On November 1, 2022, New York City will require employers to publish salary ranges for open roles. NYC joins a growing trend across the country for increased pay transparency—Colorado, Maryland, and several cities already require salary information on any open job posting. Startup leaders looking to hire in these locations are faced with a brand-new challenge: making sure that their pay bands, once public, stand up to the competition.
Today, we’re sharing three complete, recently updated sets of NYC salary and equity band data for a few key job areas. This information comes directly from Carta Total Comp as of September 2022. We hope it can help companies hiring in New York make informed decisions ahead of these transparency requirements.
We’ve put together datasets that cover all seniority levels for the engineering, product, and customer success job areas across eight tiers of company maturity (from $1 million to $10 billion in post-money valuation). You can see one salary band for each job area below.
Access the full set of salary and equity data points here.
Note that your company may not have this many levels for these job areas; that’s normal. Here’s a free leveling guide that covers common leveling decisions at different company stages.
Recent trends in NYC salaries
Since April, average salaries across key startup functions in the Tier 1 metro areas have continued to rise, though less quickly than they did between January and April. (Tier 1 metro areas pay the highest salaries on average. Currently, the Tier 1 metros are New York City, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle.) It’s also clear that demand for quality researchers remains strong among startups in biotech and pharmaceuticals.
How these bands work
Carta Total Comp is built on the foundation of Carta’s 30,000+ cap table startups. It uses real-time data about more than 130,000 employees to generate salary and equity bands that reflect seniority for each job area, taking into account company valuation and location. The tool also uses machine learning to accurately predict compensation even for more unusual locations or roles, where there’s limited data.
Why these three job areas?
Engineering, product, and customer success are foundational to any growing startup—across all companies on the Carta Total Comp platform, these three areas typically comprise about 42% of all payroll spend.
They also happen to be changing rapidly: Each job area has seen average salaries rise by at least 4% from the end of 2021 to May of this year.
Why salary and equity?
While the upcoming law only specifies publication of salary bands in NYC, that’s just one piece of the benchmarking puzzle. Equity compensation has become the industry standard for tech employees, and founders and company leaders should have all the information they need to make competitive offers.
How to plan compensation in a shifting market
Building a competitive offer will help you land your next key hire without overspending—but compensation is more than just attracting great talent. A holistic compensation philosophy and well-thought compensation plan keep your startup in business through hypergrowth and periods of slower hiring.
When you’re ready to set compensation bands, Carta Total Comp can provide salary and equity benchmarks so you know you’re making the most informed offer. Schedule a walkthrough to see how you can build a plan today.
