Salaries will lag competitors. Small company and with few resources to obtain information and other commercially available reports. Management tends to be "penny-wise, but pound foolish". Workload is not evenly divided among employees, so management will overburden productive employees, underburden those who are less productive, creating a disincentive to be efficient, hard-working. Firm needs to fill out the middle tier positions. Firm currently has plenty of top-tier and low tier positions filled, but the middle tier is lacking. The firm's high tech practice has become downsized, due to lower volume of work. Management has never communicated the company's changing focus to employees. However, if you paid attention to the many clues around you, you would not be in the dark.