When I was managing a team, we had this sacred rule: never, ever let the people who got us here feel like they’re worth less today than yesterday.
And yet, I see it happening everywhere in recent years. Companies hiring in a frenzy. Salary for new talent have exploded (sales, engineers, designers, product people). A fresh graduate suddenly makes 30% or 40% more than the person who’s been bleeding for the company for 5 years. Same role.
That’s not hiring. That’s a betrayal.
You know what it feels like when you’ve been at a place for years, you’ve shipped incredible products, you’ve worked nights and weekends, you’ve turned down better offers because you believed in the mission… and then some new person walks in, glances at the code you wrote, and gets paid dramatically more than you? It feels like a slap in the face. It feels like the company is saying, “Thanks for working long nights building this thing. Now step aside, the new guy’s more valuable than you.”
That’s how you destroy a culture. That’s how you kill the soul of a team.
I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it in the hallways. The best people (the ones with taste, the ones who care deeply, the ones who made the products insanely great) they don’t complain loudly. They just quietly update their résumé. And one day they’re gone. And when they leave, they take the magic with them.
So here’s what I would do:
1. Never let the market dictate your soul.
Yes, you sometimes have to pay crazy money to get the right person. Fine. But the moment you do that, you go back to every single person on the team who’s in a comparable role and you tell them that we’ll review their salary upwards in the next budget. You just do it. Because new people's pay might get disclosed (somehow).
2. Equity is the great equalizer.
Cash salaries get compressed and distorted by the market. Shares doesn’t lie. Give people real ownership that grows with the company they helped build. When the company does well, the people who were here in the begining will get insanely high stock valuations. That’s how you keep the early believers believing.(and staying)
Great companies aren’t built by the people who joined yesterday. They’re built by the people who stayed through the dark days, who shipped the impossible, who cared when it wasn’t cool yet.
If you let salary inflation turn those people into second-class citizens, you don’t just demotivate them; you lose them. And when you lose them, you lose everything that made your company special in the first place.
Take care of the people who took care of you.
It’s not complicated. It’s the right thing to do.