Why do you need reports to drop hints? Once they are even considering leaving for a greater salary enough that they are interviewing, they are half a step out of there already. You should be proactively fighting for your team on their behalf regardless.

You need to give your manager the ammunition.

A manager going to HR with "cost of living increase please" vs "I have a valued member of my team who is dropping hints theyre unhappy about pay" are very different things.

You're presuming all employees are like yourself. Not everybody is motivated by money. I have team members who are well paid, know it, and turn down large increases elsewhere due to the projects they have excite them, etc.

Because not everyone has the same priorities.

Like, your manager in their mid-30s might value steady employment, a good salary and good benefits, whereas their low-mid 20s report might value fast promotion, salary growth and relocation potential. So if their request to move from London to Seattle got denied, the manager might think it's not a big deal, while for the report it's a complete deal-breaker

This is it exactly. The only "hint" that a manager needs than an IT employee is thinking of leaving is that their salary isn't increasing faster than cost of living. I guarantee they know that they can leave and get a bigger raise.

If that happens multiple years in a row, it's not just possible, it's likely.

All the time 100% of the time? There has to be an upper limit somewhere. Your manager is not a mind reader. You need to tell them when you are not happy with your comp.

Of course, it's your manager's job to make sure you are more comfortable talking to this about them than you are interviewing with strangers, which honestly is not a high bar to clear.

That’s great to hear. However I’ve always had trouble trusting my manager. There’s a lot of information managers cannot legally disclose to employees. So it feels very one sided when I get well-rehearsed-seemingly-ok responses.

What is stopping my manager from doing a 20% raise today, then replacing me in 3-6 months with a lower cost person? How do you build trust or guarantee a 2-5 year timeline attached to that raise?

Bingo, I have little incentive to accept a counter offer. It requires alot of trust and if that trust existed, I wouldn't be leaving.

I thought I had trust with my manager, but when I converted from contract to FTE (required), they rejected my request for a small raise and tried to lowball me. They eventually settled on the same pay rate, so 2 years with no raise. Only to "adjust" my salary up in year 3 because 2 people quit. I'm still looking at an easy 15% increase and less stress by jumping.