And, as I said in my original article, that most people seem to have "skimmed" instead of "read". I would be more than happy with a few extra days of PTO. I'm not necessarily looking for money, so all you "it's a horrible economy, be thankful you're working" broken records need to STFU. It's a clean-cut case of "this for that"; of for all you Latin and Hannibal Lecter buffs, "quid pro quo".

Finally, a response that isn't full of cynicism but instead provides a practical approach with a good, legal suggestion. I think you for being a serious ./ contributor that doesn't troll or flame on a question just to vent their anger about the world.

There is no no-compete or non-disclosure in my file. There is no "domain rule" blanketing what I do outside of my job scope. The skills were not attained at this current employer but instead were amassed on my own time out of sheer hobby. The fact they were not divulged at the time of interview and hire are irrelevant.

Entitlement or exploitation? It's a fine line. Would you say the same thing if the terms were not monetary but instead based on the barter system and other goods were exchanged? I already have a military family background. I'm being practical. Why should one benefit at the other's expense without exchanging the means for the knowledge and expertise? They hired me and outlined my job description to the T. I abide by it. The fact that I have the ability to go beyond my job scope should be the merits used for salary negotiations. But as raises have been completely shut down for all non C-level people, what's the point of going beyond the scope? And don't feed me any of this greater good or terrible economy crap. The only way to get through a terrible economy in through self preservation and accumulating the necessities to weather the storm.

You obviously didn't take away from the article the whole meaning and instead jumped on the whole "bad economy, how dare he want more, what a selfish prick" bandwagon.

You are correct in both aspects. The treatment is poor, the morale company wide is low since the new management team was put in place and I am well under market value for my experience and skills. @Aighearach - A sysadmin is not a programmer. The skill sets are different but are lumped under the general IT fog. I hardly consider writing a script that cleans up log files on my Windows and Linux boxes to be in the same realm as writing an application that handles the hiring process and workflow for HR.

I neglected your first question. I initially wrote the skeleton and backend programming with the full intention of revealing the functionality to my Director of Operations and was ready to show it; then I found out through some reconnaissance their intentions behind the in-house development. 0 out of pocket. So I kept my mouth shut and finished the application over the course of a week with hopes the attitude towards compensation for the project would change. As I said, PTO would have been acceptable, just something to show the appreciation. But being that I'm so underpaid for my experience and skillset, refusal to compensate for something so above my paygrade has put me into a very Quid Pro Quo mindset. But at the same time, I'm caught up in knowing that my application can make life for my team as a whole much easier.

The issue is they are not willing to purchase anything. They've gone through Track-It! And Front Range HEAT. Both with horribly botched deployments that have left a sour taste. They wanted a completely specialized application but they do not want to pay for it; in any way. They don't want to staff it, they don't want to provide a raise, they don't want to compensate. They're banking that someone in my department is harboring the skills or is willing to volunteer to learn to program JUST to be able to do this. They think that programming and IT go hand-in-hand (the fallacy) instead of in parallel with proper bridges making communication between the two possible (the reality)

I've weighed this option as well but it means going back and writing an installer as well as converting all static things to dynamically assignable - harder to do when your formatting relies on some images and hefty css. I don't want to have to worry about creating a theme system from the ground up. That's what *shudder* SharePoint and even Google Sites with Lists functionality is for. I guess it all boils down to do is this: do I want to abandon it, keep the source for personal gain later, and just bide my time until a new job offer comes through? Knowing now that it means more of the same ID10T, PEBKAC, and "you're wasting my time with your stupidity" existence populated by the inglorious end-user...

I had considered it but I didn't necessarily modularize this application with that in mind. Yes, I could go back to the drawing board template-base everything so that you can simply run an installation script and choose your logo, add your own content, blah, blah, but what are the ramifications of that? Is the absence of a non-compete enough to exonerate me if I took the product elsewhere? Are there any ways to barter for compensation with this? As it is I'm already drastically underpaid so I am actively pursuing other offers. Every day that passes though is another day my team is bombarded with pointless bullshit because there's no central resource.

I never volunteered to those that were asking about it. I quietly undertook it myself as something to fill my downtime. It just so happens it turned out to function extremely well and would make operations within the IT department run more smoothly. Our current IT director had it on his project list for 2011 but he never got to it and, since he doesn't have the skills to do it, and they wouldn't let him hire anyone outside the company to do it, I thought it would be something I could mock up and provide. But my development has halted when I found out that there would be no compensatory benefit.