[gruez]

>Occam's Razor says: or the companies just want to rehire new people at lower pay.

Do you have any idea how much it costs to recruit replacement developers? Between the cost for recruiters, the amount of time spent on interviews, and ramp-up time for new hires, you'd need to lower wages by a significant amount (eg. 30%) for you to be able to get payback in a reasonable amount of time. Not to mention, if you're a startup, the loss of institutional knowledge will greatly hamper your ability to execute.

[erik_seaberg]

Salary cuts are strongly resented, so I think employers prefer to use turnover as an opportunity to hire at the market rate when it has gone down (due to competitors no longer making better offers).