Aeqium Blog

We're excited to announce the release of our new feature, Pay Transparency, which empowers brands to be more transparent about their employees' pay ranges.

Stripe just announced a new round of funding priced at $50B – an eye-popping valuation to be sure, but just half of what they had last raised at during their peak. Many private companies’ true valuations are lower than their last rounds – in many cases, much lower. This has significant implications for companies across the tech ecosystem. 

A compensation philosophy allows you to be transparent with all of your employees about your approach to total rewards. To help you get started, we’ve put together a sample compensation philosophy below. It’s designed for technology startups that pay employees with a mix of base salary, bonuses, and equity. You can use this compensation philosophy as a template for your own, or just use it as a source of inspiration.

A compensation philosophy is one of the key elements of a thorough compensation management plan. A well designed compensation philosophy describes a company's approach to determining and providing pay and benefits to its employees. It also serves as a framework for how the company rewards its employees for the contributions that they make to the organization.

Total compensation or “TC” as it’s colloquially (and somewhat sarcastically) referred to across the tech industry, is a term referring to the sum total of all of the monetary compensation that an employee receives in a given year. In tech company circles, it has become a common term that allows employees at different companies to compare their compensation and determine whether they’re being paid a market rate. 

The world’s three most famous consulting firms, Bain & Company, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and McKinsey, have recently made a number of compensation market adjustments – their largest in years. What’s going on here?