I had to make another account to comment since I am still here :/ I am quite late to this thread so I don't know if this is useful in any way anymore. In my se

I had to make another account to comment since I am still here :/ I am quite late to this thread so I don't know if this is useful in any way anymore. In my second year in college, I started to freelance and had a decent income. On graduation, I decided to keep doing that since I was making way more money from freelancing than most jobs will offer to newgrads. A friend(who I have known since 6-7th standard and we were together for ~4 years) had been asking me to join his company and a mutual also suggested that I should try it out. I was really conflicted so I went to reddit for advice, Every one there told me not to do it and then I decided to join anyway. My pay went from ~3500usd/mo(from freelancing) to ~700usd/mo(this is india, So not completely horrible but pretty bad). I had no experience with negotiations and I assumed he didn't have enough money so I didn't ask for more. I dropped freelancing because the contract stated I could not do paid work for more than 5 hours a month. In 3-4 years I have been here, My pay went from 700 -> 1000 -> 1200 -> 2000 -> 3000(Year 3). After this, They offered a low raise of just ~200 usd(It was slightly higher but due to some tax issues and in the form this extra raise was issued, I would've netted 200 usd). I asked them for 3800 and they offered 4000 usd/mo but then decided to put an extra condition, I can not ask for a raise next year and this is 4k usd/mo for 2 years. I am one of the oldest person working at this place after the 2 cofounders and 1 other person and I help with almost every thing in my scope and any thing and every thing they need help with. A few months back, The person handling HR duties added link to a page, I didn't know what it was. I opened and it was compensation data for everyone. Turns out, I am the least paid employee at this place outside of interns and recently hired community managers. (The other people with similar responsibilities and yoe at this place are compensated 12-20k/mo) I have handled _ALL_ technical infra for this place and I fully own some core backend services. The compensation issue has been bothering me, I assumed they'll pay fairly but I guess not. I had a good grip on competitive programming(back when I was in college) and I was actively working on a few different side projects(nothing impressive looking back at it now). All of that is dead after 4 years of working at this place. I want to work at good companies but they require a skillset I do not have, I have aging parents so I am too scared to just quit and find another job. I do have good amount of savings(saved 80% of paycheck every month) but I am still scared to quit and find new jobs. This place has completely broken me and I am tired. I still maintain a friendly relationship with the friend and I probably will continue to do it when/if i leave this place. I only hope they realize they have not been fair to others.