All simplicity is a lie.

If I could give a professional hint to my former self it would be: the best employers are the ones who are comfortable making a deal -- paying what they need to pay to get it done, and trying to strike the best deal they can. Any hiccup on that road (notably: not paying / checks bouncing / salary negotiations where the numbers decrease at any point, even if it is due to a technical or paperwork error on their end) is a _very_ bad sign.

It depends on the size of the company. Once past a certain size, there is not much a manager, even at director level can do to give an employee a raise out of review time. The HR "partner" have a big rule book on compensation and the poor manager can only "slot" his/her reports into a predefined range. A startup does have more flexibility to adjust compensation.

HR doesn't actually run the business- they're actually there to serve the business needs.

You were 'let down easy' by whoever told you that. It's human civilization on planet Earth, everything actually is negotiable, and "my hands are tied" is just a negotiation strategy.

I've found that's often a BS management excuse to shift blame. If they really want to keep you, they'll find the money.

Yeah, as someone who has (sort of) hid behind that excuse to shift the blame, let me tell you - that's an excuse people hide behind to shift the blame. It's like 'legal won't let me'. Bullshit, you don't care about it enough to ignore the advice that legal gave you. HR's role is to serve the business, not the other way around.

HR is a cancer, majority of the time

Ah I love it. The manager who is shocked to find out people want money. And then the excuses...

* I forgot about that, why didn't you confront me every single day about it

* We were just gonna raise your salary anyway, we just kept it secret

* We were just going to implement the promised equity plan now, we just didn't tell anyone to be a surprise

* Ah yeah the shares turned into options with zero context

* The options turned into 1 year forward priced options, but you will get more, nevermind we hoped you don't notice

> My boss told me he yelled and fought for me to get the review, but that they said no.

Unless you witness it, don't simply believe this one.

It's a cheap & easy way to say "no" while still positioning himself as the good guy. After all, he's the one that has to manage a day to day relationship with you.

And stop to think about that for a moment. If you "yelled and fought" with him, would he or the organization tolerate that behavior? If he wouldn't, why would his boss tolerate it from him?

Don't ever think it is OK for a boss to have "yelled and fought" for you. If your boss does not have the authority to actually make changes within his own team, then your organization has more serious issues than your paycheck.

You should have told him you wanted a skip level meeting as he clearly isn't your manager if he can't give you a raise

When hiring we will often offer an amount near the lower end of the range provided (assuming their range is reasonable) and include in the offer letter a ~5% raise after 6 months.

Interesting tactic. Do you mention the 5% raise in your offer letter? I wonder how this would affect the mindset of the candidate?

Yes we do mention it in the offer letter. Again, we start at their low end of their range though. We want them to know that "if things work out" they'll get a raise.