- Raises and bonuses go to sales and management, not developers and designers. A creative or infrastructure person's value is not seen until they leave or are

- Raises and bonuses go to sales and management, not developers and designers. A creative or infrastructure person's value is not seen until they leave or are replaced with someone cheaper. - Domain experience and company-specific experience (and loyalty) are extremely valuable, but those tend to be completely overlooked in salary/raise computation. Unless you can specify dollar amounts (like sales) or acronyms (which management and HR love), the value of experience seems to be 0 or even negative (loyal employee won't leave if we skimp on their raise, and we paid for their training, so they owe us). - If your initial salary was good, (you were able to pay down debts and save) and you haven't changed your lifestyle but now you're having trouble paying your bills (due to increased costs of living), then the company hasn't taken care of you. Their raises/bonuses have failed. You should not be as well off as you were when you started: having gained experience, you should be better off. If not, it will probably get worse. - Raise = +1-5% (if you're lucky). New job = +20-50% + risk of being less pleasant. Your choice. - If you're in the design/development industry, there's an ENORMOUS price range. Few people can readily tell the difference between a $12/hour developer and a $125/hour developer. Some of them have been bitten badly by guessing wrong. Expect to get some offers that are half what others are offering or less. - If you ask a little higher than you believe you can get, and do it confidently (brand yourself as premium), people will tend to believe that you can get it elsewhere (or have got it) and offer much more than if you seem desperate and willing to take anything. That factor alone makes a huge difference, although it has nothing to do with skills, experience, or ability. These things combined make switching much more profitable for the employee than sticking around, albeit risky. Perversely, they may also make it more profitable for employers to replace employees than give a decent raise, albeit at a risk. That's not really good for employers or employees - everyone's gambling while vast amounts of experience are being lost to churn. But that seems to be how the market's working.