Ciro Santilli Once upon a time, when Ciro worked at a company, one day the company decided to give everyone a 20% raise.
The likely reason was that Apple was coming to town, and was sucking the fuck out of the company's talent.
Nothing ever drove it so clearly into Ciro's heart the obvious fact that even for skilled jobs, companies don't pay you what you're worth. They pay you as little as possible so you won't quit to join someone else. It is pure market forces in play.
The annoying thing is that people are highly non-fungible, so much like painting auctions, you can only estimate your price by putting yourself on auction and seeing what people will pay for you, i.e. interviewing for new jobs.
Another point is that people have all sorts of stupid restrictions such as not wanting to work on certain areas for moral reasons, or not wanting to move away from a certain area they like. Companies will of course readily exploit such weakness to be able to pay less. Silly non-rational beings.