[Shadetree930]

Part of the issue here is that the HR department's goal is to keep your salary within range of other similar positions. Although you may be 'better' than average, the HR goal is to manage the entire spread of employee salaries in your position range. If your manager is not willing to advocate strongly for you based uopn specialized skills or departmental needs, you will to have to fit into the pre-determined salary range. The same goes for negotiating time off. Most companies will not flex much on benefit deviations for that level position. it creates too many problems with the other employees in the pool (exec level positions and hard to find skillsets exempt from this generalization).

Since network engineering is a 'commodity job' they are not going to move you too far from the salary range they have in mind. Even more so with respect to benefits.