There's a number of ways to compensate your best developer in ways not necessarily money orientated: - Give them flexi-hours. They can come and go as they plea

There's a number of ways to compensate your best developer in ways not necessarily money orientated: - Give them flexi-hours. They can come and go as they please so long as either a minimum amount of time is worked or better still they are measured on output and not on time - Give them the opportunity to work on research and development (aka 20% time) - Give them the opportunity to work on problems that your company has. If you have 50 people and several development teams I'm sure there are lots of internal problems this developer could help address - Give your developer people to mentor. S/he might relish the opportunity to help others raise their game to his/her levels of awesomeness If none of that hits the spot, find out what motivates your developer and work out how to align his/her motivations to the output of the work they go on to do. Above average developers are not easy to find. You need to make sure that you've done everything in your power to keep your best developers onboard as replacing them is not easy.