How to set your own salary

This blog post was last updated in August 2018 to reflect how the process has evolved since its introduction in Oct 2015.

At Makers we use an unusual process of setting our own salaries. It’s been nearly three years since we introduced this process. Several people went through the process since 2016. One year in, I wrote this essay for the team to help us set our salaries going forward. I’m sharing it on our blog because we often get asked about how self-set salaries actually work in practice.

This essay offers guidelines on changing your salary and responding to the salary advice processes (SAP) started by your colleagues at Makers.

Why set your own salary?

Traditionally, the salary and subsequent raises are negotiated between the employee and the company, or set according to a predefined formula that leaves little room for negotiation.

This process is adversarial in nature. It is based on the assumption that the employee is acting in a selfish way, trying to maximise their own personal gain at the expense of the company.

This setup encourages employees to push for a highest possible salary in most cases, while encouraging managers to push back as they expect the employees to inflate their salary expectations. Instead of trying to understand what salary would be the most appropriate, the negotiations often aim to find an overlap between the salary ranges both parties consider acceptable.

In most companies the salary negotiation doesn’t encourage either party to be particularly open and honest, which is the foundation for building the trust between colleagues.

So, at Makers we decided to set our own salaries. We believe that every person is best positioned to make a qualified decision on their own salary, taking account feedback from their colleagues and market data.

Makers already trusts you to use your time at work as you see fit in the best interests of the company, to decide how many holidays to take and when, to spend company’s money as you see appropriate (“spend the company’s money in its best interests”), so it would be inconsistent to have a different process for setting your own salary.

Crucially, setting your own salary forces you to reflect on the value you bring to the company and openly discuss it with others instead of delegating this responsibility to someone else. This is meant to gently encourage self-awareness, receiving and delivering feedback between all of us and establishing mutual trust.

Like any other process at Makers, it will evolve over time. One day we may decide that a more traditional approach suits us better. After all, every approach has its limitations.

The process of setting your own salary

You are expected to follow the following process:

• Reflect privately on what an appropriate salary should be, and consider arguments for and against doing it.
• Discuss it with a few colleagues privately to get feedback on your work, focusing on those who have experience with evaluating your work, those who you worked closely with, or those with expertise in finance. It should involve the person you report to and, in most cases, the finance director.
• Fill out a salary advice process (SAP) form (see next section) to suggest a change in your salary (or suggesting it stays the same) that explains the reasons for it. Share it privately with the list of people involved and ask them to contribute and comment.
• Give the people involved an appropriate time to read and reply to your SAP, answering their questions and listening to their concerns. Two or three weeks is a good guideline.
• Make a decision, listening attentively to the feedback you receive but without looking for unanimous approval. Make a decision, updating the SAP to share your reasoning.
• Ask your team lead to fill out their section on the SAP, sharing their perspective (do they agree with your decision or not, and why)
• Share the form on #advice to let our finance team know to adjust your salary starting from the next month (and to share it with the rest of the business for transparency’s sake).

What is the salary advice process form?

Historically, the salary advice process (SAP) was presented as an essay. However, we learned that most people find a more structured approach easier, so we introduced a form (SAP form) that helps cover the same points as the essay.

The goal of the process is to guide the person through a significant amount of self-reflection, not to test their creating writing skills. This form will be a work in progress, so incremental changes are likely to happen on an ongoing basis.

Does it apply to employees on permanent contracts only?

Yes, it does. If you’re joining us on a temporary contract with a daily rate, that will be negotiated in a usual way with your team lead.

What if you just joined the company?

It’s difficult to set your own salary if you haven’t joined the team yet. Firstly, most people joining our team are new to this process. Secondly, it’s hard to understand how much value you can create if you haven’t worked at Makers yet.

So, if you’re just joining, you’ll be expected to negotiate your starting salary in a “normal” way that will be used during the first year. At your first yearly anniversary, you’ll be expected to self-set your salary, which may be higher, lower or the same as the starting one.

How often should you do it?

Once a year around the anniversary of you joining the team, even if you think your salary shouldn’t change. This helps to make sure that the value you’re creating is still congruent with your salary. Even if you think that your salary shouldn’t change, you may find that others value your contribution more than you do. This will help you to learn more about yourself — a good thing. Conversely, you may find that others actually expect you to deliver more at your current salary level, helping you learn more about yourself too.

One reason it’s advisable to do it on a yearly basis is that we’ve seen several people to delay the process, leading to larger raises later that may be more difficult to justify. A yearly process helps with that.

Also, this means that the salary AP isn’t done for the first year of employment. We had situations in the past when we “mis-sold” the job at Makers by inadvertently giving the impression that it’s ok to take a pay cut to join Makers since the salary can easily be changed soon afterwards. It would be healthier to join on a higher starting salary to begin with, and stay on it for the first year.

What if someone advises you against changing your salary?

It’s perfectly normal and it is to be expected. There is no single right or wrong answer when it comes to the salary. What matters is not whether someone agrees or disagrees but what arguments they use.

One of the key goals of the salary advice process is to understand how you and your work are perceived by your colleagues and compare it to your perspective.

Should the salary advice process be visible to everyone?

No. The discussion of the process should be limited to the people you choose and name on the salary advice process form. It should be shared with the entire team only once the decision has been taken.

Discussing compensation in a public forum is unnecessarily difficult because it feels like you have to justify your salary to the entire team, which has never been the intention. Instead, the process should be private to the people involved, and only once it’s complete, it should be shared, for the sake of transparency. For the avoidance of doubt, the salary change should not be processed until the outcome of the AP (final version of the form with all the supporting arguments) is shared with the team.

How long should you consult the people involved in the process?

Please leave 2–3 weeks to give people time to read it, think about it and give you feedback. Some people may be away, some may be busy — you want to give everyone time and space to consider your perspective without any rush. After all, you’re trying to get as much information as possible — not to rush a raise through before someone notices, right?

When does the salary change take place?

After you notify the finance team, they will adjust the payroll for the current or next month. There’s a cutoff date for updating the payroll every month. If you email them early in the month, it’ll probably apply to the current month. If you email them a few days before the payroll, it’ll apply to the next month.

We can’t process an extra pro-rata payment to account for the days between taking the decision and the next month if you missed the payroll cutoff date. It creates unnecessary work for our finance team. Instead, try to time the salary advice process to complete it before the payroll cutoff date.

What if I change the role internally?

Sometimes people go through significant internal role changes. In this case, the process should start from scratch. This means that you would need to negotiate your salary with the team lead as if you were joining the company, and aim to revisit it a year later. Why? Firstly, the self-setting salary advice process heavily relies on you having actual experience being in a given role in a given team. Secondly, we can all create a very different amount of value in different roles, and the salary should reflect this.

I’ve never done anything like this before, it’s scary!

If you are uncomfortable with going through the salary advice process, you should ask your team lead or another senior person you trust to help you, and they will help. The process can be intimidating, especially if you’re doing it the first time, but it’s not necessary. It’s absolutely ok to ask for help and do it together with someone more senior. They won’t make a decision for you but they will be able to help the reflection process by providing their perspective.

Can the CEO just give a raise to someone without this process?

In exceptional circumstances, at the discretion of the leadership team a team member may be invited to revisit their salary less than one year after the last change. Why? In some cases of exceptional performance or other unforeseen circumstances, it may be in the best interests of the company to update the salary. However, this should be an exception rather than a rule.

Writing the essay

The primary goal of writing an essay is to help you structure your thoughts by putting them on paper and to communicate your reasoning to others.

Things are often clear in our heads right until the point we try to explain them to others. In addition, it’s hard for all of us to see ourselves objectively. Making a compelling written argument helps us to better understand what we bring to the table and makes it easier for others to provide us feedback.

Ultimately, the salary advice process form should describe what your job is, what is expected of the person doing it, what you’re doing well and where you could improve, citing specific evidence, and a recommendation regarding the compensation. It’s the same process that a good line manager would go through, except that in this case you’re doing it yourself.

You are the primary audience of the essay

You’re the primary audience of the salary advice process. The aim is not to get permission from others to change your salary. This is not a democratic vote. The decision-maker is you.

A well-written argument will help you better understand your strong and weak points, and communicate them to others to solicit their feedback and enrich your perspective. Ideally, you should objectively describe your work at Makers, with its positive and negative sides. A document that, had it been written by someone else, would resonate with you as an accurate and fair description, even if it were hard to read.

Your colleagues are the secondary audience. Your salary advice process form will help them to provide helpful feedback that you need to make a decision.

You’re setting an example

By writing an essay you’re setting an example for everyone else who’ll do it after you. This is an opportunity to demonstrate the clarity of thought, vulnerability, willingness to take feedback and your communication skills, which are expected of everyone at Makers, especially of the more senior team members.

Defining your job

While writing your essay you’ll need to define your job. It doesn’t need to be a very formal definition but it’s helpful to have an answer to what is expected of a person in your position. What skills are necessary? Why? What does it mean to do your job well? What would it mean to fail at your job?

This will help you to compare how you’re doing to what the job entails. It will also help you to understand how much would this skillset cost on an open market.

Deciding what your salary should be

You probably can make a fairly good intuitive guess at what your fair salary should be. If you left Makers today and started looking for a new job, what offer would make you really happy? What would you consider barely acceptable? If you left, what would Makers pay to replace you? Are you materially underpaid or overpaid compared to others doing a similar job at Makers and other companies? How do you know? What are your strengths and weaknesses? Would the company be better off if we hired someone else on an open market on the same salary?

In order to write this essay and decide the salary, it will help to talk to others to understand your strong and weak sides, and research the market, talking to other companies to find out how much they’d pay for you if you were looking for a job.

Ultimately, you’re looking to understand what your salary should be, so that you could say to yourself and others “I’m pretty sure I’m neither overpaid, nor underpaid at my current job” and know deep inside that you aren’t stretching the truth.

Can your salary rise?

Yes, of course. If you are contributing more today than you were a year ago, you should probably be paid more. Likewise, if the market has moved and your skills are worth more today than they were a year ago, you should probably be paid more.

Yet, be mindful of the initial growth in productivity that happens soon after you join. When you first start your job, you probably won’t be at your maximum productivity in the first few months while you’re learning how we work. This is expected, and has been factored in your initial salary offer. So, it may be unfair to compare your productivity in the first month on your job with what you’ll be doing a year in — everyone will show significant progress there, so by itself it probably shouldn’t be a basis for a pay rise.

In August 2018 we introduced an update to the SAP: the salaries at or above £100K/annum should be signed off by the board of directors. This doesn’t affect the overwhelming majority of the employees and allows the process to work as intended while giving the board the reassurance that they control top management compensation. If and when the salaries of Makers employees not in top management positions cross this limit, we’ll likely revise it upwards.

Whether the proposed new salary is below or above the £100K mark, the same SAP process should be followed regardless.

Can your salary stay the same?

Absolutely. If your job requirements, what you deliver on a day to day basis and the market haven’t significantly changed, your salary may well stay the same. It’s perfectly fine to keep it at the same level. It doesn’t mean that you’re doing a bad job. It means that you’re doing a good job and what you do hasn’t massively changed over the last year.

Can you reduce your salary?

Yes, theoretically. Nobody has done it yet at Makers (although one person considered doing it once) but it remains an option. It may be appropriate if you feel that the previous salary rise was not properly justified or you struggle to perform at the same level as your colleagues who are paid the same. In most companies the employees are asked to leave or choose to leave in such situations, whereas a more mindful resolution of this situation could be a salary adjustment, showing the willingness to accept the reality and deal with it.

In other words, if you feel uncomfortable because you know you’re overpaid, you can either step up delivering even more or choose to adjust your salary. Both are valid choices.

What about commission?

In many companies the employees, in particular on sales teams, are paid on commission. We don’t do it.

First of all, everyone sells Makers every time we interact with potential clients. Whether it’s the main part of our job or not, we are all responsible for sales in a way. Introducing a commission for specific employees would send a strong message that they are the ones who deserve to be paid if the company attracts more students and hiring partners, while others’ efforts don’t matter. We often collaborate across teams, helping others to do interviews, create marketing campaigns, meet with potential clients.

Secondly, an immediate financial incentive would incentivise making sales over doing the right thing. Today nobody on the team is financially penalised if we don’t accept a student that we know would struggle on the course, or if we choose not to work with a hiring partner that doesn’t share our values (e.g. by mistreating their staff). It’s more important in the long run to do the right thing, instead of making an immediate sale. In other words, we’re optimising for second- and third-order consequences, not the first-order ones.

Thirdly, sales jobs in many companies are not that exciting, so money becomes the main motivator. We’re approaching our sales activities very differently (see our jobs openings for more details), making sure that creating value for the customers and having fulfilling jobs is more important than driving short-term revenue. So we don’t have to use commission to compensate for doing a job you don’t love.

Having said all that, it’s important that we are all compensated at a market level. If you’re doing mostly sales and you know that you’d be paid approximately £X in salary and commission in a similar role in other companies, you should probably be paid £X as a base salary at Makers.

An important argument for setting up a commission structure is that it strongly incentivises employees to deliver outstanding results. If you know that you’re best incentivised by a commission structure, you’ll probably struggle at Makers. It’s ok — we aren’t meant to be the perfect place to work for everyone. However, if you’re delivering your best results when you’re driven by the intrinsic motivation to do great work, you’ll likely thrive here.

Like with any other process at Makers, the lack of commission is subject to change. We may introduce commission or bonuses in the future.

It’s against your own interest to be massively overpaid

It may feel nice on the pay day but you don’t want to be massively overpaid. The larger your salary, the more will be expected of you by your colleagues. It’s easy to lose their trust and respect once they feel you’re not delivering what your salary level suggests you would. This will be a very uncomfortable situation to be in.

Another downside is that you’ll feel trapped in the current role, being unable to move to another company knowing that you’ll be worse off financially. This isn’t a healthy situation because it’ll make you want to stay with the company for all the wrong reasons, ultimately a lose-lose situation for both you and the company.

When to do it?

Writing a salary advice process takes time and effort. It’s part of your job at Makers, so you are not expected to work on your SAP in the evenings and weekends on top of your regular workload. While some of the work will be done part-time (feedback sessions here and there), you’ll need dedicated blocks of at least half a day at a time to focus on writing it.

That’s why there’s a custom leave type in our HR system called “Salary Advice Process”. Book up to 2 days a year just like you’d book a holiday or a mark a sick day for writing your SAP and let your team know about it.

What supporting arguments to use

There are several things you’ll want to consider to decide what your salary should be.

Market data

One of the most important ones is the market data. Netflix has three questions to determine what the right salary is:

• What could you get elsewhere?
• What would Makers pay for a replacement?
• What would Makers pay to keep you if you had a bigger offer elsewhere?

Answering these three questions will help you understand what your salary should be. If you aren’t sure what we’d pay for a replacement or how much we’d pay to keep you, ask your colleagues for advice and they will be happy to help.

You are encouraged to get market data from research publications (google “salaries in London”) and by talking to hiring managers in other companies, asking for their impartial opinion. There’s nothing wrong with asking other companies what they generally pay to people with a skill set similar to yours.

It’s a good idea to include the sources of data you considered in your SAP. For example, if you spoke to a recruiter to understand what the market offers, mention it. If you analysed the recent offers on popular job boards, include the data. This will help others to understand your thought process.

Specific feedback from clients and colleagues

It’s perfectly fine to use feedback from clients and colleagues to demonstrate what value you’re creating. It’s important to focus on specific examples wherever possible. For example, “Jack delivered an outstanding service by helping us to onboard Clint and Freddie. We would struggle to make them hit the ground running so quickly had it not been for Jack’s efforts” is a fictional but specific example of a client feedback. Another specific example would be “Alice was incredibly helpful when she noticed how our conversion rate could be increased by 20% and helped us implement the change, even though she’s not even on our team”. A less specific example would be something like “Alex is great to work with, happy to have him on the team”. It may be flattering but it’s not a valid argument for a change in salary.

Specific contributions

It’s a good idea to describe in specific terms that things that you have delivered while working at Makers, especially if they went beyond the expectations for your role a year ago. This will help you make an argument along the lines of “I went above and beyond of what was expected of me at the previous salary level, hence a suggested salary raise” (assuming the market for your skills didn’t change). If you’re struggling to explain what you have delivered that wasn’t reasonably expected of you at your current salary level, talk to others to better understand what contributions you made. You may well find out that you’re underestimating what you’re doing. You may also find out that you’re doing a good job that’s in line with your current salary, and so it should probably stay around the same level, provided the market didn’t change.

What arguments not to use

There are some arguments that may be difficult to use in order to explain why a salary raise is appropriate.

Activities that didn’t lead to an outcome

It’s probably best to focus on outcomes over activities in your supporting arguments. For example, if you were organising lots of events that helped us attract students or new hires, describe specific outcomes (“Jane learned about Makers and decided to apply for a job after coming to a technical meet up I organised”) instead of the activity (“I was involved in organising events”).

Sometimes there will be cases when there would be no specific outcome. Maybe you spent months trying to persuade a large client to work with us and the deal fell through. Yet, you were one step away from a major win. Or, you may have been doing something that is obviously important but very hard to measure. You may choose to mention it anyway if you believe it is relevant.

Non-specific plans

Generally, it’s much better to focus on what was done rather than on what is planned to be done. There may be exceptions if you’re clearly taking on a new, specific set of responsibilities but even then you may choose to give it a bit of time to demonstrate to yourself and others that you can live up to your own expectations.

Generic personal qualities

It’s good to focus the essay that suggests a raise on the arguments for the salary increase itself. That is, what are you bringing to the table at the new salary level, what you were not expected to bring at a lower salary level? There are some things that are expected from everyone on our team, like deeply caring about our customers or doing your job well, whether you’re the CEO or an intern. So making an argument that you should make more money here because you care deeply about our customers or do your job well may be difficult. That’s an argument for you being part of our team, not for paying yourself more.

Time spent with the company

Many companies reward seniority. That is, all else being equal, if two people are doing exactly the same job, the one who’s been with the company for longer will be paid more than the other. This encourages loyalty but we’d much rather prefer you to always be paid at the top market level. The money the company is paying you ultimately comes from the value that you create. So if you create more value, you should be paid more, and if you don’t, the fact that you’ve been around for a while shouldn’t be relevant.

Inflation

Some large companies adjust the salary for inflation. Yes, it’s true that the cost of living slowly increases over time. However, this change will be reflected in the market rate for your skills, so it’s best not to overcomplicate the process. What matters more is what you would get elsewhere, what would we pay for a replacement and what would we pay to stop you from leaving if you had a bigger offer.

Someone else’s raise

Sometimes you will see someone doing a very similar job increase their salary, and you’ll be tempted to do the same. It makes sense to read and understand their arguments and carefully consider whether you are being rewarded fairly. However, in and by itself, the fact that someone else gave themselves a raise should not be an excuse to do the same. If you believe that they’re overpaying themselves, consider giving them this feedback and challenging their assumptions.

Personal financial situation

We all have different personal situations. Some people own property in London without a mortgage, some pay high rent. Some have a simple lifestyle, some are only satisfied with the best. Some have dependants, and some don’t. Some are saving up, some spend every penny. However, this shouldn’t be a factor in determining your salary. After all, the money you choose to pay yourself comes from the value you create while working at the company. This value doesn’t depend on your personal financial situation, so it shouldn’t be influenced by it.

If you find yourself if a difficult financial situation, speak to someone at the company. In the past we helped some of our team members with salary advances and other solutions to help someone to get through difficult times. You are not alone.

Company situation

The company’s cash situation may or may not be great but by and large you should be paid a top market rate irrespective of a company situation. If the company cannot afford you, you may be better off with another company. It’s ok. At the same time, if you know we have lots of cash in the bank, it’s not the reason to draw a bigger salary.

However, please consider talking to someone with a good understanding of the company’s financials to understand what effect the change in your salary will have on our cash position and and profits.

Arguments against raising your salary

Even if you decide to increase your salary, you will consider the arguments against doing it while writing the essay. For example, you may argue that while in many other companies you would likely make £5K more, at Makers you have the advantage of taking more holidays, given that we close for 1–2 weeks around Christmas in addition to all other holidays we take during the year. So, you may decide that you’re fairly rewarded here when everything is taken into account, even though you could make more money elsewhere.

Or, you may find that you have a unique skill set that is valued by the company (and so it will be difficult and expensive to replace you) but it will be equally hard to find another employer than needs this skill set (so your value on the open market is not that high). How should you balance these two facts? There’s no single right answer here but it may help to discuss it with others, both inside and outside the company.

Or, you may reason that the figures you’ll see on job boards often show absolute maximums to attract applicants and in reality the companies will try to pay less, so you may want to account for that.

Or, you may be aware of a couple of occasions when you really dropped the ball and let the team down in the past. You likely know (or should know) what your areas for growth are. Should you mention them?

It’s worth including all these consideration in your salary advice process. Remember, you’re its primary audience, and you want it to be as comprehensive as possible, giving a balanced summary of all arguments. When a salary advice essay is focused mostly on the reasons for the raise, it prompts the question of whether anything was left out of the final draft.

Link between the salary and your equity

We have an employee stock option pool that uses a pre-defined formula to allocate stock options to all permanent employees. Some companies offer their employees a choice between taking more cash, or more stock options. This allows everyone to adjust their compensation according to their propensity for risk and personal financial situation.

It’s challenging to do it if the salaries are self-set. For simplicity sake, if your equity grant is determined by the formula (almost everyone on the team), please don’t take the equity in consideration but rather consider it to be an addition to the top market compensation in cash. However, if you have an additional equity grant offered by the board, you may want to take it into consideration. For example, the founders are commonly paid significantly below their market value, especially when the company is young because they’re disproportionally compensated with equity (and to save cash while the company is not profitable). If you have significantly more equity than your peers, consider consulting other senior members of the team. Ultimately, the decision is still yours, of course.

How to respond to a salary advice process

How are you supposed to respond to someone asking for feedback on their salary advice process? First of all, remember that it usually takes a lot of effort and courage to write it. It requires looking honestly at yourself and asking difficult questions. So please show respect to the person sharing their SAP form by taking time to read and understand it.

You are helping the person to make a decision about whether to change their salary and if so, by how much. The most helpful thing you can do is to provide kind but candid feedback. If their SAP doesn’t cover some key questions, please highlight that. If you agree with the arguments and consider the SAP well-written, please say so instead of just saying “yes”. If you think that the SAP doesn’t provide enough information to give meaningful feedback, it’s ok to say so. While reading the SAP, ask yourself the question: does it provide a sufficiently objective and comprehensive review of this person’s contribution to Makers?

What if I don’t know what salary is appropriate?

It’s ok if you don’t know. Maybe you just joined the company, or you haven’t worked closely with this person, or you don’t know the market situation. If this is the case, it’s ok to just say that you are not qualified to give feedback in this case. Remaining silent is an option but please be aware that sometimes silence speaks louder than words, so you may be misunderstood.

What if I disagree with a raise?

That’s ok. Please explain why you disagree (preferably in person first, then in writing) in the comments to the SAP. Remember that you’re not a decision-maker, so you aren’t stopping anyone from changing their salary. You’re only helping them to make a decision by giving them yet another perspective to consider.

I’m afraid this person quits

Let’s say you’ve got a colleague who is doing a perfectly fine job at their current salary level. They propose to raise their salary to the level that you are not comfortable with. However, you’re worried that if you voice your concern, then this person may choose to quit and the company will suffer because they’ll need to be replaced.

It’s a very valid concern. However, it’s much better to deliver kind and candid feedback even at the risk of this person quitting and us suffering in the short term as the result. We will only grow as a team if we all learn to deliver kind and candid feedback even when it’s difficult to do so. You may also find out that others disagree with your perspective and so you’ll learn what are the expectations others have for a given salary level.

The most helpful thing you can do when reading a SAP is to openly share your perspective, even if it’s risky.

I agree with the raise but I find the SAP less than perfect

If you see a badly written SAP that doesn’t cover all points you expect it to cover, please say so even if the raise itself looks right to you and invite the author to update it. A poorly written salary essay likely reflects the lack of clarity in the author’s understanding of their strong and weak sides, as well as of the contribution they’re making to Makers. It sets a poor precedent and doesn’t help us all to grow in our self-awareness.

If this raise happens, it’ll be inconsistent with someone else’s salary

You may look at the payroll and notice that it’s inconsistent. Maybe someone is being underpaid or someone is being overpaid. One thing to remember is that there’s no such thing as a perfect payroll that everyone will agree on. There are many different perspectives, many different arguments and many stakeholders. Additionally, the market changes all the time. However, if you notice if something is off, talk to the person in question first. Is there any reason they are not paying themselves according to the value they’re creating? Do you expect them to deliver more provided their level of salary? You may also choose to raise it with the Head of People or another senior member of staff.

Summary

To sum it up, the point of writing the SAP is to help you make a qualified decision on what your salary should be. You’re the primary audience of this essay, and the decision-maker. The essay will require you to define your job, the expectations of this job and evaluate yourself according to it. Articulating your thought process on paper will help you understand whether your arguments, both for and against, make sense. Sharing it with others will help you to understand how your colleagues see your contribution. Hopefully their observations will help you ask yourself new questions, analyse your work and make a decision that looks right and feels right.

If you’re reading someone else’s SAP, please help the author by offering your perspective in a kind but candid way. By doing this, you’ll help them to learn more about themselves and make Makers a better place to work for all of us.

Finally, don’t forget that at Makers we’re rewriting the traditional playbook on how companies are run. Some things will work. Some things won’t and so we’ll find a better way. We’ll make mistakes and we’ll learn from them. However, we fundamentally believe that hiring great people that we can trust, and giving them all the freedom they need is the right approach to building a successful company. Trusting the team to determine their salaries is a big part of that.