@zd Normally I'd agree with you but for the 8 years at Dell, I've never gotten below a 7% raise.. My group was put under a new "manager" last year as part of the middle management flattening (Sr. Managers were demoted and we were put under a director, basically.) He has had no interest, nor cared to have anything to do with us for the last year. My group is in the federal dept and I know that the other team he "manages" is on the corporate side.
Maybe he's more involved with the corp team, I have no clue... but as far as we are concerned (my ENTIRE team) he is just someone who approves PTO and otherwise has zero idea what we are actually doing.
Which blows because, our previous manager - who is basically still our manager without the title - is AWESOME and, actually knows wtf we all do on a daily basis. This new guy does 1x1's and that's it.
The national average for a TECH raise was 1.6%, btw... Google is a solid resource my friend! Of course that will vary but no, we are not "way below" the average raise in the USA for tech.