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Pay principles

Our guiding principles for fair pay

  • We are a not-for-profit co-op working to change the world for the better. Our mission is to tackle injustice and support vulnerable people by working with charities, NGOs and social change organisations. We deliver on that mission through a worker led organisational model that provides fulfilling, dignified, and fair employment for all. 
  • To do this, DEV has produced a series of principles which we use to guide our policies and practices around pay. This process has been informed by some best practice research from leading social change organisations and discussions with our team about what we believe to be fair and appropriate. Hope you like them!

1. Quality (Or ‘only awesome, nice people please’)

  • DEV is committed to hiring, developing, and retaining brilliant, committed team members from all backgrounds who are driven to help us deliver great work. Great people are the foundation of everything we do.

2. Responsibility (Or ‘we do this for a bigger reason’)

  • We are fortunate enough to make our livings working on the biggest problems of our time, from fighting discrimination to providing better mental health support services. While we are primarily a tech team we believe in using our funds responsibly to ensure that we can make more positive change rather than enrich ourselves.

3. The right compensation (Or ‘the Goldilocks approach’)

  • Following on from Principle 2, we believe that compensation at DEV should be enough for everyone to live comfortably and sustainably but not so much that it erodes our ability to make a positive impact.

4. Doesn’t unduly distract us (Or ‘we have other things to focus on’)

  • It’s important that we get compensation right but it’s equally important that it does not become too big a focus for us. We exist to make change and by having a transparent and fair system, we hope to be able to spend our energies on that. DEV members should try to not have a competitive mindset in relation to compensation -- internally or externally -- and it is our aim as an organisation to make sure that everyone is satisfied with their arrangement in absolute as opposed to relative terms.

5. Holistic (Or ‘compensation as a whole is not just a number’)

  • We believe that pay is only one of the benefits to working at DEV. Competitive salaries, a strong emphasis on work-life balance, and the opportunity to solve complex challenges to support mission focused work combines to make our team a fantastic place to work.

6. Ratio (Or ‘working to even things out’)

  • While not everyone at DEV is paid the same, we are committed to a ratio of no more than 3x difference between the bottom and top of our scale. 

7. Decreasing competitiveness (Or ‘the more in absolute terms, the further from your market rate’)

  • The lower pay grades at DEV should be market competitive but as the pay grades get higher, salaries should become further out of sync with market rates. This is a natural outcome of our responsibility and ratio principles and recognising that paying 50% of the market rate of an average entry level developer position is not comparable in terms of quality of life to paying 50% of an average Managing Director role.

8. Devaluing negotiations (Or ‘not about hustling each other’)

  • As much as is possible we will not have differences in pay due to negotiating ability. We will work to ensure contributions to DEV are the assessment for compensation and acknowledge that many factors, such as personality type and financial safety nets, unfairly bias negotiations creating a ‘winners and losers’ scenario due to negotiating strength. 

9. Location (Or ‘we’re distributed but not for pay’)

  • While DEV is increasingly supporting distributed working, at this stage of our development we can not account for different locations and associated costs of living in our salaries.

10. Learning opportunities (Or ‘helping without exploiting’)

  • All principles here should apply to all permanent staff members and co-op members employed by DEV. In some specific cases where DEV can add value to people developing skills or changing careers, we may provide roles which do not conform with principles such as #6 Ratio. In these cases the roles will always be discussed and approved as a wider co-op, will never contravene our commitments as a Living Wage Employer, and will always be geared towards the benefit and career development of the learner. Where these people are contributing to the core business of DEV though production work, they will be paid in a fair and equitable manner in line with all of our principles.

11. Transparent (Or ‘nothing to hide’)

  • While respecting our individual’s right to privacy we need to be able to show our workings and explain the framework behind our compensation process not only to our team but externally.

12. Review (Or ‘let's be agile’)

  • Our pay scale will be reviewed yearly to make sure we’re continuing to treat everyone in the team in a fair manner. If there are substantial changes to anyone’s role before then, we will review on an ad hoc basis. The development of our principles is an ongoing process open for amends collectively by the co-op.