Heh, that's an interesting discussion - management never has any thoughts about giving pay raises, you have to ask for it, sometimes brutally. Developers shoul

Heh, that's an interesting discussion - management never has any thoughts about giving pay raises, you have to ask for it, sometimes brutally. Developers should learn a bit about marketing, have a couple of valuable things on GitHub, have a blog, have an up to date LinkedIn, etc... then you end up being contacted by recruiters, which is cool for an ego boost and as a safety net. It's then much easier to go in and say "Hey Bob, I'm producing twice the value you expect for this salary, work conditions have changed, so I want a significant pay raise". And sometimes you have to threaten with resignation, which doesn't really work in big companies, because there you have the "cog in the machine" mentality, with developers often being the bottom of the food-chain. But in smaller companies or when working as a consultant or in general when the "stock holders" have good visibility in the value that you bring, it's a very effective tactic. It's also very healthy getting a pay raise especially when the stress levels are going through the roof, as it keeps you sane, because what's worse than being stressed about deadlines is being stressed while you're not being payed enough, i.e. compensation is a hygienic issue and when working in unhygienic conditions, there's nowhere to go but down. But you know, fortunately we live in times in which the supply and demand ratio is favoring us :-)