I work in a PHP software developer firm. I've been here a little over a year now. I was hired as a junior developer but, to be honest, I was overqualified for the job but, lacking a university degree, I was eager to take anything I could get in the way of permanent work. Ten months on the job, I speak to the owner/managing director about a pay rise and job title change. I was expecting 30k which, in Ireland, is industry standard with someone with as much experience as I have. I got 27k, ok not too bad, I can deal. The senior at the time was only, after all, on 32k (3-13k below standard DOE).
A month later: the senior hands in his notice and the Project Manager, who has seen my work and my efficiency, recommends me for the role. The owner agrees and gives me the job title, the responsibilities and the payrise. "You've just been given a payrise so we'll discuss it again during your pay review in January" was my response to "but it's extra responsibility, work and hassle" when asking for a payrise. Either way, January is only three and a half months away, I can cope.
A month later, they hire a new developer "on the same level as me". Two senior developers, one junior. Dread begins to sink in. I've been meeting project deadlines, producing the same high quality tiered code and doing an all round good job but instead of hiring me a developer to add to my team of, currently, two.
Anyway, the guy comes in, he's a fairly competant programmer. Looks over our code base for certain of the newer projects, as the resident senior I have ownership over the legacy code (much of which is deserving of a post of its own). Because of this, any time a problem comes up with any of it and the junior can't handle it, I get moved off development work and onto fixing the problem. Because of this I don't get to design any new projects. I think we all see where this is going.
During a meeting one day, we were asked about what engine we should move over to from Oracle. "Great!", I think to myself, "no more using sqlplus". We're on oracle 8. Sqlplus for oracle 8 is poor.
"I really strongly recommend PostgreSQL", says I, "It's on a par with Oracle and it's free. It's a robust, secure, strong choice."
"I really strongly recommend MySQL" says the new guy.
"I really think MySQL is not the right choice for anything which is going to get serious usage. It's not as powerful as PostgreSQL and it lacks some of the basic functionality of the relational database." I reply.
"Most people in Country X use MySQL" he replies. Now he's Country X, and this is where his experience base is.
"With all due respect, that's appeal to popularity and a logical fallacy. Most people use Windows XP, that doesn't make it superior to Mac OS X. Just because most people use something doesn't make it better. PostgreSQL is, in my experience, a vastly superior database" I respond
"No, most people know the term MySQL", the owner/managing-director chimes in, "we can sell the product better if we use MySQL".