[DaveSchmindel]

I can vouch that this is true in some cases.

I worked for a multinational bank headquartered in the U.S., whose corporate team came up with a sexy program to snatch up recent Computer Science graduates. The program offered them a "fair" market rate for an entry-level jobs in industry, and let the graduates try two to three different teams and/or departments in their first year. At the end, if the company still liked them, the candidate got to pick their permanent team for a full-time position. This position, however, did not see a bump in pay, and by that time the program effectively filtered out candidates that weren't performing at an accelerated level.

The results were great for the business: young programmers that were often more proficient in COBOL than their new peers were costing them $60k-$70k a year. The senior, or "tenured," peers were in the $200k-$400k range in some cases.