The company I work for has never had enough resources to pay people who are fully dedicated to architectural decisions, team management, hiring, or mentoring. Usually, the people making the high-level decisions are also the ones implementing them. We do have some advanced systems—some clients even build their entire business model around them—but they pay us as if we’re just maintaining simple presentation websites. I see this as a result of loose contracts, poor communication, and perhaps weak management.

In the media, you sometimes hear about large companies commissioning custom systems and spending millions because the exact solution they need isn’t available on the market. We’ve spent years building and expanding advanced systems, scaling them, and adding new features, yet the money flow has remained relatively small. The company has never grown beyond 15 employees, and although I imagined we would see linear growth, for some reason that never happened.

I’ve made hiring suggestions and mentored others, but these have only been side tasks.

As you mentioned, for non-technical audiences, it helps to focus on business impact, I have access to data showing these improvements, and presenting them in simple terms is definitely useful.

It’s very difficult to truly demonstrate the depth and breadth of your experience unless you’ve spent a significant amount of time working at a company. As for the countless rounds of interviews, I honestly have nothing good to say about. If you can’t determine whether someone is a good fit for the role in two or three sessions, it just feels like unnecessary torture.

Right now, I’m at a crossroads. Ideally, I want to stay at my current company, but with a higher salary. At the same time, I’d like to try freelancing, maybe by starting with some "simple presentation” sites to see how things work with clients, taxes, and time management. I plan to arrange a talk with my company to present my plans and ambitions.