Salary Benchmarking Tools

Our latest State of Global Compensation Report - featuring equity insight from our partners Carta - just dropped, and this one is led by Jessica, Deel’s own Head of Global Compensation. Jess shapes Deel’s comp strategy and has been foundational to how we think about fairness and competitiveness across 150+ countries. This new edition gives HR and comp leaders real, actionable insights on how to navigate a fast-changing pay landscape. Highlights: - Equity is going global. With Carta’s data, we’re seeing ownership become a powerful way to build wealth and alignment across borders, especially in Brazil and India. - AI and tech roles are redefining pay norms. Specialized talent is commanding 20–25% premiums, pushing teams to rethink comp structures. - Gender pay gaps persist, but are progressing in countries like Brazil and Colombia shows what’s possible with transparency and intentional hiring. - Contractor markets are maturing. Countries like Argentina and Mexico are thriving hubs for flexible, high-skill talent. If you’re building or scaling a global team, Jessica’s insights offer a practical roadmap for fair, data-driven compensation design. Read on 👉 https://lnkd.in/dtmXytds

🚀 Have entry-level salaries in India really improved over the past 25 years? Here’s what the data shows across sectors — including high-end research. Over the past few weeks, I dug into salary trends for fresh graduates — not just in tech or business, but in core engineering, manufacturing, healthcare, finance, government, and academic research. The results are a lesson in economics and policy. Let’s keep it simple: If you earned ₹2 lakh per year in 2000, you’d need at least ₹6.4 lakh in 2025 just to keep pace with inflation (using a 3.2× multiplier for 220% cumulative inflation). So, how have starting salaries trended in real terms? 💻 IT & Engineering: 2000s: ₹2–3L 2025: ₹3.5–4L Result: ❌ Below inflation. Despite growth in tech, oversupply of engineers kept fresher pay almost flat in real terms. 🏗️ Core Engineering/Manufacturing: 2000s: ₹1.8L 2025: ₹4.0L Result: ❌ Still below inflation. 🏦 Finance (Analyst/CA/Bank PO): 2000s: ₹3–4L 2025: ₹6–10L Result: ❌ Most roles are below inflation. Only a few private sector jobs approach parity. 🏥 Healthcare (MBBS Doctors): 2000s: ₹1.8L 2025: ₹7.0L Result: ✅ Slightly ahead of inflation in urban/private setups. Rural/government pay still trails workload. 🏛️ Government / PSU: 2000s: ₹1.8L 2025: ₹6.5L Result: ✅ Above inflation. 6th and 7th Pay Commissions significantly improved real incomes. 🎓 MBA (Top B-Schools): 2005: ₹7.5L 2025: ₹31L Result: ✅ Above inflation. Tier-1 MBAs remain scarce and in high demand. 🔬 High-End Research & Academia: PhD Fellowship: 2000s: ₹0.8L 2025: ₹4.5L Result: ✅ 460% growth, above inflation (driven by major fellowship hikes). Entry Govt Scientist/Engineer (ISRO, DRDO, CSIR): 2000s: ₹1.8L 2025: ₹9.0L Result: ✅ 400% growth, well above inflation (Pay Commissions, R&D focus). Assistant Professor (IITs, IISc): 2000s: ₹2L 2025: ₹13L Result: ✅ 550% growth, among the best in India (reflecting talent attraction in higher education). Private R&D (Pharma/Biotech/Tech Labs): 2000s: ₹4L 2025: ₹12L Result: ⚠️ Matches inflation, but outliers in AI/data science do better. What does all this mean? 1️⃣ Where graduate supply far exceeds demand (IT, engineering), real salaries have actually dropped. 2️⃣ Where talent is scarce or policy stepped in (elite MBA, government, research), salaries have risen well above inflation. 3️⃣ In research and academia, major policy changes and advocacy made a real difference in recent years. This is a reminder that salary isn’t just about “skills” — it’s about supply, demand, and the value the market (or government) puts on your work. If India wants to create real income growth, we need more quality jobs, relevant upskilling, and continued investment in research and innovation. I write about #artificialintelligence | #technology | #startups | #mentoring | #leadership | #financialindependence   PS: All views are personal Vignesh Kumar

The $100M mistake to avoid when establishing compensation bands for your global office locations A mistake I sometimes see when companies set up their global compensation practices is to take one, and only one, pay differential for that new country/region and then apply it against the HQ-location compensation bands. On the one hand, this is a simple way to establish the pay practices for a global office location. However, it is an oversimplification that leads to either overpaying or underpaying talent requisite with a company’s target compensation philosophy. In particular, the global pay differentials for sales reps tend to be markedly more compressed than for other job functions such as engineering. I find this very interesting. Let’s take a look. ___________ Example: Your HQ is in SF. You decide to open an office in London. The average pay differential between SF and London in Pave is 66%. Your P4 SWEs in SF make $200k. And your ENT sales reps make $250k. (These are the band midpoints for argument's sake here.) Given the 66% average SF<>London pay differential, you decide to pay your UK P4 SWEs $132k (£99.9k GBP) and your UK ENT sales reps $165k USD (£124.9 GBP). Seems simple and easy, right? Not quite. Turns out, the pay differential for SF<>London SWEs is 63%. Meanwhile, the pay differential for SF<>London sales reps is 87% (!). Instead of £99.9k GBP, your London P4 SWEs should make closer to £95.4k GBP. And instead of £124.9 GBP, your London ENT sales reps should make closer to £164.6k GBP. If you do not take job function into account when setting your London compensation bands, you will likely be overpaying your SWEs and substantially underpaying your sales reps in that office. By the way, this simple example doesn’t take other variables such as job level into account. Often (but not always), pay differentials get more compressed at senior levels. Bottom line–pay differentials are a useful starting point for designing global compensation bands. But it is vital to go deeper on the dimensions of job function, job level, and more when setting up global comp bands. And yes, sales tends to have more compressed pay differentials in most global regions in Pave’s dataset versus the USA. This is likely driven by the nature of how sales comp is so tightly linked to revenue outcomes, meaning that it is a bit more “bottoms up” in nature versus other job families which are more subject to localized labor market forces. ___________ To zoom out a bit, let’s suppose your company has 4,000 employees and the average all-in cost (cash, equity, benefits) per employee is $250,000. This means you are spending roughly $1B (with a b) per year on headcount. A bil! 10% of $1B is $100M. Seemingly small percentage errors–10%, for argument’s sake–in your compensation bands have massive financial and/or employee retention impact at scale. Precision matters. Pay with confidence. #pave #benchmarks #global #compensation

3 things every company wants to know about their pay practices + How to measure them. Pay practices can make or break your ability to attract, retain, and motivate your people. But are they healthy? Here's three critical areas every company should assess — and practical ways to measure them: 1. Pay Equity and Internal Alignment Are employees in similar roles paid equitably based on their skills, experience, and performance? How to measure: • Percentage of roles with pay disparities exceeding 5% by gender or demographic group. • Ratio of internal promotions to external hires at comparable pay levels. • Employee perception of pay fairness (e.g., survey scores). 2. Market Competitiveness How do your salaries and total rewards compare to market benchmarks? How to measure: • Percentage of roles within 10% of market median pay. • Turnover rates for high performers compared to internal average. • Offer rejection rate (bonus points if you class. critical roles) and was salary a limiting factor 3. Pay Transparency and Communication Do employees understand how their pay is determined and trust the process? How to measure: • Manager confidence in discussing pay (e.g., training completion rates or self-assessments). • Employee understanding of pay policies (e.g., survey scores or FAQs accessed). • Percentage of pay-related disputes or questions resolved within a set timeframe. Its' easier than ever to have competitive pay practices, and the lowest bar to exceed expectations on with trust, fairness, and alignment with your companies goals. What other things tell you a companies pay practices are healthy?

Struggling to decide the right salary for a role you're hiring for? Here's a simple 3-step process I use after analyzing 1000+ job postings: 1/ Identify 5-6 companies matching your sector/stage Think similar industry, company size, funding stage, and market positioning. These are your benchmarks. 2/ Research actual salary data Sign up for a free trial on Weekday and look at salaries of 5 people in the exact job title and experience range you're hiring for. 3/ Don't just look at base salary Also factor in ESOPs, bonuses, and other benefits to structure the complete compensation package. This gives you real market data, not outdated salary surveys or guesswork. Most founders either: - Underpay (and lose great candidates) - Overpay (and mess up their salary bands) - Wing it (and face awkward negotiations later) Having concrete data from similar companies puts you in the sweet spot. What's your go-to method for salary benchmarking?

Over the last few weeks, there have been multiple leaders in our network asking about equity vesting schedules and if we’re seeing any trends. Here’s what I’ve hearing from leaders in our community: 👉 Private companies are evaluating shorter vesting schedules, but few are executing on these ideas due to the legal and admin challenges of changing equity plans. 👉 Bottom line: there is increasing pressure from Boards to limit dilution rates and burn, but Pre-IPO Tech companies are sticking to the typical 4-yr vesting schedules with 1-yr cliff for new hire grants and refreshes with monthly vesting over two years with no cliff. However, alternative approaches by 'outlier companies' are emerging. ➡ Stripe, Lyft, and Coinbase adopted one-year vesting schedules (https://lnkd.in/eYKv_vGB) ➡ OpenAI has PPUs that provide employees with a % of profits ➡ Pinterest and DoorDash have front-loaded splits over 3 and 4 yrs respectively, which is in contrast to Amazon’s back-loaded splits Why would companies consider shorter term vesting schedules? Companies move to a shorter term to reduce their 'stock based compensation' expense or burn, but a flaw can emerge if companies go this direction and commit to fixed annual grant values. If the stock price significantly declines, the company will be need to issue more shares to deliver the same value. How do you stay informed of trends? There are well established benchmarking providers for different forms of cash compensation like Radford for broad based compensation, Compensia for executive compensation, and Alexander Group for sales incentive compensation. Equity benchmarks can be much more elusive… especially for private companies. The good news is that there are now compensation platforms like Kamsa, Complete (YC W22), Pave, Compa, and Levels.fyi that help to understand what’s going on in your company and in the market. VC firms share insights from portfolio company surveys like the General Catalyst survey on equity refreshes (credit to Guissu Baier): https://lnkd.in/eniMAPNu So how do you make sense of all of this as a talent leader? 1️⃣ Be curious and learn about different aspects of equity. ⭐ Options vs RSUs: https://lnkd.in/e3HESBXN ⭐ PPUs: https://lnkd.in/ezdRkjtn ⭐ Traditional vesting schedules: https://lnkd.in/ePB2ZQqn ⭐ Unique vesting schedules: https://lnkd.in/eUrDZCUe ⭐ Preferred vs 409A valuation: https://lnkd.in/e3x7w72s 2️⃣ Stay on top of trends from competitive offers, track them, monitor impacts to offer acceptance rates, and most importantly partner with your Comp team as your company designs its program for new hires and employees. 3️⃣ Build your network with other talent leaders. 4️⃣ Follow leaders that are sharing insights on how the market is evolving like Charlie Franklin (CEO at Compa), Matt Schulman (CEO at Pave), and Zuhayeer Musa (Co-founder at Levels.fyi).

In an effort to better understand the challenges that companies face in global hiring, payroll and compliance, Deel commissioned a new study from Forrester, surveying over 300 Finance, HR and payroll decision makers across the globe. The way most organizations operate “global” payroll today is anything but that, and the vast majority cited serious challenges with their payroll solutions. Here’s the topline: Though work has become increasingly global and distributed, payroll systems haven’t adapted to the changing landscape. Many companies use at least 6 payroll tools and multiple vendors. The result is an often chaotic, distributed process for tackling global payroll, with unreliable and fractured vendor support leading to errors and delays, and overwhelming regional compliance needs. ➡️More vendors, more problems - 75% of respondents said that complexity was driven by a perceived need to use different vendors specific to each region and country  - 86% of payroll leaders use a hybrid approach—some managed internally, some by external vendors. ➡️Payroll costs are only increasing - 85% of respondents expected costs to climb - Costs related to compliance, errors, and poor experience were ‘hidden’ and generally overlooked, meaning costs could climb even more than projected. ➡️Payroll issues make for a bad employee work experience  - Payroll leaders said increased errors, decreased efficiencies, and confusion with regional compliance added up to a lot of time wasted and frustrated employees. - Consistent employee experience across regions, inefficiencies through multiple systems, and regional compliance were top challenges. ➡️Poor vendor support makes challenges more difficult - Distributed vendors with varying degrees of responsiveness makes for a confusing inefficient process.  - Vendors often outsource support, making responses to payroll errors, delayed payments even worse. - Payroll employees spent nearly half of their week on manual work and escalations with vendors. 🌏All-in-one global payroll is key - 97% of payroll leaders agree that consolidating global payroll into a single solution would be valuable. To keep up with the increasingly global world of work, a truly global solution that offers an all-in-one view of all employees regardless of location or worker type is a must. With in-house Customer Success Managers, globe-spanning local payroll experts, and 80+ integrations to sync data and automate workflows, Deel Global Payroll has the power to revolutionize payroll operations for companies looking to hire and pay global talent. Check out the study: https://lnkd.in/edAfc7vz Learn more about Deel Global Payroll: https://lnkd.in/e3fmEjiZ

One of the most important and tricky things for startups to get right is compensation and payroll spending—especially now, with profitability under sharper focus. Yet, clear benchmarks are often missing, leading to tough and sometimes sub-optimal decisions. The overwhelming response to our report last year on Startup Compensation benchmarking encouraged us at xto10x to publish another edition of the report that includes deeper insights and more meaningful data and benchmarks for one of the most critical cost areas in any startup’s P&L. The report themed ‘Evolving Compensation Trends- Indian Startup Ecosystem’ attempts to answer some of the common questions that founders and HR leaders repeatedly ask: - What’s the right mix of cash and equity for different roles? - How should ESOPs be structured to attract and retain talent? - How does compensation evolve as a startup grows? The report includes Compensation trends and Insights on how companies across different industries & stages have approached payroll as percentage of revenue; Fixed hikes, Variable payouts and ESOP grants in 2024-25; Levelling architectures for 8 diverse job families (Marketing, Sales, HR, Finance, Product Management Data Science, Engineering & Design) and a detailed analysis of all the compensation levers - Fixed, Variable, and ESOPs. This year, we’ve expanded the scope with deeper insights on founder and leadership compensation, more business functions, and data from more startups across sectors like Fintech, Edtech, SaaS, D2C, and more. I would like to thank all the startups which contributed to the benchmarking study. Hope this serves as a useful resource for startup teams, CHROs, and investors navigating these decisions to build a competitive yet sustainable rewards framework. Would love to hear thoughts from those who’ve been working through these challenges firsthand. The free version of the report has been provided below. For the complete report or a discussion on Total Rewards, feel free to write to us at rewards@xto10x.com. xto10x PeopleCues

Is Your Compensation Program Leaking Money? Many organizations unintentionally lose money through what I call “compensation leaks” or inefficiencies or misalignments in how pay programs are designed or delivered. These aren't blatant errors. They're subtle cracks that quietly drain value from your total rewards strategy. And they’re more common than you think. Here are 7 real-world examples of compensation leaks and how to fix them: #1 - Misaligned Bonus Metrics Paying bonuses for results that don’t actually drive business success? It’s a common leak. Fix: Recalibrate incentive metrics to align with true value drivers. Think profitability over pure revenue, or quality over volume. #2 - Overpaying for Underperformance Persistently high salaries for consistently low performers undermines pay-for-performance philosophies. Fix: Strengthen performance management, calibrate ratings rigorously, and use a merit matrix to align pay to performance. #3 - Under-Investing in Compensation Technology When comp teams are stuck manually wrangling spreadsheets, strategic work takes a backseat. Fix: Invest in modern tools that automate reporting and free up time for business-partnering. #4 - Outdated Pay Structures Pay ranges that haven’t kept up with the market lead to misaligned offers and internal compression. Fix: Benchmark jobs annually and update pay grade structures to stay competitive and equitable. #5 - Unmonitored Pay Equity Gaps Even with the best intentions, unchecked processes can perpetuate bias and increase legal and reputational risk. Fix: Run regular pay equity audits and fix process issues, not just individual outliers. #6 - Ineffective Spot Bonus Programs Too many spot awards with no clear criteria dilute the impact and cost more than they return. Fix: Define clear guidelines and tie awards to high-impact behaviors or outcomes. #7 - Ignoring Manager Training on Pay When managers can’t explain or justify pay decisions, trust erodes and turnover rises. Fix: Equip managers with training and talking points to communicate pay effectively and consistently. Compensation leaks are fixable. But first, you must spot them. Want a quick diagnostic? Ask: “Where are we spending money on pay that isn’t moving the business forward?” Fixing these leaks isn’t just about saving dollars. It is about optimizing every dollar for impact. If you need help identifying and fixing your leaks, let’s talk. #TotalRewards #Compensation #PayEquity #IncentiveDesign #HR #FutureOfWork #CompensationConsultant #PayTransparnecy #FairPay #SHRM #WorldatWork

₹30 Lakh package. Tier-1 MBA grad. It sounds a lot like success to all the people around you. Even you start believing it; until you realize where you're living. In India, we pretend salaries are a universal currency, but it’s not. It’s a local reality. The same CTC means wildly different lives based on your pin code. Let’s break it down with an example. ₹30L in Mumbai ≠ ₹30L in Indore Rent (2 BHK): Mumbai: ₹70,000/month Indore: ₹30,000/month Commute: Mumbai: ₹15,000+/month Indore: ₹7,000/month Eating Out (1x/week): Mumbai: ₹12,000/month Indore: ₹5,000/month School (1 child): Mumbai: ₹20,000/month Indore: ₹10,000/month House help: Mumbai:₹10,000/month Indore: ₹5,000/month Total basic monthly spend: Mumbai: ₹1L+/month Indore: ₹50k+/month In a Mumbai, after tax and these expenses, you’re surviving; in an Indore, you’re thriving. So when a hiring manager says, “₹30L is a solid compensation”, your next question should be: “Where?” Companies use cost-of-living to underpay Tier-2 hires, but never up-adjust for Tier-1 survival. A product manager in Gurgaon and one in Bhubaneswar may earn the same but the real disposable income difference can be over ₹10L+/year. When the Tier-1 employee asks for more: “We have internal bands.” “It’s market standard.” Whose market? Whose standard? In Mumbai/Bangalore, your savings may touch only ₹4–6L/year whereas in a Tier-2 city, you might save ₹12L+, invest, travel, upgrade your life. We fetishize high-rise offices, city 'vibes', and Swiggy on speed dial. However, we don’t talk about stagnant savings, commute-induced fatigue, and the high cost of looking polished. ₹30L in Mumbai may mean anxiety and ₹30L in Bhopal may mean freedom. A high CTC isn’t a flex anymore if your life gets no ROI. How much of it do you get to keep… and live? #ctc #salary #mba #iim #career #work #job #life #corporatelife #management #linkedin #india