I never said that the most highly compensated people are only paid 100% of starting salary positions. Only that for any given position, there are certain salary bands that are developed by HR. These bands can be quite large, but they don't span anywhere near 100% of a given starting salary. For those in typical careers, such as a nurse, accountant, doctor, engineer, lawyer, etc. The odds of just switching jobs for 100% raises seems completely unrealistic. Those salary bands stagger with each level, and generally are maybe 10-20% higher from the previous promotion/position level.