[sheepmullet]

To expand on this a bit: I was on ~$80k/year in 2002. If I had even had 10% raises each year I would be on ~$250k/year.

Instead I'm just under $200k. Not bad by any means but I wouldn't call sub-10% annual raises as lofty career ambitions.

[drig]

You really think that your productivity has risen more than 10% every year? Do you have any numbers to back that up? I know you use a ticket tracking system. You can add up all your completed story points, by year, pretty easily. If you're really getting 10% better every year, consistently, it should be easy to ask for a bigger raise.

My experience is that developers don't increase their value as fast as they increase their pay.

[72deluxe]

Out of interest, what do you do? And where?

It is interesting the thought about moving to management - I often see that developers have to become project managers or managers of some sort as they get older.