Certainly if the employer know he possessed those assets before hiring him, he has no reason to feel taken advantage of. Perhaps they were earned after hire, though.

Good point, fellow ysth. But I already had the competences and talked open about them: will not use unless they pay for them. At the time, everything was fine. After this event, I don't know what posture I should take about this matter. This is not the first time, but this is the first they don't take any care on hidding it from me.

-- monsieur_champs

No, fellow BUU. I wasn't hired because of the competencies that they're using. I don't even have a salary compatible with those competencies roles.

They pay me as I'm a perl programmer, and I buy books, go to workshops and study perl (on my own expenses). That's fine.

When they applied for the public contest, they presented me as an Oracle DBA (I have the competences, but never played that role here!). This is a more expensive role, and I never received even a single hour as an Oracle DBA here. And that hurts.

-- monsieur_champs

Ah. I see. Why don't you tell *them* that? Tell them that you feel they are taking advantage of your skillset but not compensating you appropiately.

Most companies assume that if you're in a position which doesn't take advantage of all your qualifications and are being paid accordingly then you'll happily move to a position which does take advantage of more of your qualifications and comes with better pay at a later date.

If this assumption is incorrect, and the employee wishes to be undervalued and underutilised even when a need arises for previously unused talent and skills, then the employer should be made aware of those feelings.



Christopher E. Stith

I guess you are experiencing that "cultural disconnection". Sorry, that's my fault. Please allow me to clarify my (cultural-affected) point-of-view:

I've paid for my entire education for years. In Brazil, that's the most-probable alternative to make you way up. There is the public (free) education system, but it is really bad at the lower levels (children) and highly restricted at the upper levels (there are vacancy for just 0.5% of the studants at the public universities).

Paid education is a heavy-weight corportation-sized investment at Brazil, and we don't have any help from government or corportations.

Now you have a bigger picture, hope you can understand my question: why shall I put my money on something others will use to make money without paying me for it?

In other words: when you put your money at the bank, the bank uses it to make more money. At the end of the investment time, you receive your money back, and an aditional ammount, in payment for the use of your money. What makes my employer think that it can use my knowledge (a.k.a. "money", as I "buy" it with education and books) to make money and don't give me anything in exchange?

Please don't confuse this with the work I already sells to my employee, and that is fairly paid. That "extra" money built on my expenses is what I don't see as fair.