> MARKET VALUE What is the employee worth to another employer? This can be judged fairly easily with some quick googling and job posts. I disagree, I don't bel

> MARKET VALUE What is the employee worth to another employer? This can be judged fairly easily with some quick googling and job posts. I disagree, I don't believe you can get a clear estimate of the value generated by the role from job posts -- you see one component of labour costs that employers are willing to pay, which gives a lower bound on the value. value > salary_costs + other_costs. The cost is not the same thing as the value. The value might be 1.5x or 2x or 20x or 200x higher than the cost of the salary. That gap between value and cost might not matter unless you are in a very strong negotiating position where you have an effective monopoly on your skillset and the company has no alternative. From the company's perspective: (1) how much value does the role create for _this_ company. This sets a hard upper bound on how much the company could rationally pay for the role. (2) how much would it cost the company to go out to the labour market and hire, train and retain a new employee to fill the role. or perhaps, how much would it cost to transfer another employee internally from a less critical role to fill the gap and hire externally to backfill that less critical role. (3) what impact does the decision have on other employees at the company? if other employees come to know that one employee negotiated a large raise, will they also ask for large raises? or conversely, if employees see some of their colleagues quitting for big pay rises with other companies, will a bunch of people resign at the same time and leave some projects / products / teams unable to function.