The agreement with the CTO was to have a raise after 6 months. There was no previous agreement of a specific number, just a "raise".

After 6/7 months I went to talk to one of the founders about that specific issue, i.e. that I was promised a raise, and that I wasn't expecting anything below 20%. I came to know during the time that I work there that was being paid well below my coworkers (and the market rate in general for my position).

Their response was that I would only get raised on the next company review (still some months to go, but note that I was promised a raise after 6 months), the raise would be around 2%-3% (note that I said to them, quite direct, that I was being underpaid, at least 20%), and the project manager even said that I would be subjected to a performance review before they would give me a raise.

So they failed me at least with 3 things: no raise after 6 months as agreed (still some months to next review), would not raise me enough so I would still be underpaid, and I could even not get raised because I would have to be reviewed first..

Basically, I quit on the next working day, and one or two months later, most of the team got laid off, so there was bigger problems on that specific company..

Expecting a 20% raise after six months is ludicrous.

Expecting employees to stick around when they find out they're 20% behind peers is also ludicrous.

I can't imagine the majority of managers fixing it and I can't imagine an employee doing anything other than finding a new job. Everyone loses this one.

He was expecting to be paid the same as his colleagues and the industry standard. That sounds like a fair expectation, irrespective of the percentage raise that implied.

Then he shouldn't have taken the low offer to begin with. That's on him at least as much as the employer. He's free to leave of course, but complaining about it after the fact?

I don't feel complaining about being paid under market rate is a strange thing. 20% raises are not ludicrous in any way, if this prevents an employee from leaving.

I didn't say he should have stayed, he did the right thing, but going in at x and expecting x+20% in six months is ridiculous. If he was expecting that then he should have got that pecific number negotiated up front.

The company has more information than the candidate when making salary offers. If they negotiate in bad faith, that burns up goodwill. It's their decision to do it! I've never heard someone ask if their salary is in-line with the other members of their team (adjusted for performance/experience): it's a given assumption that _the company isn't going to pay you massively less than your peers_.

Plenty of companies do, because HR does the negotiations & their motivation is to minimise employee costs. If you're not negotiating with the recruiter/hiring manager, you're likely to get a poor offer.