Did you have to ask your manager after every performance review for a salary increase?

To be clear about the pay increase: that was a compensation increase, which is different from a salary increase. Here are rough numbers to demonstrate what I'm talking about:

• When I started at Meta (2017): salary of $170K, equity of $150K
• When I left Meta (2022): salary of $235K, equity of $500K

You can see that most of my comp (TC) increase came from the higher equity value after I had stayed with the company for 4+ years. It's rare for someone to earn that much just purely from salary.

To answer your question directly: you shouldn't have to ask your manager for a salary increase. Most companies will do regular salary adjustments for inflation, cost-of-living, and performance. Usually these are annual, sometimes more frequently.

Meta was nice (and somewhat unique) in that salary changes and equity grants were formulaic based on your performance rating. Based on that, you'd get a multiplier on the baseline salary change or equity grant.

If you need to ask for a salary increase, you can justify it in a couple ways:

• Discuss your performance history (even if it's not an EE rating, you can still talk about your valuable contributions)
• Reference data from the market, for similar jobs as what you're doing
• Ask what the typical timeline/calibration is for salary adjustments

I talk more about this here: Negotiating Your Current Salary.