In my short career I’ve noticed that employers are notorious for underpaying you to the point that people with 3-4 years of experience are getting paid the same as freshers. The management always has an excuse to not increase pay or increase it very minimally. The best way to increase pay has been to keep moving every 2-3 years from one company to the next if switching means at least 1.5x or 2x the current salary.
This means major interview prep requiring solving leetcode style questions, solving system design questions, then some more. I just wanted to how often do you prepare? Are you always interview ready or start prepping a few months before switching jobs?
I worked for my first company for a decade. I cannot stress enough how much this held my career and technical growth back. I got raises in that position - in one case a good one - but none of them compared to how fast my salary went up once I started hopping jobs from time to time.
I’m finally to the point after twenty five years where I’m making enough for the cost of living and I almost don’t care about pay - it’s much more about culture and finding a good team.
A 50% pay bump is unusual though. I’d expect more like 10-20% depending on the current market. I’m in the middle of a job search and I’ll be damned lucky not to take a shave because there are so many laid off developers now. If someone offered me a 50% bump I’d take that in a heartbeat if there were no red flags. Although I’d need a massive freaking raise to go back to an office - QoL is so much better working remotely 90-100%.