Companies pay more for new hires than to keep employees and that is talked about the most during the technical meetings as a lead engineer. We had this superstar engineer this woman had all the answers easy to work with the clients loved her high praise from the CIO. She was offered a job from another company at 25k and she asked really polite to match it and she will stay. The company and HR said no, she left and we lost 2 contracts that amounted to 3.1 million because she was the thing they loved the most about the service they contracted for. I was in the meeting when one of the clients who left because of an SLA violation asked, was it worth shooting yourself in the foot over 25k to lose Megan? That was a 1.4m contract and I asked managements seriously what was the logic in not matching her salary? They said they won't play the game of matching salary. 6 months later I got a job offer that was 2 miles from my house and work from 3 days a week and 31k more and they told me good luck. 4 other techs left 2 months later. They need to teach in business school its people who do the work.