How Being Underpaid Took My Career To The Next Level

Way back last century, I was still just a few years into my government career after leaving the private sector.  It was a massive cultural change to go to a government job from a small dot com company, and I didn’t like it.

Mostly I hated my boss because he was a lazy do-nothing, but I didn’t really like the job or the culture either.

After desperately looking for another job in my agency for months, I started applying to positions back in the private sector.

Then one day a position as an instructor at our in-house “college” popped up.  And even though I still hadn’t gotten over my lifelong stutter at that point, I applied anyway.  It was mostly out of desperation to get out of where I was, but also as a way to crazily conquer my stutter.

I got the job, and started teaching right away.  The problem was, all of the other instructors were GS-12’s (it’s a government rank), and I was still a GS-11.

When I asked my new boss why I didn’t get promoted into the new position, he cited some new agency policy regarding promotions. Government bureaucracy is real….

So I was making quite a lot less than the other instructors on my team.  But they had been doing the job for a while so I was mostly okay with the situation.

 

Reality Sets In

Well, I thought I would be okay with it.  It became clear very quickly that the other instructors didn’t really have the skills to teach the subjects we were supposed to teach, much less create the curriculum.

I work in a technical field, and in 1999 things were moving extremely fast.  Computers were getting faster seemingly by the day and new software and internet resources were multiplying like rabbits at a rave.

But the existing instructors on my new team were old-school, and had been around for a long while.  They were teaching old, outdated stuff, and didn’t have the skills to modernize the curriculum.  

Turns out, that’s why they hired me.

Ugh.  So, not only did I have to put up with making less than my new teammates, I was also supposed to teach them, in addition to the students. 

 

Sometimes Ya Gotta Bite The Bullet

At first I was a bit upset at this situation, and felt like I had been swindled. But in and of itself the job was much better than my last one. And my teammates, besides being under skilled, were nice to work with.

The government isn’t a place that can just fire or let go of people who fail to keep up with their career field.  Having come from a small dot-com company that only had the best and brightest, it was still very frustrating and perplexing to work with people who didn’t really understand where their own industry was at.

I figured if I put my head down and really excelled at the job, I’d get the promotion to GS-12 pretty quickly.

Time went on.  I was completely overhauling the curriculum of multiple classes, teaching the other instructors new software, and teaching full classes all at the same time.

I worked 50 – 60 hours a week, and came in on weekends.  To say I went all in would be an understatement.

To be honest, part of me loved it.  I got over my stutter quickly and was learning more than ever about my field.  I grew to love teaching.

But a year and a half later, I still didn’t have the raise.  I was still making less than the very teammates I was unofficially leading.

Many in the personal finance community would say that staying in that job with that situation was stupid.  They would say that I was undervaluing my skills.

Sure, many times I would go home a bit pissed thinking “I just spent all day showing my so-called ‘team leader’ how to do his job, and he makes way more than me.'”

But I also knew that if you wanted something you had to prove you were worthy of it.  Which in the working world sometimes means doing a job that’s a pay-grade higher, without getting the pay.

In the end, I did the job for a little over two years before I finally got the promotion to GS-12.

Those two years of being underpaid taught me so much.  They taught me persistence. They taught me stoicism.  They taught me that life indeed isn’t fair.  And no amount of getting enraged on Twitter is going to change that.

But you can often make your own fairness by putting your head down and getting to work.

 

I Was Getting Paid All Along

Looking back on it, I now see that time as a pivotal moment in my working career.

Because during those years of teaching, literally hundreds of students from not only my agency but others in the government came through my classes.

They could clearly see that I was the “unofficial” leader.  That even though someone else’s name was often on the course manager line, it was me who really new the material and could answer the hard questions.

I quickly developed a huge network across the community.  I built respect, and became known as an expert in the subject matter and software I was teaching.

Later on down the line, I know I actually got promotions and positions simply from the reputation I had built as an instructor.  I also landed my second job as an adjunct instructor at a local university because of the reputation I had built.

And all of those great things came about because I was willing to continue doing a demanding job that I was being underpaid for.

The blogger Mr. Groovy calls this “egotrage”.  I definitely had to throw my ego aside, big time. 

But something inside me knew it was the right thing to do.  And there was some flat-out stubbornness there as well.

Common advice in this community is to never undervalue yourself.  If you’ve created a product or skill, don’t sell it for less than it’s worth.  Put yourself out there, and demand to be paid your worth.

While I agree that’s good advice, I also think there are times when you have to sandbag it.  When you have to dig in, check your ego, and prove your worth.

None of my students knew I was underpaid, and I’m pretty sure they would have still learned the same things if they did. 

But even though I knew I was underpaid, I also knew I had something to prove. 

Go out there and prove it.

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