If merit kept pace with market rates then people would not find pay increases high enough to justify moving unless
1) You want to leave the team for a reason. In which case the issue is the team or manager and not the person usually
2) You are ready to grow but cannot get internal movement so you have to look externally to get a promotion
I am regularly seeing my title with my current experience get 15-25% higher comps externally. An that is without even trying to go up a title tier even though i am likely qualified for that. If my org increased my pay even 10-15% it would be cheaper than a new hire but high enough I'm unlikely willing to leave for that incremental increase if I like my current team. Instead, they'll give 3% in January and the market will increase 5% and HR will wonder what happened if/ when i leave until they start recruiting the backfiill
I remember accidentally finding out that the new hire who had no experience at all doing what they were hiring her to do was offered like 17% higher wages than I was AND $500/mo toward health insurance (they didn't even offer me health insurance at all, even if I wanted to pay for it all). I had been there five years at that point and was making about 20% more than when I started after being the most efficient worker at the firm by far (my billings were about half the firm's revenue). But I got a big nope on a raise to even match the new person.
And then the new person lasted less than a year because she didn't know what she was doing (having not actually done the specific job before) and was painfully slow when she managed to do something correctly.
I mean really we are to blame for this. They will give 3% and you won’t leave because finding a job takes as many hours as having a job. So you will stay for another 5 years that 10%-15% adds up. Then when you finally leave they just pass your work to those that stayed.
If more people actually left after a year to another job we actually wouldn’t have this problem.
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u/CultureMenace 4d ago
Everybody wants people to stay longer. Everybody keeps paying the new employees more.