What to take away
- 1.At 30 staff, three engineers on three salaries is a ticking conversation.
- 2.Three levels, one credible benchmark, refreshed annually is enough.
- 3.Publish the band internally — the relief is cognitive, not financial.
At 15 people you can wing it. At 30 people you have three engineers on three different salaries doing the same work, and at least one of them knows.
Build the simplest possible band: three levels, a range per level, market data sourced from one credible benchmark. Refresh annually. Publish it internally.
The relief is not financial. It's cognitive. You stop negotiating each hire from scratch.
“You stop negotiating each hire from scratch.”
What credible benchmark means: not a recruiter's gut, not a Glassdoor average, not your competitor's careers page. Use one of Mercer, Aon Radford, or a sector-specific data set with at least 50 companies in your country and tier. Pay for the data; it's the cheapest mistake-prevention you'll buy.
Try this Monday
- Pick one benchmark source — Mercer, Aon Radford, or sector-specific.
- Draft three levels and a salary range for each, in one document.
- Schedule a 30-minute review with your co-founder this week.
The systems angle
Once the bands exist, every offer letter should pull from them automatically. That's the moment a system pays for itself.
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The HR Asia piece on early-stage comp bands is the simplest framing I've read. At 15 you can wing it. At 30 you have three engineers on three different salaries doing the same work, and at least one of them knows. https://hrasia.co/founder/comp-structure-early
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