Every level in the house, and the number attached to it.
We publish the band on every role. Problem with that is you only get to check it when we're hiring, and we're not always hiring. So here's the whole thing, open, job or no job. Five levels. Real numbers. What it takes to move between them. This is the same document we use inside the house.
- P1
Learning it
£30,000 – £40,000You own real work from the start. Briefs come to you fairly tight, and someone senior is looking over the output before it goes out. That's the job working as intended, not a lack of trust.
- P2
Doing it
£45,000 – £60,000You own your patch. Briefs come to you loose and go out finished. You spot the problem in the brief before you start on it.
- P3
Owning it
£65,000 – £85,000Nobody's checking your work. You set the standard for your craft in the house, and other people's work gets better because you're here.
- P4
Running it
£100,000 – £160,000You own an area, not a task list. You decide what gets built and what gets dropped, you hire into it, and you carry the number that goes with it.
- P5
Building it
£180,000+You run a brand or a function outright. You're accountable for whether it exists in three years.
Where you land is set by time and criteria, not by how hard you pushed.
Every level has a band because levels take a few years to grow through, not because there's a haggle in the middle of it.
Two people at the same level, hired the same month, are paid the same. Every time.
Three things, and only these three.
Scope
How much of the work lands on you without anyone assigning it.
Judgement
How often you're right when there's no obvious answer, and how quickly you say so when you're wrong.
What you leave behind
Whether the people around you got better at their jobs because you were in the room.
You'll be told which of the three is holding you back, in plain words, in writing, well before any review. Nobody should ever be surprised by a review.
Once a year, in January, for the entire team at the same time.
Everyone is assessed against the criteria above. Nobody builds a case. Nobody books a meeting. Nobody catches anyone in a good mood. Nobody brings in an outside offer to get paid what they should already be on.
Bands themselves are checked against the market at the same time. If the market has moved, the band moves for everyone on it, not just the person who asked.
We never ask what you're paid now. It's none of our business and it's how underpayment follows people around for a decade.
We don't negotiate. Negotiation quietly pays the most confident person the most money, and confidence is largely a function of who raised you.
Same level, same pay. No exceptions, including for people we really wanted.
The band on the role is the band. The offer will be the number you saw before you applied.
If you can show us the market says our band is wrong, we'll change it for everyone on that band, whether you take the job or not.
Pension
8% employer contribution, from day one, no matching game.
Loyalty bonus
£3,000 at two years, growing each year after. The only way to get a pay rise shouldn't be to leave.
Kit
Whatever you need to do the work, chosen by you.
Time off
38 days off, Summer Fridays and Winter Mondays.
Paid task
The paid piece of work in our hiring process pays £250, whether we hire you or not, paid within five working days of you sending it.
What we're not going to pretend.
We are not top of market. We're funded through partnerships and media rather than a raise, so a funded startup down the road can outbid us on the number and sometimes will.
Here's what we can offer instead. You'll never negotiate. You'll never be underpaid because you didn't know to ask. You'll never have to leave to get a rise. And you can see the entire ladder, and every number on it, before you've even applied.
Take the higher offer if the number is what matters most right now. That's a completely reasonable thing to do, and we'd rather you did it than resented us in eighteen months.