Treat average employee tenure at the company as a KPI. I've worked at companies that without a question raise all employees to market like clockwork. I've als

Treat average employee tenure at the company as a KPI. I've worked at companies that without a question raise all employees to market like clockwork. I've also worked at companies that skimp on raises. The automatic raise company had tenures in the range of ~10 years, which meant incredible institutional knowledge and contact networks. Consequently, things that would be impossible at other companies were trivial there. Long tenures can cause their own issues (specifically: not firing people who need to be fired), but are a huge tailwind to productivity, especially at the architect level. And side observation. If your company is only profitable because you're underpaying your employees, build a different company. If your company is more profitable because you're underpaying employees... you're effectively giving the missing employee salary to shareholders. Gross. Employees are the ones doing the work.