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I'm not gonna lie, I chuckled a bit reading this.

This hasn't been the case for at least a decade now, if not more.

First it was extended out to maybe once every 2 years, then more, and lately at every company I've worked at (primarily large companies) where pay was mentioned the response is "we pay at or above market rates - discuss with your manager."

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Not in all / not anymore. I'm in Canada a 300k IT/consulting company and rated top performer several years in a row. No raises last couple of years, before that it was 0.49 and 1% respectively. This year there was zero salary increase for anybody in our branch.
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Any year you're not getting a raise and there is inflation, you're taking a pay cut. You may know this, sharing as a PSA for those who might not.
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Absolutely. I've done the inflation calculator and I'm painfully aware of my lower effective compensation / purchasing power.
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Leave, that's BS.
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When it was, it was typically some amount less than inflation. 1-2%
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Every few years I get a 10% raise when they realize those less than inflation raises are enough that they are losing people who places that pay better. (sometime it was me who left, but the cycle repeats at the new place)
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That's what I think I get... So few, I don't even bother to look how much more it is...
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The worst is when you get a manager who’s either too clueless to realize you’re seeing a pay cut from an “increase” so small, or one who knows but is pretending otherwise.

That awkward pause in the comp update meeting when they tell you about the “increase” and seem to expect some positive reaction. LOL.

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Could be worse, mine has promised me salary increase thrice this year. Every time coming up with bullshit issues why it couldn't happen.

I am still working on minimum wage (as a DevOps).

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"You work hard, screw over everybody that you love, hurt, rob, kill indiscriminately and maybe... just maybe, if you're lucky, you become a three bit gangster. It's bullshit. Go to college. Then you can rip people off and get paid for it. It's called capitalism"
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If your "raise" is less than the increase from things like inflation, it's not going to be noticeable even if you did look. The concept of cost of living increases is laughable today. Even banks looking at a mortgage application is assuming your salary will increase way beyond what today's raises are. The only way to do that is to jump ship and find a new job, but then you're dinged because your work history is not stable.
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3% for me, the last few years.

There are basically only two ways to get a substantial raise at most employers, either move to a higher grade/title position, or move to another employer (probably at a higher grade).

Once you are in, large pay increases are rare, I'm sure there are exceptions but as a general rule the salary you negotiate coming in is where you get your pay raise. Hence the prior conventional wisdom that you need to change employers every few years to get your additional experience reflected in your salary.

Japan has a culture of loyalty/lifetime employment so not sure how much that happens there.

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Individual employees. But the base rate (or band) stays the same, which is not what I'm reading here. So you might travel inside the band from low-paid to high-paid, while it stays the same.
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Japan had zero or negative interest rates for decades, a period which ended a couple of years ago.
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not anymore
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