This assumes the company knows how to value your work

This assumes the company knows how to value your work. I started my career in operations working at companies that pioneered working in public clouds. What this meant was long weeks, missed sleep, and thankless work. I saved the companies millions per year through improved resource allocation, high uptime, and fast deployment cycles. Invariably, company management viewed the above as an expense to incur only as long as infra was percieved as a problem. In my third year of experience I had a banger of a year at a startup and could rightfully claim 3 million per year in savings. In uncertain terms it was implied to me that I wasn’t expected to stick around for the second year but I was given a 2% raise out of kindness :shrug: Management generally views themselves as valuable, and finds people like themselves as valuable. I got wise to this and transitioned fields.