I'm Begging for Work

1. Tell your wife ASAP about the job situation. No matter what stress she is under, learning about it later may cause serious problems. She can help you (emotionally and in trying to find answers to your problems). The better off you are emotionally, the better chance you have of finding a job quickly.

2. I've seen stories like yours a lot in my career. Some people are selfish. A disproportionate number of these seem to end up in management/entrepreneur roles (luckily, not all!!!). To your boss you were merely a source of cheap labour. Take the "cheap" out of the equation and he was not interested any more. I'm afraid that this is probably not the last time you will run into this, so be prepared.

3. This is locking-the-door-after-the-horses-have-bolted kind of advice, but if you find yourself in a similar situation (it happens a lot in this industry): get the new job first and negotiate for salary second. It's horrible, but that's the way you have to do it.

4. If you get the new job first, think hard about whether or not you really want to negotiate salary in the first job. If in doubt, don't negotiate -- just leave. I tell my employers up front that I don't negotiate salary, so they have to be prepared to offer me enough that I will accept. They won't get a second chance.

5. Remote working with no academic background and 8 months of experience means that the next job is going to be tough to find. Keep at it, even if you have to take another job doing something else in the mean time. Eventually you will make it, though you may be in for some difficulty for a couple of years. Trust me on this one.

6. I hate to say it (I really do), but depending on where you live, your salary expectations may not be reasonable. For example, $45K USD is very nearly $30K GBP. In London, I can get university graduates with intern experience lining up outside my door for that salary. In hourly wage it represents $22.50 per hour worked (8 hour day -- excluding holidays). That's 2-4x minimum wage in the US. If you are offered that salary again, I advise you to take it. Just do whatever it takes to keep working (easy for me to say, I know). Keep looking for the bigger payout and don't worry about "loyalty" for now. Once someone respects you enough to offer you a good wage, then work on building a good relationship with them so that you can grow together.

- It may take you some time to find another job. In the mean time, spend every free second you have writing code. Build an amazing portfolio. Some people don't care about it, but I have gotten good jobs from my side projects.

Again, the biggest thing I have to say is not to get too upset or disappointed. Just keep moving forward -- even an inch is enough. Whatever you can do right now is enough. Never give up. Good luck!

This is the third time this month I've heard of a startup "CEO" screwing their employees out of pay and/or benefits, specifically exploiting 'interns' or severely low-balling entry level hires who don't know better. Startups are hard. They're supposed to be hard - you're trying to build something big without the resources of a big company. That means you can't pay what a big company would pay. That doesn't mean you get to screw people over.

As a founder you have three options:

- Do tons more work as a founder. Fill in the gaps you can't hire for on your own, until you can pay to get that help. That's why you get the equity, and that's how you build your founding team.

- Be up front with people about what they can expect in terms of pay, especially early on. Let them know about the risk. Hope your idea and the state of the company so far excites them enough to join anyway. Work your ass off to improve their situation and get them to stay.

- Lie to people, obscure expectations, and basically screw up people's lives because you want to be the next Steve Jobs.

The first two are not only ethical, but pragmatic. Being able to do things on your own is a prerequisite to being a founder, and it means you need to take on less investment, you get to keep more of the company. Being able to put your ass on the line by letting people know the real risks is the way to build a strong, loyal team of tough people.

If you're going to be a founder, mull that stuff over. Accept that this is hard. You don't get to pretend it's not, because that will bite you in the ass a hundred different ways.

On the flip side, $45k may well be borderline questionable depending on where OP is located. In California, for example, the minimum that a programmer needs to be paid to be considered overtime exempt is $86k/year. It can become fairly expensive to pay for overtime, so that $86k tends to be roughly the starting salary for lower level jobs.

Definitely a case where OP needs to do their due diligence to find average salaries for their location to use during salary negotiations.