Employee of 37 years gets a $58k offer from a rival company, and their employer suddenly finds room for a 12% raise the moment they start considering leaving – FAIL Blog

What makes this situation interesting is the psychological weight of 37 years. That is not nothing. The familiarity, the relationships, the institutional standing, the knowledge of exactly how everything works, all of that has real value that does not show up on a compensation comparison spreadsheet. Starting over at a smaller company at this stage of a career means rebuilding all of that from scratch, and smaller companies come with their own set of risks that a 70,000-person organization simply does not carry.