In reality, not everyone quits and your pay didn’t move. Only way to improve your pay is often move and negotiate.

If you stay, you can do 200% of the work and hope there is a role and they appreciate your work. Or just sell your experience to a company that definitely has that role available.

Last year, money was running out in our project and the guy who had trained me decided he’d take the L and move to another project, so we could continue in the project. And yeah, suddenly I was in the role of the lead developer.

Like, don’t get me wrong, I would’ve been the one to be moved to another project, if I wasn’t up for the task. It’s not like I was a complete dumbass.
But it did still feel more like “I guess, we doin’ lead development now” rather than something I had intentionally worked towards.

i’m late to the realization you can’t neglect having a better job to dangle over their heads at every moment even if the current job looks decent and you want to stay.