Policies in big corporate can make hiring managers ashamed. As a hiring manager you can’t imagine how shitty I felt when I asked an internal candidate to apply for a job. Then my boss got it dropped a pay grade versus the posting I contacted her about. That downgrade not only meant a lower salary but also a 5% lower target bonus. To top it off she had been poorly paid in her previous job, so even giving her a big increase to get her into the bottom quartile of the grade, well it was still the bottom quartile. After I got a new boss, I started trying to get her a raise. Then I got laid off along with about my entire level of managers (think senior this or that manager and a couple of directors). So she got stuck trying to do my job and her job even though I had made almost 2x what she did. Anyway, roll forward a year and my new boss quit and the old boss got her a trivial raise via some stupid new job title that means nothing externally, but no grade increase. 2 months later she left for I guess about a 40% increase.
TLDR. I was ashamed at how hosed my new hire was and I couldn’t do anything about it.
I also didn’t go into it, but one reason she was so poorly paid was she started out that way and had 20 yrs of crappy raises. I think I was the only manager in all that time who tried to get the right dollars. It doesn’t pay to stay 20 yrs anywhere