The no-money argument is less convincing to me, because I see this happen in well-financed companies. A very common scenario is that some person leaves, and is

The no-money argument is less convincing to me, because I see this happen in well-financed companies. A very common scenario is that some person leaves, and is replaced by a new person who ends up getting paid more for doing the same role. The old person was on an old outdated rate and the new person is on a new corrected salary (that usually is higher) I suspect it's inertia. Companies don't make the effort to update old rates to match new market rates, because that requires active effort on part of the company.