Feeling Hopeless

    I feel that I needed to write tonight. I’ve been feeling unfulfilled and unhappy with my “career”. I’m not sure what it is and why that is. Actually, I do know. It’s because I’m not getting any benefits from my job, it’s simply just a job. I’m not getting the training that I need to help me grow, there’s no path for me as a project coordinator, the workload is overwhelming with no rewards. In fact, I almost feel as if I’m being punished. The last few years, my merit raises have only been between 2-3%. The only time that I had a huge jump was when the company gave everyone a bump so that we were within the industry standards, meaning we were being underpaid at the time. I’ve been with the company for 4 years now and I’ve consistently asked for more training, but I haven’t received any. Other employees that are newer to the company have received extensive training as well as an average annual raise of 5% or more. I know life can be unfair – but this is wrong. Compared to other teams, we are carrying a much heavier workload. We bid on projects and each project is different, our projects are predominantly smaller in scale – it can range anywhere from $5,000 to upwards of $10+ million. But our jobs also move fast. We’ve been on jobs that were awarded today, but our field team needs to be on site by the next. Even if we’re not comparing myself to other project coordinators, even within our own team, my 2 other teammates received 5% and 8% raises last year while I only received 3%. Yes, their work is a little more complicated and requires more HVAC knowledge, but we share the same workload. I cannot understand why I only deserved 3%. I’ve asked about my raise and why it was so low, and I was met with “What’s wrong with it?  What were you expecting?  You are within your range of a coordinator’s salary. I cannot pay you more because that would make you an outlier and other coordinators would get upset”. I’ve also tried justifying by bringing to the sales manager’s attention that I’ve been doing more tasks that fall under the Project Engineer’s role and she explained that there’s a lot of fluidity between those two roles. It also doesn’t sit well with me that a new hire was offered the same salary I’m earning while I have 4 years of experience and she has none.

    I’m just done with trying to prove my worth to this company. In the end, I feel that this company doesn’t deserve to have an employee like me on their team. I’ve been applying for other jobs, but I haven’t had any luck yet. The only reason why I haven’t left yet is because I’m waiting to be fully vested so I can take my hard-earned money with me. I am so unhappy there. I hope I find something better soon. Because I’m not sure how much longer I want to work for a toxic boss with no real rewards.