From some of the management training I've sat through money is a poor motivator but a really powerful demotivator. If I give you a pay rise you very quickly com

From some of the management training I've sat through money is a poor motivator but a really powerful demotivator. If I give you a pay rise you very quickly come to see yourself as "worth" that amount of money and so any boost is short lived. If you feel that you are underpaid that leads to a long running and very powerful effect as described above. There are plenty of other things that are much more powerful motivators than money, and a good company to work for is probably not the one paying you the most. Otherwise everyone would be in finance working 100 hour weeks and loving it. The issue isn't that someone was paid $X is that they felt they were worth $Y and the other incentives and motivators weren't sufficient to overcome that. If they were paid less than they could command elsewhere but doing work that mattered to them and challenged them, felt valued by the company, were part of a good team, had flexibility in work life balance, were given opportunities to develop and learn, had prospects for advancement and the myriad other things that different people value (and sometimes value very differently) then the situation may have been very different.