Ask HN: Looking for advice on my situation at work?

Raising concerns with your manager is table stakes. Always try to work with the company before assuming that they are acting out of malice.

That said, given the circumstances I believe it would be very wise to also proactively pursue different jobs in this case. If nothing else, it will open the OP’s eyes to the fact that jobs are a market and you have far more options than just staying with one company and hoping for the best.

The concerning part is the personal friendship the manager has with the new coworker. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the way the OP has described the situation suggests that there is an in-group and an out-group, and the OP is very clearly not part of the in-group. A different team or company where people are viewed on more equal relationship footings would be a better fit for someone like the OP who is unsure about navigating company dynamics.

No offense but at a top 5 tech company in Canada the top engineer isn't going to be an IC. They're a principal and definitely leading a team. Also the biggest tech cos have regular cost of living salary increases, especially during the pandemic when retention was poor.

Something doesn't add up here, it seems like hot-shit-new-grad-itis. Where you throw yourself in a role as a relatively junior person and wildly overperform, but then over time you slow down the unsustainable pace, and people have higher expectations, and you just begin to meet expectations instead of wildly exceeding them. It seems really common in people for whom programming comes naturally.

I was in a similar situation late last year - top performer, no raise for years, lots of talk about how valuable I am, but little tangible reward. I was earning a decent salary, but not commensurate with my skills, experience and individual contribution.

What did I do? I continued to be the same top performer. I killed every task assigned to me and developed valuable IP in my spare time. I helped recruit and train new hires. I also wrote a very detailed email to my manager and exec team detailing my contribution, my vision for the next two years and my request for a significant raise. At the same time, I updated my resume and LinkedIn profile. I low-key began posting about my side projects and researching other positions in my career progression path.

After some time, my management team came back with a minimal raise - a token amount - and a promise to review it again in the new year. Concurrently, I was crushing my interviews at another firm and quickly received an offer for a position well-suited to my skills and interests at approximately 75% more than my previous salary. The new equity package is also a significant improvement. I accepted the offer, and now I'm crushing it for someone else.

I harbor no hard feelings against my previous employer - how they were operating wasn't personal, just business. Likewise, I'm sure they appreciate that my leaving wasn't personal, just business.

This happened to me. I was eventually laid-off in favor of the guy with less experience (my 20 years vs his 4). I have a tonne of experience vs his just starting to use linux when he was onboarded. I had been with the company for 6 years. We both made the same $.

It was fucking horrible. Tell them how you feel about the situation. Start looking elsewhere.

I disagree here. If you have a functional environment you can have a team meeting, clarify everything there openly and have 1:1 once you need them due to privacy.

Regular 1:1 create the risk of micromanaging people and foster secrecy. It is good for developing people, but once they are developed what purpose do they have.

Maybe this is a culture thing (German here ... we fight in public ;)). My experience is: the layer where regular 1:1 starts, office politics is not far away ;)