[fhd2]

Absolutely! But I also see a fourth option: Just make an exception. Just because you make exceptions doesn't mean your system sucks. If you make exceptions most of the time, it probably does, but I had to make them rarely.

It doesn't sound like good management, and perhaps it isn't, but I did have people that didn't entirely meet my expectations stay, without gratuitous raises of course. I'd be open about this with them: "I think it'd make sense for both of us if you worked elsewhere, and I can help you figure out where that could be and how to get there. But I'm also gonna offer you a path here if you want it."

Sometimes that turned out to not be a good decision. Sometimes it was. But I felt it was a humane solution to the problem, that exceptional situation. No manager is all-knowing enough to understand to 100% what value they're getting out of each individual employee, so it's not the most illogical thing to involve them in that decision. But more than anything, I'm not a fan of changing a system that works for the general cases to deal with rare and varied edge cases. That's premature generalisation, and I think both in software and in organisations, that is the root of all evil.

[chiefalchemist]

Great point. Come to think of it, it always bothers me when an outfit is very particular about hard skills set.

Do they not want ppl able and ready to learn? Does the market not change? Is the dynamics of the org that ridgid?

Sometimes ya just gotta go with what ya got (and toss in some individual and team development). It will never ever be perfect.