I'm mature enough to understand some people work harder / have greater output, etc. That's for my manager to explain. If I'm getting feedback that I'm doing well at my level but still being underpaid or not hitting the 90th percentile, than there's a disconnect between the feedback I'm receiving and the compensation.
There's another problem in the industry that new hires get way higher salaries than tenured engineers. This allows me to understand what salaries are being paid to new engineers. It's hard for me to believe a new engineer coming into the org is more productive than me. This further allows me to make a case against my manager to adjust my pay.
As a (former) high level manager: your manager knows _exactly_ who her best people are, and she prays to dear god every day that they don't leave, because then she'd be SOL. This tends to lead to unequal distribution of rewards (and as some people in 2021 would say "inequitable" since the meme is now that everyone should be poor), but without this all business would collapse.
Note that I'm not talking about "old boys network" situation here. That should be dealt with at the cultural level. I'm talking about some folks being just legit amazing and making more money than I do because of it.
> I'm mature enough
If that's the case, you're _way_ more mature than most people. Most people couldn't care less how valuable someone else is or what they do, if they make $1K/mo more.
To some extent, the "levels" constrain the compensation ranges in most organizations. Those ranges get much wider the higher you are on the org chart, and sometimes disappear entirely for VPs and up. But this isn't about how much VPs get paid. This is about how much Joe from 2 cubes down the hallway gets paid, and why that's "entirely too much" and "unfair".
The best raises I ever got were due to changing jobs, not by pleading with my manager.
> If managers provide detailed feedback about what went right and what went wrong
I'll let you in on a management secret: most of the time managers can't articulate this even to themselves unless they are talking about the few people in their organization that truly, quantifiably kick ass. They're human, they live by perceptions. The only limiting factor that grounds those perceptions is whether you're solving the hard problems your manager's manager wants to see solved. You could say this is biased (and it is), but bias is not uniformly bad, woke corporate edicts notwithstanding.
Before I get lynched over the previews sentence, let me explain exactly what I mean by it. For the record, I don't mean any kind of bias based on unchangeable traits. Simply put that has no place in a professional environment. However, _any_ manager worth their pay will be biased in favor of an employee who makes the impossible possible. Most of immediate peers would even view this as "fair". But even slightly remote peers (perhaps another, nearby team), would not have much, if any, visibility into why this "bias" exists. Worse, even immediate peers who are angling for greater rewards (often without merit - their mom just told them they always get a trophy when they were a kid) will perceive the situation as deeply "unfair".
TL;DR: hot takes are not helpful, it's a difficult landscape to navigate. My opinion on this is not particularly strong because I don't see it making much of a difference. Kickass people will still get disproportionate rewards, and whiners will get pissed off and leave. It's the potential strife that I find objectionable.
My job is hard enough. I don't need to worry about my manager's job.
If I can be asked why X was implemented like this,or why a particular decision was made when implementing a feature. A manager should sure as hell be ready to answer why Bob from ProductZ team is getting paid more than me.
I have no sympathy for managers and their human biases. Everyone does their job with human biases.
> Kickass people will still get disproportionate rewards
And, they should! You're very focused on the 1% of the kick-ass people. This isn't about them, this is about the other 99%.
> You're very focused on the 1% of the kick-ass people
Quite frankly, most of the rest don't matter one way or the other. And it's usually more like 10%, not 1%. Perhaps your job is so hard because you're expending effort on things that don't matter to your manager's manager (and therefore to your manager as well). There's a second derivative to this. If you want a decent longer term trajectory, make sure to pick the manager who ensures that his/her teams work on things that matter to _his_ manager's manager. You could easily bust your ass for a decade for zero reward if you don't keep this in mind. Or you could go work in a small company where none of this applies at all.
> My job is hard enough. I don't need to worry about my manager's job.
Once you second guess your manager's decisions (pay, raises and promotions) I think it's fair game to at least understand what those decisions really entail...
I agree with you on the issue with new hires getting paid more. It's market forces at work, but... yeah that shit sucks.
Regarding your first point I think you're a bit optimistic as to how well people take such a conversations. For example, doing well _at level_ (in my experience) means meeting expectations. There's no way someone meeting expectations should get 90th percentile comp for their level. So are you mature enough to accept that you're not good enough to warrant p90 comp?
I actually disagree. You are expected to do your job well. If expectations are high (as they should be) then meeting them is great (ie: meets = you get your target bonus.)
Exceeding expectations is above and beyond "doing well."
There's another problem in the industry that new hires get way higher salaries than tenured engineers. This allows me to understand what salaries are being paid to new engineers. It's hard for me to believe a new engineer coming into the org is more productive than me. This further allows me to make a case against my manager to adjust my pay.