[skylark]

If you work at a large corporation, your manager might not be able to swing a large raise for you, even if it's totally justified.

At my current place, our manager gets a pool of roughly 2% per developer to allocate for raises. An 80k to 100k raise would be literally impossible because even if you ate up the entire pot by yourself, it still wouldn't be enough.

On top of this, the more senior developers are probably consistently given slightly larger raises than the previous year - giving you more would require them to get less, which poses a large risk for your manager. It's a tough situation to be in.

By giving your two week notice, managers are immediately given room to negotiate with HR to produce a counter offer. This does not count towards the yearly raise-pool and can sometimes be the only way to actually get a sizable raise.

My suggestion to the parent poster is to dust off the resume and start looking for another job if you feel unappreciated.

[zhte415]

This is a tangent, and not a slight on your or the OPs manager, but important and advice to other: The more important /senior /influential person you report to, the more room you have (for interesting work - better stuff gets delegated, growth, someone to learn from, salary, promotion, other stuff). And often, because of a larger and larger gap, they'd often be more appreciative of the freshness and perspective you could bring.

"Your grade is less important than the person you report to" I've heard said, and I've seen it work out in every aspect of the above (even in larger, 200000+ people organisations).

My advice, for getting a job in large corps: Report to someone at least 3 levels above you, preferably 5. The gap is hugely fulfilling, and at that level, they can carry you where they go / provide awesome recommendations to their also senior network if your direction is different.

[archivethis]

In a fairly OK position then. Contract for another agency, but mostly just work with the agency and see company manager rarely. I report directly to the team supervisor, other sub teams have separate leads but developers report direct to the supervisor with no lead