How to appreciate the opportunity without feeling that i am beeing used?
a bit of context: huge multinational finance company, big international tech team, but locally we are a very small team, 4 people total, 2 developers.
I started this job almost a year ago as a junior developer. I did not have much experience in a work environment before this, but after a few months I started noticing that some of my personal projects were honestly bigger than the stuff we were doing here. I also realized I knew and did way more than I expected for a junior role.
At the start I was constantly guiding our mid developer. He came from another system and at that moment we only had Python projects, so I kept introducing him to things like proper logging, how to structure modules, when to split things up and when not to, config setup to avoid hardcoding, etc.
After around half a year the mid developer left because of personal issues, and since then I have been working on 4 projects at the same time and even taken on more. Clients take a long time to respond, so I jump between projects constantly.
At that point I brought up to my manager that it did not really feel fair or realistic that in a 3 person team I, a junior developer, was making basically all development and architecture decisions. I was also constantly brought into client meetings because neither the manager nor the analyst really knew the technical limitations.
For example:
* how long automations would run
* whether we could take data from certain systems
* if certain data processing was possible
* infrastructure related decisions
* etc.
There was talk about an early promotion, but this is a very big company and things move slowly. Apparently people almost never get promoted within their first year.
Now 9 months have passed since I started, and my manager left a month ago because he got a much better offer.
For the past month it has just been me and the analyst handling 6 projects. Half my work time is meetings with clients or management. I am also running multiple interviews every week for interns and developer positions locally.
My current direct higher up is way too high in the chain to really be involved with our day to day work or inter/developer hiring.
Me and the analyst basically handle everything ourselves with 2-3 weekly update calls to management. Honestly we are doing our part almost flawlessly:
* we set up our own sprints
* organize all the work ourselves
* structure everything properly
* we have never missed sprint goals from our side
The only delays are usually clients responding late or changing requirements.
Management seems happy because client satisfaction is their number one priority, so we avoid pushing clients too hard and instead just remind them when needed.
At this point, and honestly even before my manager left, I have been involved in basically the whole process E2E:
* idea generation
* discussions/planning with analyst
* development
* architecture mapping/planning
* infra related decisions/tickets
* documentation
* reporting to management
* client meetings
\* interviews for interns and developers
We are also looking for a new manager, but that part is not on us.
The thing is, I am still getting paid a junior wage.
The last time I asked about promotion I got told:
"its no longer a concept, its in someone's mailbox already"
That was a month ago and I honestly still have no idea what that means.
The weird part is that I genuinely love this job. I love being involved in everything. I thrive in this environment and sometimes I actually have to stop myself from working because I get too invested in it.
It feels like an insane opportunity for growth, but at the same time I would also like to get paid more.
What I am honestly even more afraid of is this:
if we get a new local manager who would be a bit more technically savvy, I am scared my role scope will drop back down to just code writing. And I really do not want that.
I like development, it is honestly a nice break sometimes from all the meetings and chaos, but I LOVE being involved in decisions and having actual impact. I am afraid of losing that part.
To give context, how much I like this, in a weird way I would almost rather keep doing this without promotion for longer than get promoted and be pushed back into "just development work".
The promotion we talked about would apparently be around a 50% increase (I was never told any amounts, but since I am hiring for another mid developer I can see the ranges). Sounds huge percentage wise, but junior wages here are not exactly amazing.
So what do I even do here?
I already feel like I might be pushing too much with how involved I am in everything. Sometimes I am genuinely scared I will randomly get told:
"you are just a junior developer, stick to that"
I know realistically that probably would not happen, but still.
What are my options? Or am I just overthinking this because this is my first actual company job, and this is just normal expectations/responsibility progression?