I wrote a site specific web crawler for my job(debt collection agency) spent well over 175 hours on it, database integration, remote spider deployment, easy GUI. I need a major raise if I'm going to give it to them though, I'm currently making 12/hr under the title of legal assistant, think I could get a raise to 23/hr. What would you do?

First question ... whose time did you do it on?

All my own

@harleywewax Second question ... on whose equipment?

My laptop, they did purchase a server for me to configure and install the application on however everything is still running locally on my computer

If it's all on your time (not a second on theirs) and all on your equipment, I would license it to them on an annual contract ... not ask for a raise. You will probably have to dedicate a lot of time upfront for bug fixes and feature request, but it would pay off with additional licenses down the road. But (and this is a big but) ... if you've put it on any server they claim ownership of ... the waters just got very muddy. I'm no IP lawyer, so I would consult one.

Why are you writing their software if you're a legal assistant?

Do they even know you are writing this software?

Yeah they do, they were aware of my interest in programming when I was hired I was a computer science student at the time.

Thanks for the advice, my demo is next week! Fingers crossed I'm quite proud of what I put together and I'm planning to knock management's socks off. I'll let the community know what happens. Hopefully ya boy walks out with a proper check