August 11, 2026 at 1:46 pm

He Was Denied a Raise by His Bosses—Now He’s Ready to Leave for a New Company

by Matthew Gilligan

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If you’re not gonna get paid what you think you’re worth, then you have two options.

You can either grin and bear it and hope and pray that you eventually get a raise…

Or you can get busy and start looking for another job.

Neither option is easy, but you gotta make a choice if you’re unhappy, amigos!

This worker definitely isn’t happy with his situation and he thinks it’s time to get out.

Let’s take a look at what he had to say.

My company’s culture is not to give raises to anyone, yet expect people to work more for the same salaries.

“I work at a smaller company and I, alongside many of my other colleagues, have not received any meaningful raises and were promised multiple times that we are going to receive them, when in reality, we did not.

There are people with 4 and 5 years of experience too who are in the same situation of being paid like juniors with mid-senior responsibilities.

Here come the excuses…

We all started on decent salaries, but there were always excuses being made up during those appraisal interviews: “we don’t have budgets this year”, “we don’t make raises the first year.”

And even this year, with 3 years, when I put the “I am a mid developer now,” my manager hit me with “So what does that mean? That the salary should increase? Well, yes, we can consider a promotion, but for the next year…”

Now, things are like this: me and my whole team have to migrate the whole system to newer tech stack.

Which is a great decision, but realistically, it takes time and something tells me they are also going to rush with tests. They want us to do the dirty work that hasn’t been done for over two decades in less than one year.

Initially I was working there hybrid with one day optionally, on a decent salary with fair responsibilities.

Things are going backwards…

Now, we are paid like junior and literally have to work with complex systems which are being architectured live, which is very stressful.

I am seriously considering leaving and I am sure I will leave at latest on the next month. I was thinking about obtaining a certificate, and I wanted to get my 10 PTOs too, but my team leader really brought “we really need you” card up.

I still want those 10 days. When the company decided to bring 2 days in the office mandatory and I politely told my TL that I NEED to work remotely, he didn’t show up any interest, yet he went harsher on me and hit me with “drama queen” card, because “everyone does it”.

Here we go again…

Well, he was a jerk. He and also my hirer who hit me with the “next year promotion”.

I am only sorry that I didn’t job hop sooner… My financial situation is good enough to survive frugally for 7 years. But my mental state not so great, as I completely can’t stand what I am doing here…

One of my previous mentors hit me with “you are paid to work”. Now I realize that it was only half of the truth… Yes, but am I paid ENOUGH to work? No, not in this case.

My intentions for the next weeks are to obtain the PTO and the certificate. After that, my company will give us well being bonuses and might also give a bonus for receiving that certification. I want to quit after that.

What’s the worst it can happen?

He has some concerns about this.

The only thing I am afraid of is burning bridges, but to be fair, those bridges are quite dirty, muddy and might need some polishing… But regardless, I am trying my best to keep those bridges and not burn them.

The funniest thing? Yesterday I saw an announcement on Li wand the job description pretty much included our new tech stack, but it was listed as REMOTE with 5+ years of experience.

My team lead knows they are screwed.
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I also want to screw them on this one a bit and for the other stuff they’ve done, but not too hard so I don’t burn that bridge.”