How to avoid the 30% salary hike trap? ✨
True wealth when you work at a startup.
Welcome to the 189th edition of the GrowthX Newsletter. Every Tuesday & Thursday I write a piece on startups & business growth. Today’s piece is going to 94,400+ operators & leaders from startups like Google, Stripe, Swiggy, Razorpay, CRED & more
"Appraisals are still 6 months out, mostly they won't happen. Then, why should I put in bar raiser work today?" - my work friend who is a VP at a Series B org. This legit triggered me.
The whole argument relies on -”What you put in every single day at work is for appraisals” & he only works for short-term cash. I love how the bull market has changed the way even top leaders think now.
I'm gonna be brutally honest in this post. What we saw in the last 5 years will not happen again any time soon - make peace with it. So should everyone do mediocre work? - Absolutely not!
So, how to build a compounding career?
1/ STOP thinking your job = pay-check 💸
This short circuits your decision-making to what you get in 3/6/12 months. If you want to get a flavor of what happens with random 30% hike jumps every year, go speak to any mid-senior manager facing a mid-life crisis in their mid-30s.
2/ Start thinking of careers in bets ♟️
Especially when you have built a specific craft. The craft could be building products, distributing products, or both. Your craft is priceless if you understand how to build & scale products from 0 → 1, 1 → 10, or 10 →100.
3/ Wealth creation ≠ short-term large pay-checks 🚫
You can not create extraordinary wealth without owning a significant part of a growing business. Having seen it play out firsthand at CRED & Dunzo, you can reap the rewards by owning equity in a growing business.
4/ Own equity super early on ♠️
It takes time to vest & it compounds really big over a long period. Ask equity right from Day 0 cause it will help really compound over half/complete decade.
5/ Put your heart & soul into meaningful problems ♥️
Life is too short to work on problem statements that don't give you joy- especially if you are in your early 30s. Meaningful work does not mean every day is amazing. But, the end outcome should feel worth all the effort.
6/ Stay in the game for a long time (Timing << Time) ⏳
Pick founders who understand macro & can execute elegantly based on real insights - will help you compound. Stay in the game for a long time. Even mutual funds don't compound fast enough in 2/3 years.
7/ Up-skill constantly (align yourself to winning) ✨
Startups are a team game. Don't even think about just you winning. It's either everyone wins or no one wins. It's binary - like a lot of things in life. Build skills that solve for the org winning. If you own equity, you will reap the benefits.
8/ Lastly, stop short-term 30% hike BS 🤐
Build enough equity with winning that it would be foolish to think of winning without you. Sorry for the rant - it's straight from the heart. If you disagree, I respect your point of view.
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GrowthX membership got an upgrade ✨
A whole year of speaking to 100+ senior managers even before writing the first line of code. The first hypothesis we had was, "cracking senior leadership roles must be an interview prep problem". The solution felt straightforward - "Build an interview prep product".
But that isn't the only problem. This whole journey of cracking a role is extremely lonely and unstructured, and it almost always leads to exhaustion. A few things became clear as we moved along in understanding the problem.
- Talent discovery is broken.
- Most struggle to find right roles.
- We struggle to pitch ourselves.
- Fail to communicate our past work.
- Failing technical interview ≠ incompetent.
- Negotation isn’t about 30% hikes.
- Struggling in new roles - first 30/60/90 day plan missing. And, it has led to so many of us either not finding what we want or cracking a breakout role but struggling to drive impact.
And this is changing now ✨
No more lonely career journeys, unstructured moves & role hopping. With "ELEVATE by GrowthX", you get a structure + safe space to crack & thrive in any growth role, period. Built exclusively for GrowthX® members.
