I did switch jobs 10 times in 12 years and constantly asked for more raises, bargained hard during hiring and always delivered above and beyond. I was always hi

I did switch jobs 10 times in 12 years and constantly asked for more raises, bargained hard during hiring and always delivered above and beyond. I was always highly regarded by my colleagues. Doesn't matter. Company founders usually treated me terribly. In my last job, the founders said that I was essential but then when I asked for a raise plus more responsibilities and told them that it was a deal breaker otherwise, they refused. In spite of being flush with millions of funding. The CTO even threatened with violence. Their business has been going downhill since I left and the CTO has since turned members of the industry against me as revenge for leaving... In spite of the fact that my work exceeded expectations (by the CTO's own admission). To rub salt into the wound, their company was using an open source project which I had built for free (a popular project with almost 6k stars on GitHub). You're jumping to conclusions. Society does not work how you think. The fact that you cannot conceive the system as unmeritocratic and try to blame me without knowing anything about me suggests that you are probably one of the lucky few who has been given special treatment. Maybe in your peer group, one would HAVE to have done something incorrectly to end up in my situation. In my peer group, nobody ever succeeds no matter how good they are or what they do. I suspect that the difference in perception is likely rooted in widespread algorithm-based discrimination based on your social connections to rich or powerful people.