In my experience promoting from within is still insufficient. Getting a promotion means maybe a 10% raise. Quitting means a 50-100% raise. I've got a guy on my team in a junior-ish position making 80 who is about to leave to make 160. There's no promotion path in the company to get that kind of raise over night.

Where the heck are these kinds of companies? I've heard jumping for a $10-20k raise (so, roughly 20-30%), but double for a junior? Unless COL influences stuff, I'd be wondering what he did right and knock that off as an outlier.

His junior position probably doesn’t have a junior label, and the next one might have a senior.

This is the correct answer.

Well that sucks time to change the company...

I've personally never heard of any company doubling a developer's salary like that. Have you?

Double, no. But I had a company that gave me a 30-40$ increase one year because it was obvious I was performing at that level.

Then a couple years later they were giving me basically no raise. When I told them I thought I was worth more, they asked me if I could "wait a year".

I got a new job and a huge raise compared to the last one. (Again, 30-40%.)

So while it's possible, it's not always even reliable at the same company that has done it in the past.

It's certainly rare, but my employer is aggressive about keeping compensation appropriate. Top performing new hires can see their comp double in 2-3 years.

GE used to do this (not developers, but generally) in the 1980s, I think. Here's an article about promoting CEOs from within and how that is beneficial: http://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/companies-...