To offer a different perspective, I was an early engineer at a startup with strong talent that followed this playbook. Things were fine until I realized upon i

To offer a different perspective, I was an early engineer at a startup with strong talent that followed this playbook. Things were fine until I realized upon interviewing for fun that I was massively underpaid (2-3x). I was pretty young at the time, and instead of talking with the founders about the gap, gradually grew resentful and left the company. I’m now on the on the other side of the table, and we pay everyone handsomely but keep the team lean while expecting everyone to operate at a very high level. Not every startup can or should do this, but I feel strongly this is a much better model for retaining talent while balancing cost to the company.