But job hops are an easy 10-15%, hence the problem ;)

(Up to some limit obviously, as a guy with 16 years experience is unlikely to get a 10% premium over a guy with 15 years of experience)

First job out of college Inhad something to prove and worked my ass off. What I did was extremely measurable and I was easily doing 2x the work compared to the department average. Every single day.

1.5% raise the first year, made a huge fuss the second year and asked for a large raise (because my numbers of were insane) and only managed a 4% raise (promotion included).

I've been at a new job for about a year and have worked hard as always, but the things I am doing are much, much harder to measure. It's much more difficult for me to actually prove how much value I am providing. However, it's looking like I will be getting a ~15% raise shortly.

If a company wants you to stick around, they'll be proactive and show it. At least that's what I've taken from this...and I don't want to be anywhere I'm not wanted.

I discovered early on that, at least in larger companies, advancement in a role is based on your strategic value to the company, and not even remotely related to your work ethic. If your manager is willing to go to bat for you, you stand a chance of getting a meaningful raise. And that depends on whether you can demonstrably make their job easier.

Working "hard" only serves to let you feel good about yourself.

Not only are you dependent on your manager, your often only able to secure significant raises at the cost of other team member raises. The bucket is allocated to your team based on a company standard, with nothing connected to your performance, then that has to be divided, which they often claim is performance based...

Yes. Except, "strategic value to the manager"

What is strategic value to the manager that is not hard work and delivering result? I'm asking sincerely, since I do hear a lot about the lack of correlation between hard work and promotion. I want to understand.

Consider this case: For one of our software releases, we worked with another product group in the company to co-release a new product line. I was basically on loan from my team to work on that project, as the only developer from my product group, and working under another manager. During that time, my team's manager stepped down, and a new one was hired. The product was released, the salespeople made a lot of money on commissions selling the product. The "other manager" left the company. The dev team in the other product group all either left or were reassigned, and I was left as the sole escalation support for the product.

Problem: My team's new manager had no part in the decision of putting me on that project, couldn't override the time that I was required to spend supporting it, but also couldn't use me as flexibly as her other developers. So I was first at the chopping block when the company decided to have a round of layoffs. I was providing value to the company as a whole, but not helping my manager in her own job.

Hard work: Check.

Delivering results: Check.

Delivering value to my manager: Nope.

Result: Looking for a new job.

Reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_machine as well as the background in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_ancient_Rome

Essentially by supporting that manager's political goals (to gain power within the organization), you receive rewards based not on skill or merit but as a result of your support.

In this system, people in a relationship are either 'patrons' or 'clients', and it is expected that patrons will help clients within their power and in return clients will support their patrons advancement, either through advancing their ends directly or undermining competitors.

All of these things are wasteful distractions, but then, that's politics.

In my experience delivering results that the manager can leverage to demonstrate his or her value is more important than either working hard or delivering results in the strict sense that, e.g. you write solid code to produce a feature.

Often the talent on a team is not nearly as important as the talent's relationship to the strategic direction of the company.

This too, I agree with, when my cynicism is not cranked to 11.

Backing your manager and/or attacking other princes in the org. Finding dirt on incumbents... playing along and don't making a fuzz when stupid rules are put into effect.

Ostracise, or at least selectively ignore certain coworkers when called for to keep the "team spirit" alive. And so on and so forth. For being a loyal page, there might be some great reward. Funny thing is, I'm not even sure the incumbents would count it against you if the tables are turned. They know and respect a mercenary when they see one and will be happy to take you under their wing. But not if you jump faction too early, then you are just a traitor. Nobody loves a traitor.