[smallmancontrov]

"Work hard and it will be recognized" is terrible, horrible, no good, very bad advice. "Tit for tat" is the most generous to the company anyone should ever be: try working hard, if it's recognized then continue, if it isn't see if you can politic until it is, and in the very likely circumstance that it continues to not be recognized either jump for a pay bump or work like you're paid.

[NoLinkToMe]

I didn't say work hard. But if you keep contributing what you already contributed previously and nothing changes, your salary likely also doesn't change. Changing that doesn't necessarily require working hard, I haven't made any such claim. In fact my salary inversely correlated with my effort. But I do recognize that when I stopped changing things (i.e. my role in the company became stagnant), my salary also remained stagnant.

[MeetingsBrowser]

Your reasoning implies that specific people within an org are not getting raises, but in practice it is entire orgs going without raises or promotions, regardless of what any individual is doing.

[NoLinkToMe]

It's obviously both in different circumstances. I've had plenty of raises while the rest of my team didn't, and when I stopped doing what I was doing, I joined them.