Hire the Most Expensive Engineers You Can Find
However, he was a 99th percentile employee, not a 90th percentile employee. We knew that he could get a job at Google for the salary he was requesting.
Moreover, having a top person leave because we refused to pay him top-of-market right after selling to private equity could trigger an exodus of other top-of-market people.
When we finally “won” this argument, someone on their side commented to my business partner “I’m glad we could work this out, I know you really like him.”
Well, if you ever want to offend a labor economist (like my former partner), imply that they make compensation decisions based on personal relationships.
They essentially gave in to get the deal done even though they disagreed with our position and assumed we were doling out favors like the mafia rather than trying to run a rational business.
Our story wasn’t actually that bad. The PE firm went through with the deal and didn’t try to cut any salaries – just block one raise.
