Ah, the outside offer is an absolute game changer, which IMO puts it in the same league as actually changing jobs. Often you have to show that you are willing and able to leave for a much better salary to actually get the much better salary.
If you are just internally lobbying for a salary increase at your existing employer, regardless of how successful you may be, how much revenue you are bringing in, etc. I would say at the vast majority of companies you will not see nearly the same raise as either presenting a compelling outside offer, or actually taking an outside offer.
Another way of thinking of it is that a company cannot pay their employees an arbitrary amount, it has to be justified up the chain, and usually that justification is based on "grades" or "scales" of some kind or another. Most of these scales will include a fixed range for annual raises. By bringing an outside offer, you are providing the necessary documentation that your manager, HR, all the way up the chain is required to actually sign off on the raise. The outside offer means no one is sticking their neck out to justify an out-of-spec raise, or claim someone was being previously underpaid, it's just a simple equation -- the employee has an offer, and the company can make a counter-offer or not.
Of course the trick is if they decline to counter, or counter low, you have to consider if you then leave, or stay? You also probably can't come back year after year with new outside offers, it's a trick you can only turn to so often.
My opinion only, but if I had to bring an outside offer to get an inside raise, I'd take the offer. "We'll pay everyone what we can get away with, except the few who we need for the moment that make a stink." But then, I make too big a deal about personal relationships, and I forget that it's just bidness.
That said, I did get a raise once with an outside offer. But I left just inside a year later.
I agree and it can be personally very distressing when you know you are delivering tremendous value and are not getting nearly the financial reward for the value you bring.... and yet can't seem to convince the bosses to put up!
That's why I look at it now as a system that just needs the outside data point in order to properly process the request. It's not a person holding back the raise, more often the process which the outside offer fixes.
If there was such a thing as an "employee appraisal" service maybe you could do it without actually going to interview, which would be pretty cool!
Pretty much my experience too. My dad worked at one job for nearly 25 years of his life and I learned a couple years ago that I already make over twice what he did by the time he retired.
My dad was a little like Al Bundy though, he never really sought to improve himself like I do constantly and I'm sure almost everyone here does too.
I think the industry still has a lot of managers who think in terms of running a shoe store with employees that are improving themselves at a rapid pace.
