If I rephrase and edit my previous comment maybe it'll stick better. I had three ideas for you:
* Analyze what you do, figure out the portion of it that your employer cares about, and stop spending so much time on the other portions. Example: the carefully crafted prose in your per-public-method comments might be permitted to suffer.
* Instead of campaigning for a raise, campaign for a role change to something that uses more of your cleverness and less of your sweat. For instance, maybe you'd be better off as a product manager.
* Sandbag estimates to bring unrealistic expectations back into line.
I whole-heartedly agree with this. Especially the sandbagging estimates. Software Development is extremely difficult to accurately estimate, and I have found if I don't sandbag estimates, I almost always go back and explain that something took longer than expected. If I don't, I almost always have someone knocking on my door asking where something is at.
My person rule of thumb for this is to take the time I originally estimated, double it, then add a little more, especially if it's 8 hours or greater.
I wondered what had happened to it! Thank you a lot for your input.
I am - of course in a business sense - very interested in raising my market value to my current (and future employers), and am always looking for ways to enhance it.
* Analyze what you do, figure out the portion of it that your employer cares about, and stop spending so much time on the other portions. Example: the carefully crafted prose in your per-public-method comments might be permitted to suffer.
* Instead of campaigning for a raise, campaign for a role change to something that uses more of your cleverness and less of your sweat. For instance, maybe you'd be better off as a product manager.
* Sandbag estimates to bring unrealistic expectations back into line.