Quite a few companies I've worked for have raises budgetted by department/business unit/whatever. The average may be 3% over the department, which means only a

Quite a few companies I've worked for have raises budgetted by department/business unit/whatever. The average may be 3% over the department, which means only a few people get to have an above average rating. If everyone does an amazing job, everyone gets 3%. Usually I've found that translates to a few people getting a great rating, and other people getting a good rating, because there's only so much to go around. My last company, only 2 people in the department could get the highest rating, other people were passed over, including myself. I warned my manager about this, but not surprisingly we lost quite a few good people because the market is good for devs and its really easy to get a solid increase in salary. Especially if you get passed over because corporates are going to corporate.