If you're at a big company and want a significant compensation increase outside of what you'd get from the normal performance review process, the only way to do

If you're at a big company and want a significant compensation increase outside of what you'd get from the normal performance review process, the only way to do it is to interview elsewhere and get a better offer. If you succeed in getting a better offer, you can take it to your management chain and ask them to match it. In my colleagues' experience, they frequently will match it, but not always. In particular, if there are certain firms that have a reputation for "overpaying" for engineers (e.g. Uber in 2016-2017), there might be a blanket policy of "we don't match offers from firm X". If your offer gets matched, all is well - enjoy the money, but don't expect big raises through the normal review process for a while, since you're probably at or above the expected pay band for your level. If it doesn't get matched, you're in a tough spot, because your manager may view you as a "lame duck" who is interviewing elsewhere and liable to leave. If you choose to decline the offer and stay and your company, then handling this perception will be very important. A side benefit to interviewing around and receiving offers - you may realize that your aren't as underpaid as you may have thought. I've had a few colleagues who were unhappy about their pay and chose to interview around, but were surprised to find that the only higher offers they could get were at firms with a much more difficult work/life balance. They realized that their current arrangement was actually pretty good! Anyway, all this is to say that exercises like this don't have any effect unless people are actually willing to walk. Microsoft already pays for compensation survey data from across the industry - they know how much people are paid, and have set salary bands where they think they're competitive. Unless you're willing to take another offer somewhere else, complaining about comp just hurts morale on your team and makes people less happy.