Stumbling upon the department salary sheet by accident ruined my professional life and I can't unsee it
I was deep into the shared drive earlier this week, trying to find some legacy BIM documentation for a massive audit we are running. Our file management is a disaster, and apparently, so is our data security. I clicked into a folder that looked like it contained archiving protocols, but it was actually the internal payroll breakdown for the entire engineering team. I knew I should have closed it immediately. I didn't. I scrolled.
I have been at this firm for five years. I am the lead on three major infrastructure projects, and I am the go-to person when the automation scripts fail or when the coordination models desync. I have been consistently told I am "indispensable." Well, indispensable apparently means "cheap labor" in corporate speak. I found out a guy who joined six months after me—someone I literally had to explain basic Revit families to last month—is making 20% more than my base salary.
The worst part isn't even just that one guy. There are junior engineers, guys I spend half my day mentoring and fixing their sloppy mistakes, who are within two or three thousand dollars of my salary. It feels like a physical weight on my chest. I have spent years being the "reliable one," the one who stays late to make sure the submission is perfect, while they coast by on my technical expertise. It turns out my loyalty and "indispensability" have just been a massive discount for the company.
I have spent the last two days staring at my monitors, absolutely paralyzed by resentment. Every time a notification pops up with someone asking for "five minutes of my time" to solve a technical issue they should know how to fix themselves, I want to scream. I used to love being the expert in the room, but now I just feel like a fool. I am the one doing the heavy lifting for the whole department while they get paid to learn on my time.
I can't even bring it up. If I tell my manager I saw the file, I am the villain who was "snooping" in a public directory they were too lazy to lock. If I don't mention it and just ask for a raise, they will give me the usual speech about "budget cycles" and "market rates." I already started cleaning up my portfolio and updating my CV. I loved this job on Monday, but by Wednesday, the whole office felt like a toxic cage. Lesson learned: if you want to keep your sanity as a woman in engineering, never look at what the mediocre men around you are making.