5% CoL is insulting when CoL goes up less than that? Maybe what you mean is that raises when you are promoted are not high enough?
During your first 5 years or so you'll probably get good raises as you gain experience and increase the value you provide to the organization. Past that, unless you're top 5% and negotiate well, you'll probably stagnate a bit in the pay department (stagnate at a very good wage, that is). In my experience, at least..
5% raises are insulting when a company bemoans the hardships of not being able to retain talent.
I get stagnating in pay raises after 2-3 years and receiving decent increases up to that point, but how can a company complain about retaining talent when they don't offer anything past the 5% in the first place?
It just seems strange to me that companies want the option to fire off employees at will, but also hate seeing employees take advantage of that ('job hop').
Maybe a 2 year contract with built in raise structure (assuming improvement based on pre-defined metrics) would be a better solution than at will employment.
Whatever the solution may be, it doesn't seem like many people are satisfied with the current system. Especially from a hiring management perspective.
During your first 5 years or so you'll probably get good raises as you gain experience and increase the value you provide to the organization. Past that, unless you're top 5% and negotiate well, you'll probably stagnate a bit in the pay department (stagnate at a very good wage, that is). In my experience, at least..