I think that is capitalism at work. When companies shop for the lowest price vendor, that's rewarded. When employees do it, it's establishing the market rate fo

I think that is capitalism at work. When companies shop for the lowest price vendor, that's rewarded. When employees do it, it's establishing the market rate for their skills - like it or not, people will get offers for what they are worth - no more, no less. A policy like this will force your team to get very clear on the value of the work and what they are willing to pay, relative to the type of candidate you will hire to do the job. Most people like to over-hire (we're looking for someone who has done this specific thing for at least 2-3, but more like 3-5 years. If you want to over-hire, you are going to have to over pay. Realistically, you'll have to decide whether or not you really need to over hire for specific experience, or what you really need is someone capable of working at scale, who can read open-source documentation and figure out how to learn new software packages, with the assistance of Google. Or, you can do what FAANG does and over pay for the top talent, even though many of those folks write relatively trivial code.