[mnm1]

The value I can deliver is strictly limited by the sales department these days. In the last four years, I have increased the value proposition of the business 100x-1000x (hard to know for sure, but not less than that) with my team's contributions (team of 2), yet I have not gotten a raise. No matter what I do, if we don't sell more, the value does not increase. So why should I care about the value I'm delivering when it does not affect my pay whatsoever?

Let's face, it almost all jobs are like this. Certainly all startups that are running on others' funds. Certainly all big corps. The author here is talking about a very small percentage of companies where individual contributors can actually contribute to the value of the company and the company reciprocates in value to the employee (pay). The one company that I worked in where this was the case, gave decent single digit raises. Hardly commensurate with value, but not bad.

In other words, there's no reason to focus on value provided for an employee at most companies because such focus is either unrewarded or almost unrewarded.