“The last couple of years of compensation have been probably the craziest that I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been working in comp for over 20 years now,” Josh Steinfeld, principal product strategist at Carta, a total compensation platform, told HR Brew.

Startup compensation, in particular, has been particularly susceptible to volatility in the wake of a 2021 hiring boom that saw HR departments scrambling to fill labor demand. This boom cycle came to a halt when the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates to slow lending, and venture capital funding slowed considerably. READ MORE