Yay time for the age old question! Edit - apologies, seems to have turned into a wall of text.
Let me set the scene a little first;
It's my first gig, I joined an already-missed-it's-deadline-thrice project. The team manned by consultants, one as an interim lead.
ClientCo gave a deadline that was achievable if not a little reckless. We hit the deadline through over time,increasing technical debt and corralling teams we have dependencies on into bumping us up the priority list. A lot of this was lead by me, because the interim lead was floundering in his new role, having spent the last 40 years of life shirking all responsibility and the five before that crapping himself.
So here I am 3 months into the project, approaching burn out, glad for a breather and hey, maybe I can finally do the washing up now?
Meanwhile interim lead has communicated upwards that I am dissatisfied with the work we are doing. This is not entirely untrue as the expectations are absurd and negotiating with teams for resources isn't why I got into programming.
As a reward for my hard work and to stop me from leaving due to job dissatisfaction I am offered a lead role on a new project, that also, drum roll please, has a possible but very tight deadline.
Obviously interim lead has done a bad job of communicating why I am dissatisfied - no surprises there, his inter-personal skills are worse than his technical ones and that is saying something.
I have since bypassed him from the comms loop and communicated my own position of having gone above and beyond reasonable expectations of a contractor to deliver, and said that I have no intention of continuing in the same vein despite the tight deadline.
As an aside it looks like the previous team (incompetents) will be the team I am leading on the new project, with interim lead presumably now beneath me.
I mentioned to ClientCo that my contract is up end of Jan and they immediately wanted to know how to renew it with the consultancy.
Off the back of this I mentioned it to my agent. He asked if I would accept and I said it depends on the offer, which he said wont change.
Now this is a lot of nothing at the moment as there's no formal offer.
Ignoring all of the above, I am already underpaid for market - a guy left our team recently and you could add 100 to my day rate and I'd still be short of what the ad said. (My first gig, got stiffed, long chain)
What is the best way to approach a raise, given that clientco want me to lead project with tight deadline and I am already under market value? Agent is unlikely to want to rock the boat for fear of the agency he is contracting with wont give him more gigs, probably doesn't have great margin to sacrifice.
The margin is all with ConsultancyCorp so is it them I push? Or try to get the client to on my behalf? Or just tell the agent that my responsibilities have increased and I am putting my rate up and let him figure out where to get it from.
Let me set the scene a little first;
It's my first gig, I joined an already-missed-it's-deadline-thrice project. The team manned by consultants, one as an interim lead.
ClientCo gave a deadline that was achievable if not a little reckless. We hit the deadline through over time,increasing technical debt and corralling teams we have dependencies on into bumping us up the priority list. A lot of this was lead by me, because the interim lead was floundering in his new role, having spent the last 40 years of life shirking all responsibility and the five before that crapping himself.
So here I am 3 months into the project, approaching burn out, glad for a breather and hey, maybe I can finally do the washing up now?
Meanwhile interim lead has communicated upwards that I am dissatisfied with the work we are doing. This is not entirely untrue as the expectations are absurd and negotiating with teams for resources isn't why I got into programming.
As a reward for my hard work and to stop me from leaving due to job dissatisfaction I am offered a lead role on a new project, that also, drum roll please, has a possible but very tight deadline.
Obviously interim lead has done a bad job of communicating why I am dissatisfied - no surprises there, his inter-personal skills are worse than his technical ones and that is saying something.
I have since bypassed him from the comms loop and communicated my own position of having gone above and beyond reasonable expectations of a contractor to deliver, and said that I have no intention of continuing in the same vein despite the tight deadline.
As an aside it looks like the previous team (incompetents) will be the team I am leading on the new project, with interim lead presumably now beneath me.
I mentioned to ClientCo that my contract is up end of Jan and they immediately wanted to know how to renew it with the consultancy.
Off the back of this I mentioned it to my agent. He asked if I would accept and I said it depends on the offer, which he said wont change.
Now this is a lot of nothing at the moment as there's no formal offer.
Ignoring all of the above, I am already underpaid for market - a guy left our team recently and you could add 100 to my day rate and I'd still be short of what the ad said. (My first gig, got stiffed, long chain)
What is the best way to approach a raise, given that clientco want me to lead project with tight deadline and I am already under market value? Agent is unlikely to want to rock the boat for fear of the agency he is contracting with wont give him more gigs, probably doesn't have great margin to sacrifice.
The margin is all with ConsultancyCorp so is it them I push? Or try to get the client to on my behalf? Or just tell the agent that my responsibilities have increased and I am putting my rate up and let him figure out where to get it from.
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