My starting salary was a not-extravagant $55K 25 years ago when .coms were handing out $100K+ to CS grads. That's $100K today. $80K is exceedingly low even for juniors in a highly skilled profession

The real issue is that companies aren't willing to increase pay even with the rate of inflation. This isn't a controversial take.

So yeah, you may be loyal to the company, and you may show loyalty by coming to all the "mandatory fun" events as well as the "all hands meetings." But the reality is that they pay the minimum what they can get away with. And the more loyal you are, the more they can pay less.

If you think about it, on one hand it's a market based approach -- which is probably the right answer for management to do. On the other hand, if there's no incentive for you to go out of your way, you won't. Nor will you work harder if all you're going to get is a %2 pay raise, even though the last year you closed on average 3 tickets per work day.