I've even been in an extreme situation in crypto sector where I was putting pressure on the company founder for a salary increase. I was earning like USD $100K per year comp total. They had over $100 million of assets. The founder, a multi-millionaire who had more money than he knew what to do with said that the pressure I was putting was like "Holding a knife to the company's throat." Guess how much of a raise he offered? 2%! I quit. Within 1 month after I quit, they fired half of the company. Coincidence? They didn't even need to do layoffs, they still had over $100 million in liquid assets/runway. They were spending at a rate of like $1 million per month. WTF!

Out of the 10+ tech startups and corporations I worked for over the past 20 years, that was the closest I ever came to receiving a raise and still didn't get it.

The whole market feels fake. Like a kind of weird social engineering PsyOp.