Paying fairly when you cannot pay the most

Most companies competing for engineers are not going to win on cash. What they can win on is clarity: bands people can see, reviews that happen on time, and raises that do not require asking.

Where this usually goes wrong

The failure is almost never a lack of good intent. It is that nobody wrote the thing down, so two people held two different versions of it and only found out under pressure.

What to do instead

Put it in writing while the stakes are low. Revisit it on a schedule rather than in a crisis. And be specific enough that someone could disagree with it — a statement nobody could argue with is not a decision.

A working checklist

• Name the decision and who owns it.
• Agree what would make you change your mind.
• Set the date you will look at it again.