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I've never worked at a company that had raises that kept up with the market. I've been a software developer since 1985.

Agreed. If you can under pay by an amount that is less than the perceived pain of looking elsewhere, that's sane if you have a short term view.

Other option you'll see in big corps is to use old technologies only. This gives them an excuse to underpay, and makes it harder for their devs to leave to a fair market salary role!

I work in the IT department of a major European investment bank. I can assure you that they're willing to pay high salaries to hire experts in said old technologies.

Mainframes are still in use, COBOL devs are in very high demand and finding experts in technologies as young as CORBA is becoming more and more difficult.

Never understimate the cash power of big financial institutions with old legacy systems.

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