If you are at a low level, you move to Facebook/Google and you come back to Microsoft the next year. The world is filled with people who are waiting for a raise and will not get it in the next decade.
Yea, I used to believe that fairy tale. "Just wait! The quality of your work will speak for itself" is nonsense. Reality is, for every person who uses the Hope And Prayer career development strategy, there's another person who hustles, self-promotes, or brown-noses their way into promotion after promotion. In most places, a raise that I get is a raise that you don't get, so you really have to think about it as a competition.
I agree that more recent generations advance monetarily through a series of jumps between organizations. However, I think that this quote is particularly salient to the felt need for recognition that your work is recognized and relevant and important. It's a mercenary mentality that I admit that I have and fully endorse. However, the way I parsed the conversation is that Jeffery was already being paid at levels above where he was functioning at the time. It took time for his work to be recognized as having the requisite value of his pay grade and, once that recognition was achieved, it seemed to accelerate his upward mobility within Microsoft.
I'm not trying to discount your perspective, because it's one that I have lived out and fully endorse. However, I took this quote as a nice check, or even corrective, to my default mode of operation. I think that these checks to our own personal status quos are important to our growth as human beings.