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Comment by susan_hall | Hacker News Reader

"For most of us, yearly pay raises are a fixture of corporate life"

Was this article written in 1955 and then accidentally drawn out of the archives and posted in 2016? The annual pay raise died a few decades ago. There were countless articles about it. You can go back and re-read early issues of FastCompany, from the 1990s, where they talk about "you" the worker needs to make themselves essential to the company, because annual raises are dead and only real promotions bring real money any more.

And of course, at some point there emerged in the USA the odd habit of top managers, such that to get a pay increase an employee needs to quit and go elsewhere, or at least has to get a real offer from somewhere else, and only then will "your" company give you a pay increase, to match that competing offer.

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> The annual pay raise died a few decades ago.

AFAICT, despite the hype, it really didn't, it just became less significant.

> You can go back and re-read early issues of FastCompany, from the 1990s, where they talk about "you" the worker needs to make themselves essential to the company, because annual raises are dead and only real promotions bring real money any more.

Its true that in private industry, reliable annual increases that are much greater than inflation (and so represent real advancement) are far less common than they used to be. They still happen in some places where people advance within broad pay bands without a change of position or title, so it isn't strictly the case that all real (significant) pay increases come from promotions, but its not a bad approximation.

But even so, annual nominal pay increases that are at least near or slightly higher than inflation seem to remain common in private industry.

I think it's safe to say that whether annual pay raises died or not depends highly on the company/industry/country. I'd say it's been a thing at maybe 50% of the (U.S.) companies I've worked.

Everywhere I worked at in the past 20 years - from startups to fortune 50 companies this was/is a thing.

Large companies do this "by the book" with HR-imposed bell curve type quotas (that they are trying hard to hide) with ~80% of the employees getting an average rating/raise, ~10% getting below average rating/raise, "top" 10% or so - getting a higher but also capped raises.

Smaller/less "formal" companies tend to reward/"punish" (you're still getting a raise but it's small) based on individual contributions.

So yes this is definitely a reality of the "corporate life".

> Was this article written in 1955 and then accidentally drawn out of the archives and posted in 2016? The annual pay raise died a few decades ago.

This is the first year in my 14-year career I did not get an annual raise.

Dunno about the U.S. but in Australua they are definitely a fixture.

UK here - agreed. I don't know anyone working at a corporation where annual raises aren't a thing, they might be small(3-4% if you aren't doing well on your performance review) but they almost seem mandatory.

UK as well, pay raises have fluctuated between 1.5% and 15% during my career. Only one year (2009) did I not receive a raise and that was down to the small agency I was working for at the time having a mortgage lender as a primary client. Not the easiest of years for them.

They are a fixture in the U.S., too, in my experience.

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