The reality is that the vast majority of software developers does not stand out enough to get any benefit from fending for themselves.
It's funny to see this idea repeated throughout this thread that we're all special snowflakes that can negotiate better deals on our own.
Even more funny if you look back at the many threads about negotiating salary and see the huge number of people on HN that never even negotiate initial offers but just accepts what they're handed.
My own experience is that some of us can negotiate outstanding deals, but from managing teams for the last 20 years and being part of salary negotiations and ranking developers for most of that, in almost every company I've worked, I've seen seen software staff get lumped together in big buckets of (from the company's perception) entirely interchangeable developers and set raises across whole blocks, with the only salary differences generally being banded by narrowly by position other than for a tiny (5%-10%) portion of top performances.
Odds are you are a commodity to your employer in terms of salary and performance.
At every company I've ever worked at or gotten an offer from, salary was effectively non-negotiable, because HR set the rules of The Band and the Rules were the Rules, which the hiring managers simply had to abide by. Occasionally I've been able to extract a hiring bonus or something relatively minor like that, but the insistence with which they stick to the salary is mind-boggling.
It got really absurd at my last job, where I was co-lead on the most profitable team in the company and a "10x" developer: I got an offer for much more money elsewhere, so I regretfully (I really liked that job) sent in my resignation. They asked me why, I told them it was honestly too much money to pass up. My "people" manager, project manager, and a senior manager fought hard to get me a counteroffer. They escalated all the way to the VP of HR, a direct report of the CEO. The final response was "no, he can't have that, that would be out of band, and he can't move out of the band yet because his degree + years of experience doesn't equal x." This materially affected the company. One of our clients in particular was a little paranoid and I had developed a great working relationship with them - when I left, they effectively put in a stop work for months until they were satisfied my replacements understood the system as well as I did. (Which I don't believe was necessary; they were not as good, but they were and are good enough, but the guy was really paranoid. Perhaps understandably, since bugs would have directly led to financial mishaps.)
But in general the band system saves companies money, so they stick with it.
Of course there are plenty of exceptions - things are obviously different in startups, for example, where HR might not even exist, and plenty of companies don't give HR so much power.
It's funny to see this idea repeated throughout this thread that we're all special snowflakes that can negotiate better deals on our own.
Even more funny if you look back at the many threads about negotiating salary and see the huge number of people on HN that never even negotiate initial offers but just accepts what they're handed.
My own experience is that some of us can negotiate outstanding deals, but from managing teams for the last 20 years and being part of salary negotiations and ranking developers for most of that, in almost every company I've worked, I've seen seen software staff get lumped together in big buckets of (from the company's perception) entirely interchangeable developers and set raises across whole blocks, with the only salary differences generally being banded by narrowly by position other than for a tiny (5%-10%) portion of top performances.
Odds are you are a commodity to your employer in terms of salary and performance.