1

Compensating What We Value

Basis for Grade Level Banding & Annual Review

2

What we Value

Shown by who gets:• Rewarded• Promoted• Let go

Synergy of: Behavior Skill

Identify Gaps on Our Acting According to Our Values

3

In Inventive/Transformative Work: the Best are 10x

Contributing to Each Other Each empowered,

enabled Team shares: Success Failure to Perform

Star in Every Role

We value every team mate being someone: You respect You learn from

Actual Values:Bar Raising

4

Good Process Attracts High Performers--And Requires Them--

Context-setting frequently: Roles Metrics Strategy Milestones Goals Impediments Product Leadership

Freedom to push hard & fail

Self-learning, self-improving

Transparency Tightly aligned, loosely

coupled Budget spending

authority

We Take Responsibility for Where Context Was Not Set

5

The Behavior That Makes The Difference: Influencer

CausesDirection Changes

Control:Compliance,

Tops-Down

Responsibly Sets Context

Underperformingor Unnecessary:

Self-Learning or re-Deployment

MentorMentee

Bar Raising

6

Compensation:Market Value Ramps

Relative to Local Cost of Living

7

Grade Level Banding:Main Individual Performance

VP, Chief Product Officer

Fellow, VP, CTO, C-Software Architect

VP, Chief Process Officer

VP, Chief Strategy Officer

DirectorManager

Associate

Lead, Principal, Architect

CoachManager

Sr. Eng.

Manager

Director

Associate

Engineer

Researcher

Each band to be broken into 2-3 progressive grades: I, II, III

MTS SDE PC F

ResponsiblySets Context

Communication, Teamwork, Innovation, Courage, Agility

Mentor

Product Owner

Scrum Master

Developer

Strategy

Grade Band

Competency: Tech + Behavior

Causes Direction Changes

Not every cell/column will be filled

8

Innovation Team Budget: Each individual placed in band, and grade level Sum of individual comps: gap? Study market for each band, geo: behavior + tech Recruiting band: D-III

Judicious market comparatives always apply: Minor quarterly review: successful teams Major annual review

Caveats: Comp can stay flat if market remains flat No counter necessary when people leaving voluntarily

Above Fair Market CompensationFor Performance Bands

9

Pay as much as a replacement would cost Technical Skill + Behavior

Pay as much as we would if they had a higher offer elsewhere

Specific Job Compensation: Each Grade Level & Individual

One “Strong” Person Gets More Doneand Costs Less than Two “Normal” Ones

10

BAND CHARACTERISTICS CONTRIBUTOR SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR PRINCIPAL CONTRIBUTOR DISTINGUISHED

CONTRIBUTOR

Distinction Influencer Software Apprentice Mentors Apprentices Responsibly Sets Context Causes Directional Changes

Developer

Grade Level Code MTS1 MTS2 MTS3 SDE1 SDE2 PC1 PC2 PC3 F1 F2

Salary (mean)India 1               more a lot more

Ukraine 1               more a lot more

US 1               more a lot more

Competencies (Incremental)

Communication You listen first, so you can better understand.  Only after you seek to be understood

You share knowledge and information openly and proactively

You take responsibility for any/all underperformance where you may have failed to set context

You influences anyone/everyone to positively impact the business 

Teamwork You seek what is best for your scrum team rather than you

You inspire your scrum team mates with your thirst for excellence

Your scrum team(s) accomplishes amazing amounts of important work

Your team(s) demonstrate consistently strong performance

Courage You work hard towards your goals and are willing to fail, when it's the smart thing to do

You say what you think even if it is controversial You are known for candor and directness You make tough decisions without 

agonizing

Innovation

You quickly learn to develp, test, release.  You become familiar with coding practices / tools, build tools, design patterns.  You adopt unit testing, load testing.  You gain practical training in data strcutures and problem solving.

You learn to re-conceptualize issues to discover practical solutions to hard problems.  Collegues realize they can rely upon you to manage deployments and to conduct peer reviews.

You learn to design and develop non coupled components, modules.  You acquire knowledge and ownership of the full stack.

You share your understanding of design patterns, implementation and multi-tier application design.  You demonstrate hands on with multi-threading, concurrent programming

You coach team members, establish best practices and code review.  You exhibit mastery of  business requirements specification.  You are able to multi-task and are an example on how to re-prioritze work to best fit changing requirements and business landscape

You constructively engage and collaborate in cross-team projects / product integrations and architecture peer reviews.  You are relied upon to conceive and have a team execute a project. 

You are counted on for key design and architecture decisions.  You drive for automation, agile development practices, development best practices.

You are a publisehd thought leader and mentor on technology, architecture, design.  You are experienced in designing clustered and high availability systems. You are an expert in messaging architecture, caching architecture, database architecture.  Also in deployment strategies, datacentre / cloud architectures, capacity planing and production topologies.

You make wise decisions despite ambiguity.  You identify root causes, and get beyond treating symptoms.  You smartly separate what must be done well now, and what can be improved later.

You think strategically and can articulate what you are trying to do, and what you are not trying to do.

Agility You are familiar with Scrum You are adept at Scrum You advicate Scrum You are a Scrum expert

Experience You have strong hold of language, data structures and computer science fundamentals

You developed and  shipped minimum viable products from inception You lead, engineered or architected internet-scale software You masterfully can develop any 

internet-scale product

Industry Mapping

Title Software Engineer Sr. Software Engineer Sr. Tech Lead, Principal Engineer, Software Architect Sr. Software Architect, Fellow, Chief Software Architect, CTO

Timing 0-4 years 3-6  years 4-7 years 5-9 years 6-10 years 7-11 years 7-11 years 9-13 years 10 +  

Banding & Compensation: Developer