Well with all this talk of hyperinflation, and anecdotally seeing some of the salaries my friends are getting recruited at, I'm starting to think I'm getting a bad deal. Does your company have any kind of policy to deal with inflationary periods?
In some countries it's common practice to get a 2-5% auto raise per year to cover inflation.<p>When you stay longer in a company people getting in almost virtually always get a better pay. Salaries in tech aren't really following any logical trend, but internal raises in most companies do. A junior might have started at 45k four years ago and 65k today, most people don't get a 20k raise over the same period.<p>That being said you'll always find a friend doing the same job and getting more money, unless you're grossly underpaid I wouldn't overthink it. What matters is to be happy with what you have, if you're not move on, if you are it doesn't matter that your best friend gets 20% more. I personally enjoy having a relaxed work environment with few but serious people, 0 bullshit and no internal political games and I sure get paid less than I could if I was working for #bigtech or some random startup working on yet another bs product. I have friends paid almost twice as much as me but listening to their weekly horror stories doesn't make me feel like I'm missing out, set your own goals
Inflation is an increase in the cost of goods and services. Employers generally mitigate it with regular small bumps in salary, often called “cost of living” increases.<p>What you’re seeing with salaries right now is not inflation, or at least mostly not inflation. It is supply (lower than usual) and demand (higher than usual) of certain skills. In other words it is a real market movement in the value of certain kinds of labor.<p>Employers can mitigate this as well, either by proactively raising salaries to match (sometimes called “market adjustments”), and or by waiting to hear an employee is leaving and then trying to match their offer to keep them.<p>Candidly, sometimes employers don’t actually want to mitigate these forces, but instead see it as an opportunity to trade longer-tenured employees who are entitled or jaded for newer employees who are more enthusiastic (and maybe more naive).<p>In any case, the only sure way to test your market value is to apply for new jobs.
Never directly that I've seen. However indirectly I've seen across the board 10% raises for everyone when the company realized that people were leaving for better paying jobs, and those who were left just hadn't found the right opportunity yet (probably because they were lazy about sending out resume's but that is not something a company should count on)<p>I've personally left a position I liked mostly because my raises were not keeping up with inflation. I understand that at my age I'm at about the peak of what I'll earn in my lifetime: I'm not expecting a raise to earn more money anymore, but inflation still applies and so 0% raise is a pay cut against inflation. Turned out I liked the new position, but I wouldn't have risked that if my wages had kept up to what I thought I was inflation.
An explanation I saw lately about misalign between salaries of newly hired people and existing employees is due to budgeting.<p>The budget for new hires comes from one budget line, and budget for increases comes from another.<p>A manager has $N to distribute among fixed number of existing employees (typically a few % of existing salary mass). They can't 2x everyone's salary. And the budget for this is approved long in advance.<p>OTOH they have some a budget of $X to hire M new people. They might not be able to hire M people if market is hot, so they hire fewer people at elevated salaries and still stay within the overall budget $X.
I expect a yearly raise that at the very minimum match the inflation, such a raise I interpret at "my salary has stayed the same as previous years" while no raise means "I'm getting paid less". I'd probably quit if the company started paying me less (by not matching inflation) unless they had a very convincing excuse.
Employees negotiate salaries. In theory this means they should take possible future scenarios, like inflation, into account when coming up with the salary that they'll accept. You can always ask to re-negotiate, or look for another job in this hot market.
Money isn't everything, peace of mind is worth lots of money. If you <i>need</i> more money, then consider jumping to another job for a substantial raise or asking your supervisor for one after citing why you deserve it.