I was told early in my beginning career days that you are only worth to a company what your last paycheck was. Time and experience mean nothing, it's only good if it's needed by the employer. Still holds true today.

You can think you are valued but at end of the day it's business. The business either needs you that day or it doesn't. Your boss is not your friend. Most fellow employees will push you aside if need be.

Employee loyalty to your employer disappeared during the dotcom boom of late 90's early 2000. That's when jumping from one company to the next was normalized. Dotcom companies had large amounts of funds coming in and young folk running them. Was very common to be over paid in those times and just jump around to whatever company was wiling to pay your asking price.

It always has seem that company's are far more willing to higher from outside and pay more than to have a current employee do the job and give them an increase in pay.

I’m a BSEE but spent my entire career doing digital logic design. I was terminated from every job but the last for “business reasons”. My employer went out of business, or closed my division.

In every case I found new job at a significantly higher salary.

In my last job I was able to tell my employer that his services were no longer needed, and retired. Felt good.

many years go I was a Career Winn Dixie (grocery store) guy
worked thru some depts, became a Journeyman Meat cutter, meat manager, then store manager

plan was to go from Meat Manager to a rep for Cargill or similar company,

those jobs disappeared, so became a store manager,

plan was to be a Store Manager for a bit then part of what was called the Business unit as in out of a store, but in charge of or over saw a district worth of departments,

then that company went tits up

switched to Kroger, became a store manager,
turned down a similar district business unit job,, cause it involved a move I did not, and honestly could not, make

politics eventually pushed me out to another company, (a screaming example of a company, onwhat to do wrong ) and eventually self employed,

best move I ever made, should have done it 6 or so years earlier,


throughout the years, I always put in whatever the company match was for 401K's, and every raise bumped that a percent or 3,

and kept that on the low side of risk, so I rarely lost money, sometimes made alot (and honestly, did leave some on the table)


but, overall, in a good place now at 62. and with a good Financial guy, getting even better,

I've been in the same job for 27 years. Our longevity max is 7% of our base salary but it's capped at $4k a year due to contract. So I will never see the max. We've had no luck removing that cap in the 27 years I have been there.

Sadly, last contract they got rid of that longevity (the rest of us were grandfathered) so all new people get an even worse longevity bonus.

We just settled the contract for the next three years and our raises were only 3.5%, 3.5%, 3%.

The way our medical goes up, it basically negates our raise. Our monthly medical plan for family went up 50%, while the single and employee+1 (married no kids, or single with one kid) both went down. I have no spouse and two kids. I said I will marry one of my coworker's girlfriend who has no insurance and adopt a bunch of kids since family is the same price no matter how many people are on it.

I think age has an affect. It seems when you get older than those around you in your job, family, and friends, the lesser of a person you become in their eyes in terms of relevance and significance, even while you're still productive with excessive critical ongoing responsibilities. Maybe like an old farm horse that no-one cares about any longer, maybe a bad analogy but that's how it seems at a gut level. The world belongs to the young, to the conquerors, to the mighty. We were all young like that and one time or another, maybe it's the natural progression of life. The professional workplace is probably no different. Take Roger Penrose for example, one of the worlds most prominent physicists on the world stage who worked with all of the great physicists of the previous generation, and he is no longer taken seriously by fellow scientists, though if he is in a larger discussion forum, his knowledge and experience in the field is clearly superior to many in the current crop of better known scientists. My guess is it's just the nature of the world that older things fade away while newer things take over, even if they're not necessarily better.

This was true at the company I worked for during my 28 years there. The only way to combat it was to take promotions as salary increases were 2.5-3% annually most every year. And when I was in a management role I could see that it took extenuating circumstances to deviate from those numbers even if you could find the money in the budget.
I do recall once where they made a "Market Adjustment" in excess of the norm but they were WAY behind the curve at that point.
The only way to get ahead was to work with your boss to go up the chart in your job function. This allowed a "promotion" and put you in a different pay band but even those were limited as to how much the differential could be and how often you could jump up.
The path of least resistance was jumping ship to a competitor which always seemed counter productive to me.
But, at some point you basically had the "Golden handcuffs". Pension and other benefits were enough to discourage you from jumping ship. True to me the last 10 years or so of my stint.

Or existing long term loyal employees who are extremely qulified for advancment, get passed over to bring in a new person from the outside much younger and much less qualified (or these days just plain old DEI), and come in with these lesser skills at top market pay, way over the existing salary of the existing employee who could have slid in the job so easily, to become the new boss of that person. That is very very common in some companies. In cases like this there are other cicrumstances in play, going beyond simple math like this, some probably legitimate like the personal preferences and desires of the hiring roundtable, probably ok in some situations, other situations questionalbe, and some reasons probably just plain old dirty rotten or corrupt. In that situation it may seem like a family owned business, where the someones kid cousin gets a big job they are wholly unqulified for, but we see this happen in big companies and in govermernment employers.

Yep, longevity penalty is a real thing and has been for some time. I was with the same company for 30 years, but I turned my notice in twice over that period for higher paying/advancement positions. In both cases, my company countered with offers enough to get me to stay. Been retired for 15+ years now and I doubt that would work in today's environment, but you never know. I certainly wouldn't employ that strategy unless the other positions were a lock, nor did I those many years ago.

Age discrimination is real, and that can lead to an employer intentionally under-paying a long-term employee. They know the 55+ yr old will have a very difficult time finding another job, so there's little incentive to increase his pay. There may also be some feeling that the older employees cost more for the company to have on their health insurance, so it is offset a bit by under-paying them.

My observation of industries I was in was that short term bottom line accounting mentality drove pretty much every decision. There is no quantifiable benefit to experience or longevity.

I've been my current position for about 12 years. I know I'm under paid with miminal pay increases.
However, I haven't been laid off once in that time. The other companies I worked at paid slightly better, but surviving frequent layoffs is tiring. My buddy has had about 16 jobs during same time period.

The company had a female HR who thought she'd hire several in my field as backups to do my work. More than once, they tried to have me train my replacement. It became very evident that no one was suitable to my experience and most left finding better pay since they didn't like their alternate positions. They realized she didn't know what she wasdiing & let her go. The company gave up that effort of my replacement about 5 years ago.

I have been on "review", and had several writeups about being too slow for about eight years now. Most people only last one year with that pressure from management. However, I always save the day a few times a year that resets the clock, so to speak.

Like this Tuesday. I'm scheduled for vacation, but going in to make an emergency part that the service guys on-site with our customer needs right now. Otherwise, the company would be stuck for over a six weeks waiting for the part to arrive from Europe.

None of my past potential replacements would have been able to come through in these type of situations.

When the company outsources parts for the cheap locally, it isn't uncommon that I'm often reworking them.

So my trade off has been slightly lower pay, for better security. I like the variety of the challenging work and my peers.