To add to what you said about contracting, which I think is right on (would have modded up if I had points), there are also different ways contractors can be paid (in the US): W2, 1099, or corp-to-corp (c2c). I found this page (I am not the author) which has an excellent summary of the three, pros and cons, and the tax implications, including some worked examples. Basically W2 is the easiest for tax purposes (but the rate will usually be lower because the company is paying more taxes), 1099 might draw the attention of the IRS, and corp-to-corp is a little more difficult to set up but probably a good idea if you plan to be contracting long term.

1.5x may be right for 1099 or c2c, but for W2, taxes will be the same but you do have to factor in benefits (including vacation and sick days which won't usually be paid). Given a W2 rate, figure for, say, 48 or 49 weeks (allowing 3-4 weeks unpaid vacation/sick) and check rates for getting your own healthcare (both premiums and what you may need to pay out of pocket; if you have been employed FT, look at what your insurance paid on your behalf in the last few years and average, and account for expensive items like having a kid). We've been (2 of us, no kids) using $12k/year as a round figure, and neither of us has any unusual conditions/diseases. For example: $75/hour = 75 x 40 (they usually won't let you bill more than 40 hours without approval regardless) x 48 - 12k = 132k equivalent salaried. (And I'm not factoring in some things like having access to a 401k plan, extra accounting costs, or, that medical coverage is deducted from salaried paychecks, which may reduce the 12k a little.) So in this case compared to a "naive" 75 x 40 x 52 = 156k, the ratio is closer to 1.2x.

Sure. Update your resume and start pounding the pavement (make use of any contacts you might have first, then hit the usual online boards). Or strike out on your own (maybe take a few friends with you, depending on what you signed when you started) and build web apps as a contractor.

Fact remains that your best chance at a pay (and maybe responsibility) increase is to switch employers.

If you're set on staying where you are, the same kinds of things that you would do to make yourself look good on a resume (e.g., enumerate your accomplishments in terms that can be seen to relate to a company's bottom line - not necessarily in a dollars and cents-specific manner, but in way that makes clear what you built or directed and how you took responsibility) can also help you when talking to your manager.

If you're strictly looking for a raise, first do some research about prevailing pay rates (check ads; check GlassDoor) - if you're underpaid, you have an easier case (you can also try talking to friends at work - good friends, as pay tends to be something people don't talk about and management encourages not talking about it for obvious reasons). Either way, you want to present a case that has something for them, too. Saying "I think I deserve a raise" doesn't help much and creates defensiveness. Better to come to an agreement about a goal. Ramit Sethi has some great advice in How to Hack Your Day Job (short article and a couple of videos).

If you're looking for a promotion, and not so much the money, you still want to proceed along the same lines, but first consider whether the company has openings at the level you're looking at. If you want to go from, say, developer to senior developer, that's likely not a problem since the company defines what "senior developer" means, and you can help yourself by examining others at that level and trying to do what they do as well as you can within the constraints of your present position. However, moving to a lead/manager position will require an opening. For any promotion, try to take on more responsibility where you are - volunteer to write requirements documents, coordinate builds, create tools and processes that streamline or automate poor processes. Keep a log of these accomplishments, even if it's just in a text file, so you can present specific reasons when discussing advancement.

A book I'm reading now called Dinosaur Brains (Albert J. Bernstein) has some interesting observations about office politics and psychology and it may be helpful to you. Avoiding "office politics" isn't really an option, but you can participate on your own terms. Seth Godin's books—Lynchpin (on being indispensable), in particular, in your case, and perhaps The Dip—will also be helpful and help you marshal your arguments and perhaps give you a push to move forward or move on to somewhere that can better use your talents.

I considered using EverNote at one point, but my concern was offline availability (for personal use on my laptop) and security (for use at work). I didn't think management would be happy with me storing proprietary/confidential data on someone else's remote server, so I stuck with OneNote. (I also didn't realistically think they'd get broken into, to be honest, just thought it would be frowned upon. Sometimes paranoia works for you.)

I have looked into several open source alternate note-taking programs, but none of them worked for me as well as OneNote - some were too clunky, didn't have decent search, didn't do quick page hyperlinks, poor formatting, whatever. (Full disclosure: I used to work for Microsoft, which is where I started using OneNote - it was free for internal use - but I stuck with it after I left because it really is a great product.) I would be ecstatic to learn of a free/open source note-taking program that had parity with OneNote, but I haven't found one.

Srsly? If the US government is launching nuclear missiles at its own cities, it's already lost. If the military isn't against the state already, it will be when their friends and families are killed by WMDs launched by their employer. OTOH, even if the freedom fighters get hold of a nuke of any decent size, there's not much they can do with it without turning everyone against them, except perhaps use it as a deterrent to attack (which makes for an interesting plot; ask Kenneth W. Royce, although it was just conventional missiles in his book). There is a reason why Rothbard viewed nukes as a separate class of weapon - not merely a different degree, but of kind, due to the indiscriminate damage they do.

A distinction without a difference; and it's no difficulty for them to also plant drugs on the boat and then keep the proceeds of their theft.

Likewise, none of my third-year courses involved anything as simple as writing a blog. Even first-year courses weren't that simple. Please tell me the OP isn't actually for a computer science degree; but I can't think of any respected degree that would include writing blog posts as a third-year credit. My third-year courses covered topics like operating systems (with programming assignments to implement things like virtual memory), numerical analysis, concurrency (heavy theory and programming), and the like. (Damn straight get off my lawn!)

Are you perhaps thinking of this Joel on Software article "How Trello is different", in which Joel writes:

Over the next two weeks we visited dozens of Excel customers, and did not see anyone using Excel to actually perform what you would call “calculations.” Almost all of them were using Excel because it was a convenient way to create a table.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah... most people just used Excel to make lists. Suddenly we understood why Lotus Improv, which was this fancy futuristic spreadsheet that was going to make Excel obsolete, had failed completely: because it was great at calculations, but terrible at creating tables, and everyone was using Excel for tables, not calculations.

Your source could have just been another writeup of the same Microsoft investigation, of course.

Why aren't you out fighting it? Clearly you understand it exists.

Why should a person be forced to continue to pay someone they no longer wish to pay to do work, for any reason?

That's not "unfortunate" at all; that's basic freedom of association and trade.

A job is a transaction between a buyer and a seller.. That transaction should not be forced to continue if either party does not wish it.

Perhaps I should have written more specifically not happy with their work at a given rate, X+$5 per hour in this case, then. :-) That is, with making an exchange of X+$5 for an hour of said work. A job is, after all, a (repeated/continued) transaction between a buyer and seller. I may be happy to buy a 6-pack of beer for $8, but balk at buying the same 6-pack for $13; but someone may buy it, or pay the worker $5 more. Value is subjective.

Why is that unfortunate? Should people be forced to continue paying someone to do work that they no longer want them to do?

How, exactly, did it work out for Poland?

pay is lower than it should be

How high "should" pay be, and why? How do you know? Whose head are you going to hold a gun to to make it so?

How is forced age discrimination "morality"? Granted, forcing 8-year-olds to dig coal out of a mine is wrong (because of the forcing, not because it's work), but there are plenty of jobs banned to people that are perfectly able to do them and give informed consent without sacrificing education or health. Child labor laws came about to reduce competition (as did many forced union laws - those darkies were stepping on toes with their work ethic and lower wages; how dare they! Require people to belong to unions, and then it's as simple as keeping black people out of unions based on the flimsy pretext of the day.).

Similarly, there's no such thing as "right to unions". Or, rather, you can (or should be able to) associate however you like, and let whoever you like speak on your behalf; but it is not "moral" to force an employer to retain or hire union members (or redheads, or people that wear Nikes, or Democrats or Republicans or gun owners or gun grabbers) if they don't want to. Since I'm on the subject, "right to work" laws aren't quite right either because they stop employers from choosing to, say, hire only union members if they wish to do so.

Sure it's allowed; you just have to call it a "stock market".

(Yeah, yeah, if trading stocks is gambling you're doing it wrong.)