"As a one man IT department, in 15 months I reduced my annual budget from $2.3 million to $600K, cleared up 500 old tickets, and implemented 4 mission critical

"As a one man IT department, in 15 months I reduced my annual budget from $2.3 million to $600K, cleared up 500 old tickets, and implemented 4 mission critical applications. My reward? A 4% salary increase. (I gave my notice during that review.)" Wow, that's pretty horrifying. I certainly agree with your point. But... "As a contractor [...] I proposed a project that would add everything they needed from these ERP packages to their current system in 90 days. I hit the target and got paid $225K." The big ERP vendor may well be grotesquely inefficient, or their software may provide a lot more than your client needed, or both. Congrats for saving your client so much money. But complaining that you "only" made $225k for a 90-day project, working by yourself, seems a little hubristic.