Yeah, that's actually a key thing I miss from my previous bigcorp job many years ago.
Pay was tied to numerical career grades. Everyone's numerical career grade was public information. Salary ranges (fairly broad and overlapping for each grade) for each were published each cycle. While there was a ton of griping along the lines "seriously, X got promoted to 23!? They just suck up!", it was at least consistent across disciplines and clearly tied listed job responsibilities to a pay range to make justifications for a promotion easier.
I know it's a very common system, but my current company doesn't have that, and I quite miss it.
We somewhat do via titles. E.g. I know the 25 year old engineers who have the title "principle staff engineer" despite not being trusted to do anything directly are absurdly overpaid, but it's really murky and not consistent. E.g. If your title says "software engineer" you're on a completely different scale than someone who's title says "data engineer". And if you have actual experience in the field, you'll be considered a "scientist" or a "technician" instead of an "engineer" depending on the exact role you're hired into.
At any rate, it's really, really, really unclear how anything relates, and going from a "staff X" position to a "junior Y" position is often a pay raise.
Pay was tied to numerical career grades. Everyone's numerical career grade was public information. Salary ranges (fairly broad and overlapping for each grade) for each were published each cycle. While there was a ton of griping along the lines "seriously, X got promoted to 23!? They just suck up!", it was at least consistent across disciplines and clearly tied listed job responsibilities to a pay range to make justifications for a promotion easier.
I know it's a very common system, but my current company doesn't have that, and I quite miss it.
We somewhat do via titles. E.g. I know the 25 year old engineers who have the title "principle staff engineer" despite not being trusted to do anything directly are absurdly overpaid, but it's really murky and not consistent. E.g. If your title says "software engineer" you're on a completely different scale than someone who's title says "data engineer". And if you have actual experience in the field, you'll be considered a "scientist" or a "technician" instead of an "engineer" depending on the exact role you're hired into.
At any rate, it's really, really, really unclear how anything relates, and going from a "staff X" position to a "junior Y" position is often a pay raise.