This is where equity becomes important. If you're a company hiring engineers but can't offer a 'market rate' or find that people aren't accepting offers becaus

This is where equity becomes important. If you're a company hiring engineers but can't offer a 'market rate' or find that people aren't accepting offers because the compensation is too low, your other bargining chip is to offer equity. Maybe its .1%, .05%, .2% or even .5%. Why can't these growing businesses that are profitable offer equity to their employees? Equity aligns incentives. If the buisness is growing and profitable the equity is valueable (and should grow in value!) as well. Even if the company remains private, there are mechanisms for trading shares of a private company. Companies don't need to raise salaries by 20% for everyone every year. They do need to be open to making adjustments as needed. Especially if they care about retention. Otherwise they'll end up spending far more than that 20% increase on turnover, hiring costs, and onboarding costs. Which will only leave them at the same capacity as before. The new hire will likely also be asking for a higher salary since the market will have appreciated anyway. If you happen to know of a place though that offers 20% raises each year I'm all ears!