This is great advice that entirely ignores the fact that the best way to progress as a developer is to change job (or at least to change team within a company). In a market where moving on every couple of years at most is the aim of young candidates hiring for anything long term is just silly.
Exactly right. It seems based on the unrealistic assumption that someone will have a long-enough tenure at your company for the two lines to cross. It is far more likely that they will jump ship for a better baseline assumption (and the base salary that goes with it) than that they will stick around for you to see the two lines cross.
When discussing lifelong learning and skill growth it is also worth being honest in the description of the lines. Few have a constant upward slope, they usually plateau for a bit and can even turn negative if you get stuck in an obsolete skill set. Just because someone's 'slope' looks positive now does not mean that will continue.
I actually think the advice is aligned with that. Young candidates have high slope and low intercept. I don't think the aim of ambitious young developers is to move jobs and maximize pay, but rather to be in a role where they can continue to optimize for slope. That's the kind of company you want to build and the kind of developer you want to hire.
I'm pretty sure it's both. The problem with a company being both is that it generally seems very hard for companies to promote to market value. This makes sense to a degree when you consider that the company has to be a bit discerning as to what it trusts in those negotiations. I can say I've gotten an offer for anything I want. I can say the going rate for my position is what I see being offered on the market, even if I might not be hired for those positions. There will most likely always be a tension between what a company thinks someone is worth and how they value themselves, so there will always be the risk that someone believes they can get more elsewhere. I'm not sure overpaying would even help this, people might just adjust perceived their self worth accordingly.
