I had a good performance review, but weak salary increase, how much should I care and what should I do?

tl;dr:  Ask your manager what needs to happen for you to be promoted.  Also shop around for a new job to at least get an idea what the market is like, and potentially use an offer as leverage (or simply leave).  Whatever you do, don't let it just slide. Long answer...and keep in mind I don't know where you work, how large of a company it is, etc. Where I work HR has a magic method for determining what they call an employees "market ratio," which is basically your compensation divided by what they believe your market rate to be.  The higher your MR is, the harder it is for your manager to justify a raise.  One of the primary inputs to this is your official level, so a promotion automatically shifts down your MR.  MR is semi-independent of the hard limits on salary ranges for a position.  It could be that your peers started higher than you and were in the same boat when it came to raises.  Or it could be they have some objective trait that's fed into the formula that gives them a higher MR, e.g. more advanced education, education at a higher ranked school, certifications, more years experience, etc. Another factor may be that sometimes performance review scores and merit raises are only loosely coupled, with performance reviews largely being a local process between you and your manager, while the merit process is broader and much more political.  It could be your manager isn't an effective advocate for you, you have a detractor out there somewhere, or you just aren't very visible in the broader organization.  Where I work, overcoming a high MR requires a fair amount of effort by your advocates, and at times it is impossible to overcome. My experience is managers are very fast to shift blame from themselves to "the rules," but in reality those rules are largely guidelines that a determined management chain can overcome if they really want to, and making them want to often involves being demanding and putting pressure on them.  Just don't overdo it because then they won't want to because you're a pain.