[protonimitate]

Same thing happened to me at my last company. I was over worked, wore too many hats, and was paid significantly less than my team mates who were more junior than I was (and had less responsibility). I had a handful of conversations that never amounted to anything. As soon as I put in my notice with a new offer in hand suddenly I was able to "set my price".

I left for other reasons as well, but it really shone a light on how management thought of ICs. Managers: proactively reward your ICs, don't wait until they're halfway out the door. I would honestly take a less aggressive adjustment in comp if it was done proactively, rather than waiting until I'm fed up and on my way out.

[steveBK123]

Too many roles / too many hats is far too common and why I find it hard to stay anywhere more than 4-5 years.

As a senior IC in a super-flat & growing org.. I'm almost like a customer successs engineer, product manager, scrum master, senior developer and tech lead all rolled into one.

Management administrivia I accumulate administrative things my manager doesn't want to do & pushes down I do unofficially own a part of the team Dotted lines of devs in my "team" that can be rolled in & out sprint by sprint

Customer success / product / architecture I collect customer requirements, translate them into stories & documentation I manage customer/manager expectations with status meetings & reports I project plan out 3 months of work with JIRA hierarchies/Gantt chart I design solutions given the requirements

Scrum I run our standups, sprint plannings, backlog refinements

Corporate citizenship I am involved in recruiting 5-10% of my week I run working groups / long running cross team tech org

Development I do IC work - directly assigned sprint deliverable tickets (analysis, development, infra creation) I need to accomplish

I've been looking at moving to a more official management role elsewhere so I can focus at being good at a few things instead of decent at all the things.

[maxsilver]

> I'm almost like a customer successs engineer, product manager, scrum master, senior developer and tech lead all rolled into one.

This is also me. Except I really like it. But I'm not sure what to do about it, it can reflect super poorly on a resume for some reason.

"Oh, your applying to be a Senior Engineer? Look at all this product management and developer manager experience on your resume, you must not really be serious about coding, you aren't strong enough technically, the developers won't trust you"

"Oh, your applying to be a Product Manager / Product Director. Look at all this programming and tech experience on your resume, you are really just a developer, you should just be pulling tickets from JIRA/Asana/Linear, you probably wouldn't be able to speak in non-technical terms in front of customers/clients/etc"

(loop on repeat)

I've not heard of a job name/title/role that accurately represents this sort of work, even though companies generally seem to like it, if I can somehow get through their application process.

[strgcmc]

TBH, reading this as a manager, I have to admit I feel like asking my engineers to take on SOME of these beyond-just-the-code duties... is a good thing? Obviously there are a bunch of caveats, and nuances to whether you want an IC engineer to be 100% coding and 0% talking to customers or doing admin (this seems bad), or is it 90% vs 10% (maybe okay), or 80/20 (sweet spot?), 50/50 (concerning), 20/80 (bad again), etc.

That being said, if you are doing all of these things, and not being fairly compensated for it, then that's definitely a problem. A $50k/year web dev position at some random agency, doesn't deserve this level of work from you, esp. if you could instead take all these responsibilities, and do them at a serious technology company or start-up, for 2x-5x the comp.

[FpUser]

My last title before I went on my own was CTO/Architect. And I was doing all the things you mentioned down to coding. I could not complain about compensation as it was very fair - $250K in 2000 (the last year). But I was becoming a wreck.

Now I have my own company and I still do all those things, LOL. Big difference being I choose what I do, how I do and obviously the size so I can chew it on my own or with my few trusty subcontractors. It is basically development of new products from scratch either for clients or for my own company and once in a while some very short hit and run type jobs. I now also leave plenty of time for myself to enjoy whatever activities make me tick.

[robertlagrant]

Sounds like you could co-found a company, which could also be cool but in the other direction.

[autarch]

What you're describing is a Staff or Principal Engineer title and should be compensated accordingly.

[moneywoes]

I have 2 yoe and end up doing all of these. Startup life I guess haha

[t-writescode]

> and was paid significantly less than my team mates who were more junior than I was

This is the kind of thing that any company doing this should be named, shamed and blocklisted.

There is no reason other than greed that a higher ranking employee shouldn't make at least as much as a lower ranking employee in total compensation. "Person was hired earlier and is okay with the lower wage" is, frankly, a reflection of a company hating their employees. It's a shame and an embarrassment.

[tomjakubowski]

I don't know. At every company I've worked for (as a junior, and as a senior) there were some juniors who clearly contributed more to the company's success than some seniors. I don't think this is an uncommon experience.

To me the "rank" of senior engineer should indicate the engineer's experience, and maybe their "wisdom" and depth of knowledge, not their salary. A senior engineer may slack off a bit and be less productive than an eager junior, or want to take on less responsibility; it seems fine in that case that the junior is rewarded with higher pay.

Know your value to the company, and negotiate compensation to match it (or exceed it!). I'd also suggest companies not tie pay to title.

[tharkun__]

Disclaimer: I'm not trying to say anything about or against your parent here.

This can be a very subjective thing. How do you 'rank'? This is not something that is completely clearcut, cut and dry and you are 100% accurate without fail.

Example: I have a guy on my team that is 'more junior' than some others. He's killing it though. He's consistently behaving like he's got 10 more years of experience than he does and people that had 20 more years of experience than him couldn't do 10% of what he does without fail.

Of course you could say that the Senior developer should never have been hired if he was actually a Junior developer that's just been around for some time already but hiring practices aren't perfect, people get hired on one team and move to another and you're the first to actually do something about it etc.

[jokethrowaway]

It's really hard to justify with management.

Instead saying "X left, we need extra budget to replace it" will often work.

It's idiotic and expensive for the company but what can you do.

[shuntress]

Here's what you can do: Hold and express sincere trust in and appreciation of your employees.

[roguecoder]

I swear at some of these companies it is going to take engineering managers going on strike before corporate actually respects that we know how to run effective teams for the good of the business.

[hinkley]

You get what you measure, and the only thing they know how to measure is negative outcomes.

You can't prove that giving me an extra 5k made me stay long enough to pay it back at >= our revenue targets.

The semi-healthy version I see play out is when people who want to be better use the loss of a customer or a coworker as fodder for pushing their agenda. Essentially it's one class of teachable moment. People learn from pain when nothing else works, and you can amplify or dull that sense of pain.

[dvtrn]

proactively reward your ICs, don't wait until they're halfway out the door.

[Insert frustrated comment here about how capable, sufficient and well-performing ICs are absolutely rewarded.....with more work and additional duties]

[minton]

IC = independent contractor?

[Thorrez]

Individual contributor. So writing code yourself, not managing other people.