Some companies have a hard limit on developer salaries. Many will never pay a developer over $200k, even if the developer is that good.

This can come from two reasons:

1. The company doesn't have sufficiently valuable projects to capture the developer's potential. There are a lot of companies which simply don't need very senior developers and hence cannot match the price for a senior developer on the open market.

2. The company perceives developers as second-class relative to management or their core business leaders. Thus, they can never have developers paid more than those core people.

These companies see a very consistent talent pool of mediocre developers (who have been mediocre for a long time) and junior developers who come in and leave after 1-2 years once they realize they can get more elsewhere.