datawalke's comments

Freelance may be my best choice at the moment. I do however have to make sure I have a little more in the bank before I make the jump if I don't have a full time position lined up. Instead of killing myself with extra side-work raising my freelance rate may be in order just to have a little bit more of a cushion. If I didn't have a family to care for I wouldn't be as worried.

Thank you for your advice.

Thank you very much for your reply.

I agree with you on all aspects. It would be too risky for me to do anything but act normal until I settle my future plans out. One mistake I would have made would have been on the disclosure of my salary -- Thank you.

And admittedly, working at this company has been very fun and a great experience for me. However the nature of how the founder is and the current compensation drove me to where I am right now.

Thank you again for your advice.

Pennsylvania.

No equity.

I am trying to keep this post fairly generic, however we are located in the Northeastern United States Lower than New York, Higher than Maryland ;)

This could be a possibility. On #1 I know he will say no to. Actually, I believe all your steps would come out just as you laid them out there.

I'm sure your great as well!

Hell I'm 21 and I still can't do most advanced algebra. When I was nine my passion started working in GeoCities and Tripod. I don't know any nine year old who can actually do real web work. ;)

I agree with mnemonik.

You wouldn't be able to gain experience in those listed skills without using them for something. There has to be some work of yours out there somewhere. And if not, start doing some freelance work or launching some of your own ideas/projects onto the web. It's a great way to get real experience out there and extra rewarding when you see users interacting with your work!

I do agree that my colleagues do need a little guidance in the situation as well. They are almost all new-hires right out of college and were never exposed to anything else.

With bills it comes down the items I listed before (housing, car, student loans, credit cards, utilities) Food/misc wasn't included.

The issue with this area is it's fairly stuck in the old' days. People expect to pay $200-$500 for a website, regardless of what it does. It could be one page, or it could have all the functionality they would ever dream of but only expect to pay a one-time fee.

Thank you for the kind words.

I think the key to my next situation is making sure the next group of people I work with give me my fair share.

I think this falls into what a lot of people experience is the doubt in not knowing what you are worth. In my area typical entry programming positions are at around 35k/yr. I feel my time and experience puts me well past any entry based position. I am always somewhat unsure of exactly where I stand.

I thing renegotiation is out of the question. I feel even if I renegotiated and it ended up being the perfect compensation/benefits position the day-to-day work environment would become hostile -- and that is something I do not want to happen.

I honestly don't know what I was thinking. -- Well actually I do: Back in 2008, a year and a half into college, I won a local business plan competition and dropped out. (The competition gave office space and some startup capital.) The college I was in was a small community college and the classes weren't that great for the IT field. Going into college I thought everyone would have the same passion I did. Into the first semester I was helping teach my major related courses.

Unfortunately, not having any sense about business and being somewhat misguided by my other founders, the business flopped. I started a second business which did slightly better, and again won the business plan competition again. However our overhead was too high compared to the cashflow coming in. We started working with the company mentioned in this post and I was basically made an initial offer to work exclusively for them. (Mistake.)

Going back to my reasoning: I felt that if this company did go somewhere, that there would no longer be a need or a way to get roadblocked by not having a degree. I am a strong believer in work and passion than a piece of paper. I know I would have never hired any of my classmates from that college.

Although the justification is/was not sound at all. Getting out know is the only way for me to continue to seize my potential. I know continuing down this path will only lead to my own destruction.

Working on updating a few resume and portfolio items now. Thank you for the good luck!

Good catch, thank you. The email address was unknown in this realm, but still could easily be connected to me with a little research. Took your advice and created one. Thank you.

I do believe life is a good deal of weighing risks and taking them at a period of time. Jumping right off to freelancing would be too uncertain at the moment. Bills come to around $1,500/mo. Freelancing at the moment generates around $900-$1200/mo. But I currently only have the bandwidth to handle 1 or 2 projects per month.

On the rebellion side I would not feel ethical doing so. I don't want this guy's business to crash and burn. It does honestly provide a solution to a need in the industry and the product is of high quality. As much as I sometimes wish I was, I'm not that much of a dick to cause trouble. (Plus there may be some movement there of a lawsuit or something that would make me overly nervous.) I do have a feeling however that me leaving this company will have a snowball effect on the others there.

Agreed.

Originally he brought this up and I was thinking like 10 to 20%. He then said something to the degree of a half percent per year.

I unfortunately did sign a non-compete. The founder has pretty tight connections within this industry. It would be hard to steal clients to begin with -- I make sure all of the work is perfect and the clients are happy. I also would feel unethical doing so.

Thank you for the kind words.

If anyone on HN is hiring or looking to keep some extra talent in mind I would love to talk to you. I am very good at a select few things: UI Design, PHP (Specifically CakePHP), XHTML/CSS, and Problem Solving. I am also okay and very comfortable with Subversion and MySQL.I have a passion for the web and automation. You can contact me via HN or at: [email protected]

Thank you for the bluntness, at times -- especially now, I think it is needed. I have been in this position twice before where I have been debating what to do in terms of leaving/staying. However this time is different. I have never felt a depression like I have over the past two weeks.

Mentally commiting myself is something I believe I can take hold of. My main issue and worry will be finding a new employer. The area I am in currently, Northern Eastcoast, lacks tech companies. I would have to relocate to Philly, New York, or Boston to get to any hub. And currently money is too tight to do something of that nature.

With this job I got myself into this nasty living paycheck-to-paycheck situation. I will have to have something in place before I leave.

"As for the "he has not taken any pay" crap, he has equity, you do not your only reward is your pay check in that situation."

Very correct. On several occasions I have been promised equity. At first as a compensation for my pay, and then as vested. However none of this ever came into existence. Every time I brought it up again he would keep putting it off. But then in any discussions for a raise or anything to that degree he would use it against me saying something to the degree of: "Well, you know you are going to get equity in this!" I called him on it once. Saying that I wouldn't want equity if my pay was increased. The conversation ended right there.

Thank you for your advice. Along with doing this business I do run a fairly good freelance business to make up for the lack of pay. The freelance work is what really makes me happy. The clients are always great and seem to love the attention I give them and the work I generate for them. However it does make it a bit hard mentally and physically for me and my family. Getting home at six, seeing my family for three or four hours and then working until 3AM each night gets daunting.

I guess Woz was right.

Looking good. It is nice and clean. However I would really like to see something to describe the four screenshots. Maybe underneath them a little black box that spans across the width of the 4 images that has a little arrow overlapping right on the bottom of each screenshot describing what it does.