And now trump has to actually accomplish things , not just brand his name on shit . His trolls can only deflect to Clinton for so long . <| sep |> First off , calm down , there ' s nothing to blow up about . You were hired on with what you thought was a nice starting salary . They hired on their intern at a lower rate than some of the others and got a good deal . Everyone was happy . That ' s just good business . Now , you want to negotiate for a large jump in pay because you feel your work is the equivalent of or better than your coworkers who make more . Good deal that ' s certainly worth talking to them about . Just approach it rationally no one ripped you off or did anything bad against you . You need to approach it along the lines of , With this change in moving me to nonexempt status that ' s what being moved from salary to hourly means , I ' ve come to realize I was hired on at a much lower rate than my coworkers . Now that I ' ve been here for 4 years , and my performance is as good as theirs ' give examples here as to why you believe this , I ' d like to see about getting my pay adjusted to be at a closer level . Something along those lines . Understand , though , that this may not work . It ' s a truism in the developer world , and many other industries , that often times the only way to get a large pay bump is to move to another company . There ' s a lot of factors behind the scenes that can make it difficult for a company to give a large pay bump to an employee . Hopefully , since you mentioned being able to talk to the owner , yours is a small enough company that this won ' t be a factor .