I often get the feeling that I'm significantly less well paid than others in the company. I've seen pro formas for certain management positions and some ideas on wages in a company we just acquired, and I'm sure I'm pretty low on the list.
Part of the disparity is likely negotiating tactics (I know one employee who got a nice raise after getting a competing offer), and the desire of the company to pay the least amount possible.
For me, another big part is that my job can't be directly attributed to a revenue stream (we're in the services industry). For those who's jobs are directly paid by contract with the client, they'll pay whatever the client will agree to. For those of us in "overhead", they'll pay as little as possible because it's difficult, if not impossible, to assign a dollar amount to the value that we bring to the company.
I would venture to guess that devs that work for software development business get paid more than those that are just in IT at a non-software company.
You always have to be willing to walk away. If you're early in your career, this means building up your skills (and certs, if you're in IT) to the point where you feel very confident that you can get another job quickly if necessary. If you're more advanced in your career, it means keeping your networks/skills fresh and possibly doing some freelancing on the side.
It's not even just about salary negotiation; knowing you can walk away whenever you want to (and actually believing that you will if you decide to) gives you the freedom to take risks and just have more fun at your job in general.
I work in the software and it can be just as hard for developers to figure out where they fit in the revenue stream. I've talked to guys that work IT in large corporations and they make boats more than I do for the equivalent amount of work and expertise. The only difference is they are a company of 5000 and we are a company of 25.
I believe the only people that can truly justify their pay with any accurate metric are salespeople. They are paid entirely by commission and no sales means no income so there is no question about what they are paid. They do get additional perks like company cars, expensed meals, etc that fall outside the metrics. So 10 developers work on one product that draws in $2 million of revenue. How do you slice that up? by lines of code, hours worked, bugs squashed?
I would also say that large software companies pay developers more than small software companies. But I find this to be the case in almost every industry.
Salespeople can justify their pay relative to each other, but not in an absolute sense (at least not any more than developers, anyway). If it were absolute, why would you need developers at all?
Their pay is only relative to what they sell. Which is about as absolute as you can get. Developers, and many other occupations are paid relative to each other. A mid-level developer in Missouri will not get NYC rates no matter how hard they try.
The best way to find out is to polish up your resume and actually see. We only know the value of things when people are buying them. Your time is a free market asset and there is only one way to know the actual value of it.
And you don't have to take any of the offers you get, you can do what ever you like with the information. But if you want to know what you're really worth this is the only true way.
Part of the disparity is likely negotiating tactics (I know one employee who got a nice raise after getting a competing offer), and the desire of the company to pay the least amount possible.
For me, another big part is that my job can't be directly attributed to a revenue stream (we're in the services industry). For those who's jobs are directly paid by contract with the client, they'll pay whatever the client will agree to. For those of us in "overhead", they'll pay as little as possible because it's difficult, if not impossible, to assign a dollar amount to the value that we bring to the company.
I would venture to guess that devs that work for software development business get paid more than those that are just in IT at a non-software company.