Equal salary encourages more job jumping

This is a huge post.

Lets first focus on your main skillset and compare that with freshmen with similar main skillset.

Giving new employees same salary as existing employees looks good in theory.  What it means is that you will always have the same salary as everybody else in your company.

• This is fair.

This is fair for some time.  When you have been there some years, you develop skills and become an expert.  You can do stuff what a freshman cannot do.  You can do stuff much faster than a freshman can do.

• It is still fair, when you have the social hat on.

• Then it is no longer fair, when you put on the industrial thinking hat.  When you compare input vs output.  Some freshmen can have new thoughts, new technology, which can offset and balance the fairness.
  

Sometimes later, the freshmen becomes experts.  Then all are experts and have equal salary.

• This is fair.

This shows the unfairness sometimes felt by experts with lower salary than average is visible in just a short timeframe, and with the right hat on.  In order to really see the bigger picture, we need to zoom out and compare your opportunities in one company vs. the opportunities elsewhere.

If your company's salary policy is equality (freshmen gets the same as seniors) then your salary advancement curve will follow the salary level for freshmen.  You could use this place to learn the ropes and then quit.  When you become an expert, you will pay them, instead of them paying you.  We can classify such employers as freshman-friendly.  Salary-wise, I advise to get out of there when you feel your skills has stabilized.

If another company's salary policy is advancement (freshmen starts lower than seniors) then you are well situated.  Here you can work for a long time and know that you are well off after some years.  This kind of place might require you know some specific skills well before you start.  Ensure you have a good skill match and that they have good policies before you start talking salaries.  If they really need your skills, you will hopefully get higher salary than you expect.  Remember, they see your skills first and foremost, and then how you are as a person.  If both is ok, then you will get an interview.

In general, ensure you aquire a good skillset, that is needed by many companies.  You can pick up new skills and slide into other areas and companies as you go.  Working on your skillset, positions and salary is what is known as career development.

Only you care about your development.  Only you decide what you want.  You can check it regularly, or you can let it bloom for some time by itself.  The important thing is that you are happy with how things are going.  Your development is government by you.  That is the fruit of individual freedom.

Your salary development can sometimes happen within a larger bubble of a regulated work market, like in Norway where there is national-level negotiations between a hierarchy of employer organisations and a hierarchy of work unions, as well as local negotiations on the company levels.  If your market of possible employers is Norway, then you will find your possible employers here, all in the same bubble, or else you will find them elsewhere.

Norway state-sector salary policy is particularly bad for lazy gits; internationally relatively high salaries for positions where you can acquire knowledge fast, and internationally relatively low salaries for positions where you need a lot of education or knowledge up front.  This encourages people to get in, and leave it up to them to get out.  Many stays, which means that salary is not everything here in life.  If you are salary-minded, you should go for private sector, but if you are a lazy git, you will soon go back to state sector.

Salary depends on you working for it or not.

As is with everything.