Pretty much what the title says.

I have (had) a co-worker who crossed his 10 year mark with the company last month. As per company policy, the final bump in pay and PTO is at the 10 year mark. He is now making the most money he will ever make with this company. He could stay for another 10 years and will not get another raise after this one.

This last week, he put in his resignation. When HR asked him why he’s leaving, he them that he has no incentive to stay with the company. He said that because he can’t get anymore raises from this employer, the only way for him to make more money is to go to a different company.

He is using this most recent raise/benefits bump as a bargaining chip when negotiating wages at the next company. He took an offer with a company who is giving him 15% raise from his now maxed out income and apparently they are matching all of his other benefits.

Moral of the story: companies who are removing pensions and putting caps on income/benefits after a certain point, are encouraging their most loyal employees to leave the company.

Edit: for clarification because people are asking. The company is a machine building OEM. This guy was our lead hydraulics systems engineer. He, along with the mechanical engineer, and myself (the electrical engineer) would work as a team to design, build and troubleshoot massive systems for our customers. They couldn’t promote him or else they won’t have their hydraulics engineer anymore, and they have a hard time replacing him because engineers are hard to come by as a whole, (there’s more engineering positions open in the USA than there are qualified people to fill them) let alone hydraulics engineers specifically. About the only way I see my employer replacing this guy in a timely manner is to poach someone from a different company which will force them to pay more than this guy made.

And yes, management has already asked the mechanical engineer and myself if we can get by without a hydraulics engineer (we both said no); but this lead the two of us to have the conversation that we will both leave if that responsibility gets added to our already over stressed workload. If this happens then this will be an OEM with zero engineers employed; and I can’t believe management doesn’t see the red zone they walked themselves into.