I totally agree with you. I've seen situations where there wasn't anyone available at their current salary schedule so they chose to do without. If a company brings in people above their salary curve, they either have to adjust their curve (giving raises to all the wage slaves) or don't give a raise to the new hires until they get down to the curve (which pisses them off and they leave in a year or two).
This is a boom time for technical people. The demand has gotten so high for engineers in many fields that companies are having to do what it takes to get people and/or not lose too many. It became that way in late 2005.
I got layed off in 2002 and found a position at about 60% of my prior pay 15 months later. Two years after that the boom got going and I got another postion paying slightly higher than my original 2002 salary. Since late 2005, my salary is up about 16% with raises every 6 months. I could change employers for at least a 10% hike but I like the flexibility of where I'm at.
My employer is turning down clients because they don't have the people to do the work. They are turning down jobs and declining to bid on many others. They have made "courtesy bids" 20 to 30% above their normal rate for long term clients where they didn't want to get the award and still got the job.
This will end in a few years.
