I worked for 10 years for a multinational service corporation. If you've ever been in a major US retailer, you've seen our equipment. My first year, I got a decent raise and was told what a great job I was doing. The second year the raise was a little less, but I got the same praise. This continued every year, but just by a small margin. During the pandemic, all raises were frozen, but we still had to work.
This year, the raise was a whopping 3%. My territory manager said “Hey, they capped everyone at 2% but I went to bat for you and got you 3.” It sucked, but what sucked even more was discussing it with others and finding out that biggest fuck up on our team, who I spent a good 10% of my time cleaning up after, got the same raise.
It just sucks because I really hate the idea of job hunting but I'd had enough. I'd picked up tons of certifications and was the only person not only the district, but in the state of Texas, that was trained to work on certain equipment.
So, that night I updated my LinkedIn profile with all the certs I'd picked up and changed my status to available.
Within a week I had two offers and chose one that more than doubled my salary.
I waited a few days to turn in my two weeks notice because I had a few vacation days scheduled that I wanted to burn. When I emailed my two weeks notice, within about 30 minutes my TM called to tell me that they could offer a 6% raise. I said if they'd have matched my offer, I'd consider it. When I told him the offer amount, he just said “congrats on the new job.”
The lesson; Don't wait for your company to recognize your worth on the open market.
Edit: This was probably a month ago. I'm really liking the new job, but not married to it if a better offer comes along.