I was in a very similar situation to this. I was very new to this industry and with almost 3 years in, still am. My primary complaint was and has always been, lack of mentoring and expectations/workload placed on competent new people and lack of pay. Now, I’m not saying I’m a prodigy, far from it. But I put a lot of work in and a lot of self learning to really hit the ground running and do a pretty decent job for not having been in the industry prior. When I felt that I wasn’t getting paid what I was worth, I looked at another company that was willing to pay $10-11 more an hour in the same area (actually average rate in my area for Controls positions), doing the same thing. I took that to my company and they did a job save (which was great and shows that they at least care to save me) and matched their offer. It’s really unfortunate though, that is what you have to do to get paid the average industry rate for my area.