Excerpts from a Wall Street Journal article
1. What kind of company are you working for if you have to threaten to resign before they pay you what you are worth?
2. Where is the money for the counteroffer coming from? Is it your next raise early? All companies have strict wage and salary guidelines which must be followed. Are they going to make your increase retroactive in order to compensate for underpaying you over the last several years?
3. Your company may immediately start looking for a new person at a cheaper price. In many cases, you could be training your replacement.
4. You now have made your employer aware that you are unhappy. From this day on, your loyalty will always be in question.
5. When promotion time comes around, your employer will remember who was loyal and who was not.
6. When times get rough, your employer will begin the cutback with you.
7. The same circumstances that now cause you to consider a change will repeat themselves in the future even if you accept a counter-offer. Things about your position and company rarely change.
8. Statistics show that if you accept a counter-offer, the probability of voluntarily leaving in six months, or being let go within one year, is extremely high — 85% of people who accept a counter-offer are gone in six months, and 90% of people who accept are gone in twelve months.
9. Accepting a counter-offer is an insult to your intelligence and a blow to your personal pride knowing that you were bought.
10. Once the word gets out, the relationship that you now enjoy with your co-workers will never be the same. You will lose the personal satisfaction of peer group acceptance.