Agreed. Get a better offer and leave, never accept a counter offer intended to keep you.
Accepting a counter-offer in that situation is bad for several reasons. One is that the employer will be left with a sense of extortion and lack of loyalty from you. Another that you should realize that this employer was underpaying you and is either blissfully unaware of the market rates and thus incompetent or worse, malicious. In both cases you are better off working for someone who knows (or has HR who knows) and values your contributions properly.
If you accept the counter offer it should be for other reasons on your part such as that the current job has other benefits for you, such as physical proximity or CV boosting properties.
I've seen colleagues stay for years with golden handcuffs and it has never paid off. It leaves them with psychological misery and have made it much harder for them to get the next job.
I once used a job offer to 1.2x my current salary. I had no intention to pick the other job, as they had a pretty poor work culture, and I liked where I was. I stayed another 1.5 years and there was no bitterness from my employer’s side. My boss’es comment was “I guess we started you on a too low salary, our mistake.”
Your bosses comment is hilarious. They got you for a discount, it was not a mistake and I doubt the raise covered the difference of giving you full pay from the start.
I can see a scenario where you do accept the golden handcuffs during a critical period of your life. Of course provided that it really is a very high salary. I.e.: simply doing it for the money for a couple of years to move the personal finances along.
Ie my original plan to stay in BigTech for four years and go back to my comfortable life of working for smaller companies.
But I will see if the pay/bullshit ratio is high enough to be worthwhile after my four year anniversary next year and all of my initial stock vest is completed.
But at 49 years old, my shit tolerance level is very low.
Once they know you were REALLY serious about jumping ship, they will start preparing a replacement in case they didn't have one before. And if they think the lower paid replacement can replace you, they will let you go.
