Are you on LinkedIn? Do you ever speak with recruiters about other opportunities? That's a great way to get a feel for the 'market rate' for your skillset in your area. When's the last time you changed jobs?
I recently made the transition but it was extremely difficult. I ended up with 1 offer after ~10 or so interviews and ~50 or so applications.
The real problem is I deal with this sort of stuff. I started doing analysis about modifying a system to provide a new field to another system for the purpose of reporting. After spending a day looking at it, they pulled the story because they didn't actually need that field. And this isn't a one time thing - pulling back work. Then they give me BS stuff. They wanted me to increase the code coverage on an app that we were going to transfer to another team. The target percentage - 100%. It was already at 97% line 98% branch. Why am I wasting my time on this miserable task?
You are almost assuredly more desirable in this market than you think. Consider making finding a new job your new hobby.
The past couple of jobs I've had I came in at the upper end of Glassdoor's reported salary, for the specific company even, even when I had relatively few years in the role, and without negotiation on my part. And Glassdoor didn't at all represent bonus and equity properly. Levels.fyi did a much better job of it (but has fewer data points for non-tech companies).
I have never worked extra hours to come up to speed (and in general haven't put in extra hours, though I've sometimes had to work weird schedules due to working with people across timezones), and have pretty consistently been a high performer.
I'd still recommend just doing some searching. Worst case, you validate that your current comp is the best you can get. Mediocre case, you find you could get paid better, but not doing anything you feel comfortable taking. Best case, you find something that is interesting and exciting and will pay you better.
What kind of job do you have? I thought extra hours were normal in tech?
I have looked around. This area (Philly region) seems to be pretty terrible for tech jobs. There are some higher paying ones, but they tend to be niche.
Every place I've worked I've seen the same thing. Work/life balance is stressed as being important, BUT you will totally end up working extra hours if you cave to implicit pressures others set on you (oftentimes the business, product, etc). Someone will try and schedule you for a meeting at 5 PM, or say "we need this by next week", or whatever. And every place, I've said "No". Sometimes it's "I can't make that, I have to be home", sometimes it's "That isn't what we committed to this sprint" or even "That's what we committed but the sprint has been broken because (other thing)". Occasionally it's even been "Hey, we ran into something unexpected; even though we committed to that it isn't going to happen by that date".
On call pages happen; I always take time off the next day. As a manager, I -tell- my team to take time off the next day if they get paged.
Even where I am now, where I will have meetings scheduled at 7 AM, and 6 PM, routinely, I just close my laptop up in the middle of the day. Sometimes I'll even book time pre-emptively just to prevent people from trying to schedule me straight through (and thus leading to a > 8 hour day).
Etc. The perverse thing is that by doing this people actually get a -better- impression of me. There's an element of confidence; couple that with the fact I do deliver, and they don't question it or push back on it. And ultimately even if they wheedle enough I say "okay, fine, yeah, I have to talk to the guys in China; 6 PM meeting it is", I just book time 9-5 for my own stuff, or (when in the office), leave at like 3 so I can get home, unwind a bit, have dinner, and take that call, and still only work 8 hours.
I can't speak to Philly; you might be right. If you're tied to the area, consider remote. If you're not tied to the area, consider looking for things outside of it.
I've found that if I only work 8 hours they will say that I'm not getting things done fast enough. It makes sense if they are comparing you to people who work more. I know one department where the tech leads all work 10 hours consistently.
I was once in a discussion about how to get to a senior dev position (after filling the role of senior dev for a year and tech lead for another year). I was told I had to work an extra hour per day. That's a 13% increase for a 7% raise and a role with higher expectations...
First, a great deal of research shows that working past 8 hours of day for long stretches actually -reduces- overall output compared with working 8. Now, to be fair, the bulk of this research was done on physical labor, not mental, but interestingly, what research -has- been done on mental found the same thing, except the actual hours was more like...6.
Second, you're working at a place that actively -encourages- you to work unpaid overtime. That sees it happening and rather than saying "what can we do to prevent this and not risk burnout" instead says "good. Keep at it". If you're salaried, you're effectively getting paid a lower hourly rate for the work you're doing. So...not to beat this horse again...but...look for another job. It doesn't sound like the pay is great, it doesn't sound like the environment is great. The only thing keeping you there is a belief you can't get anything better; maybe that's true, maybe it isn't, but it certainly will be true if you don't at least look.
Get yourself on Linkedin. Find a tech focused resume writing service to help you with verbiage, both for your LinkedIn profile and your resume. Let recruiters know you're looking on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/67405/let-recr...). Start looking for roles in your area, and remote (and in any area you'd be willing to relocate to). That sounds like a better use of an hour a day than giving it, for the same price (free), to your current company, in the hopes of a 7% raise and higher expectations in the future.
Programming languages are all the same, so learn 3 or 4 new ones and discover that you can probably write in any language for an interview (then do some in relatively unfamiliar languages for kicks and giggles to practice).
Tech is all the same. Take data in, poop data out. That’s the whole job. The formats and protocols change, but once you starting thinking about your stacks as data-in, data-out, they all start looking the same.
Make video games or hardware drivers from scratch, those are the hardest things to make. Video games from complexity overload, and hardware drivers from interface complexity.
I don't have any interests in games or drivers. Those aren't applicable in my company either. I am currently working on an Angular site. I will host it on S3 with a Lambda and maybe SQS for a marketing email list. This is tech that we use at my job, and many other places.
They'll likely run a background check and make sure your resume isn't obviously lying (they'll confirm start/end dates and title, basically), and make sure you're not a criminal, MAYBE do a credit and/or drug test.
It sucks that I suck. Oh well.