Please take this in the constructive way it's intended. You might want to consider that your stance of withholding your full effort is very probably the reason you've never experienced a healthy relationship with your employers.
If your definition of "full effort" means: 50+ hour weeks with no end in sight, arbitrary deadlines disconnected from reality that exist only to give some a-hole exec an illusion of lower risk, make-believe agile, inability to disconnect after work, and countless meaningless hoops to jump through, that's NOT something which will reap rewards in the long term and it is far from a healthy relationship.
"Full Effort" should mean a solid day of work, with enough time to have a life outside the office. Sure, sometimes there's a crunch and one needs to stay late. If the relationship is healthy that will happen a handful of times a year, max. Anything more than that, and you're getting used.
You might get lucky in the current job, but odds are against you.
A bit of a lightbulb moment for me as i didn't want to go back into people management. I now use this term to set out what i have and what i can do for the project and how that has lead to greater success/value of a product.
It also highlights to management what happens if i was to leave.
It's their rules. I'm just playing the game.
As someone who have experienced British managers in practice, this explains a lot.
I don't think your expectations are realistic. Most peoples' salaries don't increase monotonically throughout their career, they top out around 40, the day you get your last big raise. For most people that's the day they become a senior/top/lead/etc, whether they're a chef or a welder or a doctor or whatever.
I've seen several developers work towards management roles, make the switch and then end up moving back to IC roles after realising the grass isn't always greener.
There's so much to unpack here. Some doctors make 400k. Some make 700k. Some make 300k. Some are stressed and work a lot of hours. Others aren't and don't.
Some lawyers want to be on partner track at a big firm. They might be stressed and working a lot of hours so that they can make 400k or 500k or $1,000,000 annually. Some make $100k and don't work much, aren't stressed.
Most software developers make less than $150k. Most software developers I know are stress balls until they check out and then start working 24-30 hours a week and the rest of the office time is bullshit.
On the west coast of the US and in Fintech in NY some developers make 300-400k.
In VHCOL areas those numbers are much higher of course.
'full effort' might mean a variery of things, but if we are talking about working overtime to meet a sudden new requirement, or studying new framework over weekend, then thats a cancelled family trip and dissapounted spouse.
And if you do that repeatedly it will result in unhealthy relationships at home, which is much worse than at work