After 5 years as lead dev small startup, what now?

2 points

13 years ago

I wanted to know your thoughts on what I should do at this point in my career. I've worked for the same startup for 4 years now. I am not a cofounder but I have been with the company from the start as the head of development/technology. We are a very small shop, and I don't foresee the company growing more than 10% a year from here on out. I'm also a bit unhappy with my manager's tendency to micro-manage. He is non-technical, and I feel he has little appreciation for how good of a developer I am (something like this: http://xkcd.com/664/).

I have some stock options but I doubt they will ever be worth anything as we will likely never IPO, and acquisition is possible but I don't have any reason to believe we are moving in that direction. The company is profitable.

I make ~100K, + 15%-20% bonus, but I want my base pay to be at least ~125K + bonus. I'm unhappy with the personal and career growth opportunities at this company. I have to go way out of my way to keep current with even relatively recent tech (most of the first 4 years was spent on legacy systems with 8+ year old tech, the past year was the 1st greenfield project and I knocked it out of the park with new stuff).

I'm looking around to see what the opportunities are, but I also have a performance review coming up in early Feb, so I wanted to know what I should be aiming for in case I decide to stay. What's the normal next step for a director level lead developer at a small, profitable startup after the first 4-5 years? Besides a salary increase is there anything else I should be asking for?

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