) and ended up getting dev/support removed leaving me with QA (devs wanted dev back and I wasn't invited to the party). I promptly left the company and found a much better job doing Dev for 55k, which sadly burnt some bridges with people i liked.

They will likely agree that you should be moved more officially into a dev position, but since you're moving up within the same company you shouldn't expect to get paid what you think is adequate for the duties. Giant pay bumps are an extreme rarity when moving up in the same company. This isn't just an IT problem, but it is why developers don't generally stay at the same company for more than 2-3 years.

Have a friendly conversation with the right people about it, but make sure you have terms laid out that you can agree to in the long run with them, otherwise start looking elsewhere.