No one ever really hits me up on this, but I'll offer it anyway.

A lot of people are underpaid, under-leveled, or not even sure where they stand. I've been there myself.

If you're looking for input, my DMs are open. I'll also thread some random thoughts here...

Pay in the short-term isn't as important as pay in the long-term.

Sorry if this seems obvious, but I'm really trying to say it's more important to prioritize valuable experience, professional growth, or even just personal health. In the long game though, pay matters over time.

I spent the first five years of my career completely losing out on both all of the above. It was a painful lesson that I'm keen to share whenever I can.

It's fine I suffered at any one of these, but terrible I wasn't gaining at any of them.

You also don't need to completely trade away one of these, or some other, values. There's usually some stack rank though of certain values being most important.

I encourage everyone to identify their one true priority, and then have a general order of what comes next.

Early in my career, it should have been experience and skills growth. I was extremely limited though because I had zero technical mentorship.

One day I realized how badly I was missing out, so I made my next move very intentionally. I joined a much more mature org & team.

This team completely changed the trajectory of my career.

It also happened to pay fairly. In fact, I was grossly overpaid at the start. I learned at the time that more skilled developers on other teams were grossly underpaid, especially relative to me.