Nobody Knows What to Pay Anymore – Building Tech Teams Salary Discussion
Eight guests into Building Tech Teams, one theme has shown up in every single episode: money. A principal software engineer who now manages a team of agents asks what he should be paid, and nobody in the room has a clean answer. AI has changed what one person can produce, and salaries have come off the rails behind it.
In this best-of episode, James MacDonald pulls together the sharpest thinking on compensation from five of his first eight guests. Nathan Hill, Head of Telco at AWS, on the question nobody can answer yet. Adam Witanowski with the real numbers from a live job hunt: nine companies, seven offers, US startups paying US$450–500k base against comparable local roles at $220k. Claudia Barriga-Larriviere on whether AI is making teams more productive or just faster. Matt McFarlane, founder of FNDN, on token costs eating into the people budget. And Cloe Stanbridge, Talent Lead at Airtree, on the moment a big cheque is actually worth it.
It adds up to a state of play for the Australian market on AI-era pay: why the gap with the US is structural (no hyperscalers, startup funding a tenth the size, enterprises that still think engineers are too expensive), why almost nobody is measuring the productivity gains they are paying for, what happens when ten people run five thousand agents, and why the cheapest move in the whole budget discussion is the raise nobody asked for.
Building Tech Teams is produced by DayOne.
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Nathan Hill is Head of Telco at AWS. He appeared in episode 3.
Adam Witanowski is an AI Architect who built AI engineering capability inside nib, and shared the numbers from his live job hunt in episode 7.
Claudia Barriga-Larriviere is a People & Culture leader at Startup Flamingo, working with startup founders on building human-centric culture. She appeared in episode 4.
Cloe Stanbridge is Talent Lead at Airtree, where she helps early-stage founders make their first engineering hires and later-stage companies scale their teams. She appeared in episode 6.
Matt McFarlane is the Founder and Director of FNDN, a compensation consultancy helping startups and scaling tech companies build pay practices that are clear, fair and competitive. He appeared in episode 8.