Pay increases and passing the 5-year mark

[Ben Gould]

You do a great job setting a clear guide for starting salaries based on experience and role (although I have to echo kcshearon's issue #37 on the discrepancy between "technical" and "non-technical" roles, a distinction which seems more a vestige of past exclusionary practices in the industry than one that has a meaningful role). However, there's no standard outline for pay increases over time, which will be important for retaining the employees you hope to keep and develop over 6+ years.

Just as "Traditional salary negotiations are also heavily biased because they rely on individual gut feelings and negotiation," which "favors candidates who come from more privileged backgrounds and are afforded more confidence during the hiring process," traditional raise increase negotiations have similar issues. As a first step, I would recommend considering a flat % increase based on years worked at Clef, along with a stepwise increase of +20k for employees who pass the 5 years of experience mark that factors so prominently in starting salary (or +30k for non-technical, if that discrepancy is retained). The flat % increase could be local CPI + GDP growth, or 5%, whichever is greater.

For example, consider technical employees X and Y, hired at the same time. X has 6 years of experience, while Y has 3.5 years. X starts at $120k, and Y at $100k. After 1 year, they'd both receive a 5% increase, to $126k and $105k, respectively. 6 months later, Employee Y would have reached 5 years of total experience and receive a $20k increase to $125k , and 6 months after that they'd both receive a 5% increase, to $132.3k and $131.25k.

(5% might be a little high, but it makes the example easier.)

This ensures that new hires with less experience don't start at a higher salary than employees who have been at Clef for several years, and that salary increases can be considered fair and reliable. There's still a slight discrepancy, but it's small enough that it doesn't conflict with your values.

[B]

Thanks for this, it's super interesting and something I tried to figure out a good formula for but hadn't succeeded at before we open sourced the handbook. We decided to ship it because we knew we would be expanding the rubric soon, as we'll be raising our Series A, but I think raise-policies are certainly an important place to avoid bias and a policy like this would be 👌👌