That has been my approach over the past 4 years. I've doubled my salary from 2011 to 2014. I'm now pretty set with where I am so will be sticking around for a while now once I get into a position that I enjoy.

That's the easiest way to get big raises, but you should expect at least a few percent raise every year without switching jobs. Otherwise you are taking an effective pay cut after inflation.

Sure, but if you're going to work the kind of job that has a regular cycle of performance reviews and raises, you're going to be wasting a few percent of your working year dealing with the bureaucracy involved in the review process. You're probably also going to be biasing the choices you make about your everyday work toward whatever it is the review process measures, instead of just doing whatever needs to be done to build & ship your product.

I'd rather accept inflation as a fact of life and waste no time thinking about performance reviews. Whatever trivial regular raises I might get through such a process will be inconsequential compared to whatever I can expect by finding a new job on a bigger project somewhere else.

I think that's true if you want a non-trivial raise. That's how I usually have gotten mine when not tied to a promotion. Unfortunately I have trouble asking for a raise, so I figure if they don't give me a raise, it's time to leave.

How often do you change jobs?