Building Tech Teams with James MacDonald Nobody Knows What to Pay Anymore: A Building Tech Teams Best-Of
With Nathan Hill, Adam Witanowski, Claudia Barriga-Larriviere, Cloë Stanbridge
About Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane is the founder and director of FNDN, a compensation consultancy for startups and scaling tech companies, typically Series A to D businesses with 50 to 500 staff. FNDN helps them set a compensation philosophy and build job levels, salary benchmarks, pay bands and employee equity plans.
Before FNDN he led People Operations functions in companies of different sizes, including as Senior Director of People Experience at Oyster, a global employment platform. He publishes the FNDN Series newsletter and launched the Startup People Summit for people leaders in the Asia-Pacific region.
On Building Tech Teams with James MacDonald, he explained why pay conversations go wrong even when the number is fair.
- Talks about
- Hiring & Team, Leadership, AI, Growth & Scaling, Startup Lessons
Behind the microphone.
Also in conversation.
2 episodes
Start hereWhy "The Number Is Never the Problem": Matt McFarlane, Founder of FNDNHis full interview on why pay conversations fail even when the figure is fair.
Building Tech Teams with James MacDonald 
Building Tech Teams with James MacDonald Why "The Number Is Never the Problem": Matt McFarlane, Founder of FNDN
Go straight to the good bits.
Key moments from Nobody Knows What to Pay Anymore: A Building Tech Teams Best-Of.
- 0:00Cold open: what should a 10x engineer be paid?
- 0:19Nathan Hill: quantifying what AI is actually worth
- 1:05Million-dollar salaries as a bet on future ROI
- 1:28Adam Witanowski: nine companies, seven offers, real numbers
- 2:35US$500k in the US vs $220k here: which one would you choose?
- 3:50Why the gap is structural: funding, hyperscalers, enterprise mindset
- 5:37Claudia Barriga-Larriviere: more productive, or just faster?
- 6:15"What you don't measure, you can't change"
- 7:26Matt McFarlane: the jump is too big, because you've been underpaying
- 8:32Tokens are eating the people budget
The path so far.
- Now
Founder and Director · FNDN
- Earlier · Scale-up
Senior Director of People Experience · Oyster
- Earlier
Director of People Operations · Rheinmetall
Sources: oysterhr.com, newinasia.com
FNDN on Day One
FNDN is an Australian compensation consultancy, founded and directed by Matt McFarlane, that helps Series A-D startups (roughly 50-500 people) build clear, fair…
1 person · 2 episodes
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Spot something wrong? Suggest a correctionUpdated 29 October 2026
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