You have things very backwards. The way a company makes money is through making products that are better than the competition and doing so as efficiently as possible. The cornerstone of that is retaining highly talented people. Every employee is necessarily worth more than they are being paid. It is generally far more efficient to maintain an environment of mutual trust and appreciation by paying developers well and giving them raises as appropriate than to try to nickel and dime them. In the first case you pay a little bit more but you also retain top talent which more than pays for itself. In the second case you drive away top talent and retain only the dregs. On paper you are paying less money but you are paying vastly more on a per talent basis.