I mention that because a lot of people see "compensation" and think only money but that is just one of many dimensions e.g. flexible schedule, career growth, benefits etc
This is a great blog post about using those other dimensions when "just throw more money" is not an option: https://web.archive.org/web/20130409033601/http://www.articu...
As VP Eng supporting a team of 30 at a startup. I had a similar situation. One employee was absolutely crushing it by performing above level and when compared to peers, despite earning about 5% less than the median (zero prior experience before being hired, so it was a bit of a gamble for the company). At annual comp adjustment time, I gave him a bump that brought him a percent or two above peers (including their own adjustment).
Well, did that unleash a shitstorm. One of his teammates complained that it wasn't fair that he made more money. She was solid and consistent and was squarely in the "meeting expectations" bracket. It was irrelevant to her that he was overperforming. She had been at the company 2 months longer and therefore, should make more money.
However, what really blew my mind was when the employee who got the raise complained about this as well. He also felt that it was unfair that he made more money than his teammate. They both then brought up that they felt that they felt it was an issue of sexual discrimination, which was especially ironic since our CEO, COO, and VP Finance were women (yes, I was on the management team of a tech company where women outnumbered men).
In any case, the agreed upon solution to make the problem go away was to a) bump the teammate's pay to match and b) completely eliminate any discretion or performance components to annual pay increases. Everyone simply got 3%.
My own favourite are the swashbuckling, resume-impressing "transformation" programmes in big corporations and their corollary "consultancy debt" which involve much scratching of heads by the hoi-polloi at the time of execution, and often severely depleted and inadequate services long after the debtors have fled the scene...
Are you outing yourself doing a bad job? :P
My big take away from being given a management job on a sinking ship IT transformation was: You've got to kill and eat your pets. If the IT transformation really is that important than a lack of success should be an existential threat to the business and everyone doing it. Maybe this means that big projects never happen, and maybe that'd be a good thing. But where I work, we just did 7 years to have the last 2 be a death march where everything delivered was under cooked.
I feel like the lack of a real embrace of a burning deck is what did it.
I'd try and win success with a 'too good to pass on' bonus that's paid 2 years after delivery. But I know in this Agile world, getting a set of agreed on requirements is just impossible.
So I'm back to championing roadmaps and small projects with small teams.
Your key goal in life at that stage is cash-flow, keep the checks coming. But in terms of how you fit or how they see you, that ship has mostly sailed and you will need to leverage the market to find the better role. This is not a apocalyptic scenario, and can be managed maturely over months or years.
Everything is a long game.
Understanding the technical architecture and managing and building teams as well as reviewing budgets and aligning to plans aren't two skill sets that are intertwined. It's very common to have one person great at one and another great at the second.
If it's made clear who is responsible for the architecture then it is clear who makes decisions there.
Likewise, that person can focus on the technical architecture and someone else is doing the people management, timelines, budgeting, and so forth.
What's the alternative? Promote the architecture person into a managerial role and have them be unable to scale the teams?
Or promote the other person, scale the teams, but run into technical issues and debt because there isn't a person owning the architecture and keeping the mental blueprint in their head how all of the pieces fit together?
It really comes down to getting the right people on board, clearly explaining the responsibilities, ensuring compensation is equal, and then having the two parties see each as allies on the same team.
