In my mind, if you have to ask for a regular raise, then your company isn't treating you fairly in the first place. It's one thing to ask for a change in your salary because you feel you're underpaid, but it's worse when your company doesn't even have an annual evaluation and accompanying raise.

This is bang on. Anyone here willing to share how you convince yourself to ask for a pay raise?

Know that you deserve it. I keep an up to date LinkedIn profile, and when recruiters contact me I ask them if the position they're hiring for will pay more than a certain figure (my benchmark is usually 50% more than my current annual salary). Your benchmark value may be higher or lower, but either way it should help you gauge market conditions.

Also when you're taking a broader market into consideration, be sure to consider quality of life. Yes I may get more money somewhere, but it might be a miserable product/team/culture which reduces the value of that position. Or I might have a shorter commute, fewer hours or more vacation, which would add to the value of the other position.

I search for other, comparable positions, and see what I _could_ get if I jumped ship. At my previous job, I asked for a raise when I realized I was being paid significantly below market rates. They gave me a decent bump, but not enough for me to stay at the company when I got another (higher) offer.