Is it bad to start looking for a new Job right after waiting for a major raise?

[Anonymous]

I will throw in a possible negative, is your manager limited in how many raises he can give so this is money it cannot pay to someone else? In the federal government we get a limited number of "QSIs" or quality step increases. In short, this is a means to move top performers up the pay scale faster but they are not widely available. When I have been involved in this decision there is a lot of thought that goes into how to distribute them to the maximum benefit among a short list of people. If I gave an employee a QSI and then that employee quit that would have burned a raise I could have given another high performer.

That said, they usually come as a surprise to employees as there is no expectation they will be available every year so no one would be expecting one in normal circumstances.