This sounds like a guy making idle threats. "I have an offer for $X !!!!!!" - but it doesn't really seem he's interested in leaving. Honestly, for 5 years of r

This sounds like a guy making idle threats. "I have an offer for $X !!!!!!" - but it doesn't really seem he's interested in leaving. Honestly, for 5 years of raises, he didn't negotiate well. If he negotiated more aggressively, he probably could've gotten up to 200k at this point, since he was promoted to be one of the key technical people. One key thing he didn't do was negotiate the new job offer well. If they offer you $75k at a new job, you need to push them up to 85k-90k. Once you have that, you go to your current boss and negotiate it up to $100-115k. By not countering, he lost one of the major advantages of finding a secondary offer. Yes, it's better than not having something to fall back on, but he left 50% (or more) on the table. It's like asking for a discount, and getting 2%. That's ridiculous. If they're willing to give you 2%, they can give you 10-20% as well.