Some of us have been there. I was a 1-man show for a fiber optic distributor. I was IT. Help desk. Network administrator. Training. Developing internal ap

Some of us have been there. I was a 1-man show for a fiber optic distributor. I was IT. Help desk. Network administrator. Training. Developing internal apps and processes. Website development (including working with marketing and graphic designers). Everything. The website and the CMS that powers it (wasn't a thing as a cheap CMS back then), the middleware that tied their contact management and other systems together? All still running fine (I've been brought in for 2 weeks in 8 years to do some small enhancements). What did I get? $12/hour and 5 days off a year. Within 60 miles of one of the 10 most expensive cities in the US (I'd like to say #4 or #5). Compensation in their sales department was equally messed up (i.e. a guy that was seriously responsible for 55% of company revenue got only 10% more compensation than someone responsible for 3% of company revenue), but I digress. It was bad. I knew it. I made a plan to move on. It's 10 years later. I moved out of that general area after taking higher paying jobs ($45-50K/yr), realizing that moving to the city was a further 50-to-100% pay raise for a 20-25% cost-of-living increase. I was not wrong. Took A) being top of my game, B) the time to achieve A and C) getting out there looking for what I wanted. The work is now interesting, and I'm paid at market rate (nearly 6-digits) in the city, but it took effort. About 9 years of it. And I still dealt with a mountain of nonsense along the way, and several bosses that would tell me, "You're getting screwed for compensation, but so-and-so won't approve a raise larger than X".