If you want any substantial raises within an employer, you really need to be 'promoted' somehow - new project, more employees reporting to you, new responsibilities, etc.<p>MARKET VALUE - its often the case that an employee is worth more to a different employer (where they can bring their experience) than the current employer (where they have experience, but other people have the same experience and can train someone new).<p>SKILL SET - the employer may not need whatever skills the employee has, particularly any new skills that have been developed since being hired. If an employer judges that a role can be filled with someone with, say, 5 years of C++ experience, and they hire someone with 5 years of C++ experience, and that person stays for 8 years, that doesn't mean that the employer values and will pay for those three extra years of experience, they may prefer to loose them, and replace them with some new person with 5 years of experience. Employers like people who are <i>minimally qualified</i> for a position. This is why you need to use whatever new skills you have gained to be 'promoted' or find a new role (internally or externally), you can't expect an employer to start wanting new skills and experience in the same role that they didn't originally hire for.<p>HISTORY - this depends a lot on other people in the organization. Did you learn all the 'historical and legacy knowledge' from senior management / founders who are still there? In that case, they can teach that to someone else, just like they taught it to you. This is only valuable if those people leave and you are now the only person with the knowledge, otherwise you can never have more value than the original people that taught you, according to this metric.<p>Basically, if you want to earn more, you need to find ways to move into new, better jobs / employers, you can't try to turn your current position into a higher paying one.<p>There are some other metrics that are important too:<p>TEAMWORK - Does the employee work well in a team, share work, help others be productive?<p>LEADERSHIP - Is the employee showing leadership, and a potential replacement for any management employees that leave?<p>NETWORK - Does this employee have contacts across the organization, and bring people together? Have they referred people in their network to join the company, become clients or vendors?