I got a new certification and a raise, that while I was thankful for, wasn't quite what I was expecting. I interviewed somewhere else, and my company matched the offer. All total, 40% raise this year.

I lack the background. I'm not seeing anything that is better that I'm qualified for.

Congrats you must be at the top of your bracket for your skills level then. Only way I see it is to work on your skills.

I wish. I'm in the bottom quarter of the grade range for an intermediate dev at my company. There aren't any opportunities for my skills.

If you're an even remotely competent developer in a language used by more than one company, have a reasonably firm grasp of the English language, can work with others reasonably well, and can be bothered to apply for jobs, then there are definitely plenty of opportunities for your skills. Plenty of companies don't even care about the language, they figure you'll pick it up. The only way this isn't true is if you are already hugely overpaid or if you come off terrible in interviews. A year ago I would have said "or are a convicted felon" but I think plenty of companies don't even care about that anymore, that's how huge demand is. You don't even have to live somewhere with jobs anymore so long as you have a reliable Internet connection!

If you just sit around letting your current company take advantage of you, and complaining about not getting a big enough raise you definitely won't find those opportunities though. You have to interview a lot.

They don't allow me to become an expert by having me be full stack in multiple stacks with frequent context switching. I tend to be slow in the code screens.

Out of curiosity, what do you consider your skills? What languages or frameworks you have experience with? Keep in mind that often your skill with a particular language is not what they're looking for - many of us have changed jobs to a place that used a language that was new to us.

Most of my experience has been in FileNet and Neoxam. I have limited/inconsistent experience with AWS, Java, Python, and Android.

The options are very limited with Nexoam and FileNet. Especially with family constraints like not moving.

Interesting. I'm sure my unfamiliarity with those colors my response (for which I am sorry), but if you have experience coding in Python and/or Java, and are willing to work in those, there are likely companies looking for that (even if they are not looking for FileNet or Neoxam).

Yeah, I've been looking. I'm not finding anything really better. I put in a couple applications for things that would be about 50-100% raises. Had an interview for one, but wasn't selected (faster people at the code screen... plus it was in JS, which I'm very rusty at).

I thought that myself but I was wrong (or at least it didn't matter as much as I thought it did). I was heavy on telecom/phone app development, there's not much out there. But I had enough web and system dev that I got a bunch of recruiters contacting me about those opportunities.

Yeah, I interviewed for a phone system app internally. I turned it down because of lack of options afterwards.

Nobody cares what your internal performance rating is. People are desperate for warm bodies. Start apply, start talking to recruiters. You will get paid more, you can do this.

Are you located outside the US? The job market might be local to the US.

Fake it 'till you make it! Anecdotal, but every successful dev in my immediate circle did that at one point in their career to get over a hump or past a plateau.

I could apply to a tech lead position that's open... HR would likely throw a fit.

In the current company? Bad idea. They're not likely to ever value you like a fresh company would.

Options are limited here. It might be bad but should be better than my current situation.

This

Some companies wont even ask you interview questions and will give you an offer right away.

Wow, that's crazy. The interviews I've had still involve questions and code screens.

Haha the easiest I had was one 30 minutes interview. No coding. Just simple questions.

But do you want to land on that team? What are the conditions that lead a team to not even ask questions of candidates, and what do those conditions imply about their trajectory?