Find Their Pay Tier

Open the relevant role above or in the . Based on the skills ladder in the role description, place the person into a pay tier. Methodology:

  1. Typically if you rate the person in each skill and then average the ratings, that will work well.
  2. Sometimes someone will be in a lower tier for most skills, but a very high tier for the skill that they use the most. They deserve to be placed in a high tier. Other times someone will have a skill they are excellent at, but if the majority of their work does not involve that skill, they should be placed based on the skills they use the most.
  3. Within the placement, also provide notes on whether the person is towards the top, middle, or bottom, based on the skills assessment.

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Note that some of our Role definitions use a new method where the tiers are more abstractly defined. Use whatever is in the Role definition to make your best determination as to which tier is most appropriate.

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Determine a fair offer within the tier

The pay tier will provide an upper and lower bound on salary, assuming the person is full-time. Adjust that offer based on soft skills and benefits that the person brings to the team, including:

  1. Communciation Skills. Do they regularly meet our communication guidelines? Do others need to “Check in” to make sure they are getting their work done?
  2. Leadership Skills. Do they help others on the team grow? Do they manage team members while also fulfilling their own work?
  3. Accountabilty. Do they take charge of their work? Do they continually deliver results by agreed-upon deadlines? Do they consistently respond to internal communication or do they sometimes miss it?
  4. Networking. Do they bring friends to Cantilever as potential clients or staff? Do they actively seek to grow our talent pool or find new leads, outside of work?
  5. Efficiency. Are they delivering work in a shorter amount of time than their peers in the same tier? This gives us more value so they should get paid more.
  6. Flexibility. Do they play multiple roles? This gives us value, so they should get paid more than they would in either tier separately.
    1. People who play multiple roles can be rated based on the Role they hold the most, then adjusted based on their other Roles, or you can compute wages for each of their roles independently, and then average/blend the wages.

Adjust for Output

We pay for output, not time. For a developer, output can be observed via story points completed on a weekly basis, and emergencies resolved. For a project manager, output could be a number of projects successfully managed at once.

For each role we have general expectations of what someone can accomplish based on their seniority. When someone intends to deliver less, we adjust compensation accordingly.

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For example, let‘s say a Level 3 developer is expected to complete 30-40 story points worth of work each week. We have a Level 3 developer who is great at their job but is not able to deliver that volume of work because of their family commitments. Instead, they agree to be expected to deliver 15-20 story points per week and receive half of the salary they would have otherwise.

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Adjust Outside of the US

If the team member is not in the US, add 8% to account for the difference in taxation structure between US W2 employees and employees/contractors in the rest of the world. This addition is capped at $12,816 or $8/hr, which is the maximum employer tax that would be due in the US due to the FICA tax maximum.

  1. The team member can choose to be paid either in USD or local currency.