[BluePen8]

Based on what I've heard and my own experience, raises are a pittance anyways. You have to change jobs.

My manager did the opposite, praised me for being the top dev, gave me a 7% raise, said that's the max they could give anyone, asked me not to tell the others.

The problem with being "the top dev" is there's no one to learn from, so I started looking for other opportunities anyways.

Never mentioned my old salary, and new company offered me 50% more.

And when salary comes up in general conversation the new company frequently mentions apologetically that they're a smaller company who can't afford to pay as much as others.

Raises cap out here at 6% if you're absolutely phenomenal.

[cryptica]

I worked for at least 15 companies (of all different kinds) over 15 years and the last time I worked with a developer who was smarter than me was 5 years ago. I've been working nights and weekends on open source projects too so I think I must be near the top in terms of skills... But somehow that doesn't translate to even moderate financial success. I find myself more alone and less appreciated than ever in spite of the fact that I've never been more performant, sharper and more knowledgeable.

I can deliver extremely high quality projects (in very complex areas) at an unparalleled speed and can turn a team of junior developers into 10x developers but nobody cares and many less experienced developers disagree with my approach in spite of the fact that I keep proving them wrong over and over.

To give an idea; I've build a blockchain ecosystem in 1 year for $0 (only paid in the new crypto before it had value)... My closest competitor has been working torwards the same thing for 5 years and it cost them at least $20 million.