I’ll never forget the moment I realized I was underpaid.
This was when I was still in corporate.
It didn’t come from salary research.
It didn’t come from a spreadsheet.
It came from a recruiter.
She reached out about a role at another company.
Similar scope. Similar responsibilities.
On paper, it felt like a lateral move.
Then she shared the compensation range.
And that’s when it hit me 🤯
I was making significantly less than market for the level of responsibility I’d taken on.
Not because I wasn’t performing.
Not because I hadn’t earned it.
But because my role had grown fast, and my pay hadn’t quite kept up.
Over the years, my responsibilities expanded quickly.
I was delivering at a higher level.
Owning bigger outcomes.
Solving more complex problems.
But my compensation moved slowly. Incremental raises. Small adjustments.
Nothing that reflected how much the role had evolved.
That recruiter conversation made something very clear.
Loyalty doesn’t always equal alignment with market value.
When you grow inside one company, your scope can expand far faster than your salary.
The business adjusts expectations.
The role quietly grows.
But pay often lags behind unless something forces the conversation.
And often, that something is an external comparison.
Here’s what I see all the time now with my clients.
They’re high performers.
They’re trusted.
They’re delivering real results.
But they’re being paid for an older version of their role.
An older version of themselves!
If you’ve been in the same company for several years.
If your responsibilities have grown faster than your title or compensation.
If you haven’t pressure-tested your market value recently.
There’s a good chance you’re underpaid too.
The good news is this.
Once you have clarity, you have options.
That might mean negotiating internally with the right data and positioning.
Or it might mean exploring roles that actually reflect your current level of impact.
If you want help figuring out where you truly sit in today’s market and what your experience should command, you can book a free call here: