>If HR is infact the reason why this doesn't happen then HR is hamstringing the rest of the company. Yes, exactly. The thing is you then have to hire a compet

>If HR is infact the reason why this doesn't happen then HR is hamstringing the rest of the company. Yes, exactly. The thing is you then have to hire a competent HR member to do all this. Believe it or not, the HR industry is actually even more mercenary than the software developer industry. If you want a good HR employee, it costs money. All in all it adds up to a "high investment, high reward", approach to hiring and retaining employees. Highly paid HR, highly paid employees, all as pre-requisites to a "good faith" market indexed pay raise. But for many, many companies, this HR model doesn't make sense, or else management has decided not to implement it.