Given your current tax burden, $3k/mo take home is a joke. I'm in a similar position as you, Laravel/PHP dev working on a highly specialized platform and my take home is a bit over $6k/mo after taxes (in Texas) with full benefits.
I have to track my hours because I work for an agency that bills it's time to clients, but for the most part, I'm working on one/two Jira tickets in a day so it's fairly manageable. 4 hours spent on one ticket, 2 hours on another, and an hour or two of meetings per day (stand ups, grooming, etc). Some days I work on one ticket and call it quits.
Don't sell yourself short. You're worth a hell of a lot more than you're making now. I think you have every right to demand double your take home pay, at least.
Thanks for a great comment! Seeing your comment and other encouraging comments here on HN, I had a call with the startup this morning.
I basically said: "Now that I have to log my every hour, it got me thinking about my hourly price. Some of my friends (actually referring to HN people as you understand here) are making $250/h. I'm making $37/h. Are we able to increase my price?"
And they basically said: "We don't have any more money to pay you. Yes, I too can see some of my friends with nicer houses and clothes, but so what. We're building this startup and we all make sacrifices."
Well, they do offer me a percentage after a few years, but the company isn't worth anything right now, so this does not motivate ma at all. They own 99% of the company anyways.
And this is what I said to them. And they told me to come back in a few days and see if there are any other arrangements we can make (like give me a part of the company or something like this).
I don't now. Let's see what they say, but probably I'll need to start looking for something else.
I have to track my hours because I work for an agency that bills it's time to clients, but for the most part, I'm working on one/two Jira tickets in a day so it's fairly manageable. 4 hours spent on one ticket, 2 hours on another, and an hour or two of meetings per day (stand ups, grooming, etc). Some days I work on one ticket and call it quits.
Don't sell yourself short. You're worth a hell of a lot more than you're making now. I think you have every right to demand double your take home pay, at least.