<prompt> Human: This is pretty long and I apologize, Im attempting to be detailed. I appreciate any help, advice, or recommendations.I work for a College in Virginia and I believe Im being significantly underpaid. My current job consists of two portions. The main half being quality control and monitoring of a statewide realtime database system and its components. The second half is operations and security of a closed testing site used for research. Ive been at this job for a year and 6 months. The training was long and the protocols are extremely tight and ever changing.When I started in July of 2014 I was a part time employee making 11.77 an hour. In July of 2015 I applied and became a salary employee making 25,000 a year. I didnt receive any raises until my transition to full time. At both interviews I understand I could have possibly negotiated my pay, but at the time I was just happy to have a job after being unemployed for so long. When I initially applied in 2014 I didnt have any experience either.One thing I never encountered before was that the QCQA half is paid based on a contract through another state agency. The operations portion is paid via the college. Its my understanding that the college pays about 10-20 of my salary and the state contract covers the rest. The workload has increased significantly over the last year, hell even in the last 6 months. With the QA database being busier than its ever been and the operations portion consisting of well over than 10-20 of the work I do on a day to day basis. It was far less busy and taxing in both systems this time last year, easily by 13. With the ever changing nature of my job I feel under compensated. Ive been reading articles about how people ask for raises. Normally they track how much money they have saved the company or detail what contracts clients they brought to the table. Those things are all tangible pieces of data that can be factored into the worth of the employee. That system isnt really applicable for my office since we are not a money making company. I have personally contributed really great changes to my department by getting the ball rolling and providing detailed information on various systems that improve reliability, fail safes, security, and tracking systems. All of my recommendations have been applied to the office, but Im not getting any credit for the contributions. Instead my bosses come in and let everyone know of the great idea they had then implement it poorly because they dont fully understand the material from the get go. A lot of going around your elbow to get to your ass type of stuff. Now I do enjoy my job, and I enjoy the people that I work with. This is probably one of the best jobs that Ive ever had. Ive only ever been late one time from over sleeping an alarm, I show up 10-15 minutes early every day. Every day off Ive requested has been more than 2 weeks in advance. However some of the things that are dragging me down are:- I dont have a set schedule my hours change time and days almost every week. - We are a 247 365 office and there is no shift differential.- No lunch break.- Not all days off are consecutive.- The pay period split happens on FriSat so sometimes ill work 7-9 days in a row without over time.- I dont feel like Im being valued for all I do unless I show signs of dissatisfaction. Which is met with a Great job OrdinaryBoar, we appreciate it. pat on the back.- I feel like Im doing two jobs for the price of 34th of one.- We are understaffed and there are not enough people applying or qualified to fill the positions.- I get health insurance and benefits like that. But I pay more for the insurance though my job full time than what I did for obamacare as a wage employee.- If the state agency ever decided to end the contract through the college I get no severance pay or guarantee of a job.- Im 31 dollars over the absolute minimum they can pay me in my pay bandpay grade. The band stretches from 24,969 to about 58,969.I dont want to leave this job but I feel furious about the pay. I live in a college town so while the cost of regular things is pretty normal the price of rent is highway robbery. I feel for my other co workers because I know that they are in the same situation but in their own words they Just feel beat down by the whole thing. Ive only ever heard of any raises happening when the state raises the pay scales a few dollars every year all around. With all that said Im curious on how I should approach the subject of a raise. My employer seems oblivious to what is a fair salary. Since there are no real examples of my job I can pull data from Im purely looking at just QA or Operator jobs which seem to averaged around 36k for my area through state employment.EDIT: Thanks for all of the help everyone. A lot of the information you have provided has given me better insight on the playing field. Im feeling far better equipped to tackle the situation. Assistant: This sounds like a terrible place to work. Start interviewing at other places until you get an offer youd be willing to take. Go to your current employer and ask for a raise, stating what you listed in the post as well as your other offer. If they dont give you the raise then quit and take the new offer.Also, Im not sure exactly what type of work youre doing but even 36k sounds very low for software related QA.Human: I dont disagree with you, I think youre right. Could you maybe expand on some of your recommendations? Or rather with more information would that help assess other private sector jobs I could go to? Im currently looking for other jobs but the QA I do isnt on software its on the information it details. Which makes me feel like transitioning to the IT world may be a no go. For example: Every single event that happens on any road or near any road in the entire state is entered into the system by regional operators. I look at every single one of those events to make sure they conform to the correct format, spelling, time tables, locations, closures, and responding authorities. Again, with all of it being in real time, information cannot exceed correction time stamps by the minute. That also includes any and all roadwork activities. The other half is running dispatch equipment and sensormodules for research testing. So all of this happens at the same time. The job feels very niche. I dont have a college degree and before I worked here I worked in a maximum security prison in another state and before that I worked as a freelance painter and general construction. So even though the job kind of sucks Im nervous to leave it.  <response>: You miss 100 of the shots you dont take. Research some companies that you would like to work for and send out resumes. And dont tell any one at your current employer about your job search. 