It’s rare, but it can happen. I once negotiated a a raise in salary (of about $15k a year) because they wanted me to move to a much more expensive city. No qui

It’s rare, but it can happen. I once negotiated a a raise in salary (of about $15k a year) because they wanted me to move to a much more expensive city. No quitting threats, it was just decided that it was a requirement for me to relocate. Then, the week I arrived in the new city, I got another $10k raise. It was because we’d just lost another senior employee to a large company and they wanted to preemptively retain me, but it was one of the few “out of nowhere” raises I have ever had. But in general, it isn’t in a business’s best interest to just offer raises without any negotiation or discussion. If a person isn’t asking for more, why should you offer it? Like, morally, I totally see the argument to do it preemptively, but as a business function I don’t. It’s true that the best way to get a promotion or a significant raise is to get an offer at a competitor. And that sucks. But, it is also possible to make the argument for a promotion or raise without threatening to quit. I’ve done both over my career and while the competing offer tactic usually works faster, it isn’t a pre-requisite. The one important thing to note is that if you are going to leverage another offer for a promotion/raise, you need to be prepared to walk if the company says no. If you don’t, you will never have any leverage ever again. So my advice is always to not make idle threats you aren’t willing to back up. I’ve had job offers before for substantially more money but at places I did’t want to work at. I don’t take those offers to my current employer (assuming I still want to work there). Instead, I use that knowledge of my value/worth to leverage get an offer at a place I would leave for OR to craft a better argument when I present my case for promotion/pay raise at my current employer.