I love my job but I've been looking at other opportunities because I know I'm underpaid.
A few months ago, my manager had a very open conversation with me about how much the company values me & that they want to promote me & bring me up to market-value salary range, but they can't until December because of a strong company policy not to give raises outside of December. (This manager wasn't the same one I had when I initially started, and he seems to understand the competitive market for software developers a lot more than my old boss).
I asked for a one-time bonus to help improve my current year compensation package but was turned down.
This week (completely out of the blue) my manager told me he got me approved me for a decently significant raise, effective immediately beginning next month. This (supposedly) won't affect the raise they have planned for me in December. I expressed a thank you but I was pretty thrown off by it.
Do I need to be concerned that my manager somehow knew I was looking to leave? The timing is way too on-the-mark with my job search, as I only seriously started looking a couple of weeks ago.
If they really value me so much, WHY would a company risk having me leave because of this "Dec-only policy" (which is pretty real, as I've heard about multiple times), only to change their mind & break their own rules two months later?
Now that my salary concerns have been mainly resolved, I'm (happily) stopping my job search. In theory I'd love to tell my manager that he literally just stopped me from leaving, but I imagine that's a taboo thing to ever say to your boss. Is there any other way I can give him a hint to that, or just to express gratitude beyond the small, surprised "thank you" that I gave when he told me? (This question is related but his question was only for future situations. Mine is for how to express further gratitude beyond what I already said.)