I'm in Europe. This week I discovered a person who joined the team last November will make more than me starting coming November. I've been with the company for 2.5 years now, and I haven't had a single raise.
At the moment she makes about 3% less than me, but coming November she'll get a 5% bump due to her Personak Development Plan. She was promoted from a lower function band to this one, and that accompanies pay rises. This will cause her to earn about 2% more than me. Which isn't a lot, but it sends the wrong message.
Since discovering that she'll be making more, I spoke to my manager and he said he can't do anything because HR policies dictate when someone can get a pay rise, and that experience in the team or company isn't one of them. Even though I'm now more valuable than I used to be and I have 2 years of experience more, they cannot give me a pay rise.
This is very frustrating, life has gotten a lot more expensive, I've been a great employee and all my stakeholders always praise me to everyone. I, at the very least, expected them to match my colleague's salary.
For now, I agreed with him to go into a development path that makes it possible for me to go up a function scale with the accompanying pay rise.
At the same time, I'll be looking for other opportunities now outside of my current company and do the bare minimum. How do they expect me to remain motivated if someone with less experience gets paid more.
Rant over.