I don't think it's realistic (but I wish it were). An example from a Western European country of what retention should look like from my point of view: Senior

I don't think it's realistic (but I wish it were). An example from a Western European country of what retention should look like from my point of view: Senior software engineer (10 years of exp.) joins company X. Year salary: 80K EUR. This salary is not exclusive of "tier-1 top companies"(but let's not start a discussion about how low or high this number is, please) - After 1 year. Good performance, everyone is happy. Raise of 15%. New salary = 92K EUR - After 2 years. Great performance, everyone is happy. Raise of 15%. New salary = 105800 EUR... now this salary is starting to look unrealistic - After 3 years. Great performance, he's the de-facto tech lead of the team. Raise of 15%. New salary = 121670 EUR. Now this is salary is rare for for non-tier 1 companies At this point the senior engineer considers leaving because in year 4, it's impossible he'll get a 15% raise again (that would make around 140K EUR, and company X is not Google/FB/Amazon/Microsoft). So, he switches companies. Company hires a new senior software engineer for 90K EUR. The cycle starts again.