The minimum amount a promotion was worth. The impact on the base salary (and the slight impact on the bonus) if you were considered important talent.
The impact on the bonus (and only slight impact on the base salary) if you had outstanding contributions last year.
The overall base increase for everybody based on seniority (higher for more junior positions).
The latter more or less covered inflation. The others improved on that (sometimes by quite a margin).
SWE work can be super impactful depending on what you're working on (especially in startups), why can't we share in more of the glory? In some companies, if you run the numbers and divide that result by the total number of hands that have touched the project you can STILL come up with net revenue or even profit that is 100x+ what you're being paid. And not seeing more than a token piece of that is just wrong.
If I knew that performance could net me 2x or more of my salary, you can bet I'd be a lot more motivated to work hard.
Eventually I got bored, stopped trying, and still walked out of reviews with average or above-average marks and same pay bump. This is after getting talks from my manager about upping my game and narrowly avoiding a PIP.
If an employer wants me to bust my ass for them they need to make it worthwhile. If my work unlocks significant value (verifiable 6 or more figures) for the company then I expect more than a token amount of that to be sent my way.
SWE pay may be high but they use that as a cudgel to keep you from claiming value proportional to your contributions, and don't even get me started on the trap that is equity compensation