Medtech Bands Price Roles & Markets Price Skills

Most of the time that distinction does not matter. But in the medtech space, we […] Most of the time that distinction does not matter. But in the medtech space, we are now importing skills and experiences that were not native to the market. Examples like imaging and navigation specialization from other industries, AI & ML at the most elite level of accomplishment and product creation. Historically in medtech, most roles sat in deep markets where talent was substitutable, and a well-built band is a predictable read of what the work costs. It changes though when there is a critical path, and on the critical path getting it wrong or less than optimal ends up having a compensation problem be the outcome of an early organizational design problem. The failure declares itself at the offer, but it happened months earlier, when the role is created. Someone writes a title, assigns a level, and inherits a band from a structure built for a company or critical function that does not yet exist. By the time that requisition reaches the company search for the role going to market, the number has been set by a person who did not know the role sat on the critical path and what the real market cost was, and every conversation after that is a negotiation against a decision that nobody remembers making. The right moment to designate a role as market-priced rather than band-priced is at creation, well before the hire exists. Later is not as simple as a correction, later is a fight. In device startups many of the inflection points are predictable enough to identify in advance. One of them is clinical, specifically the person who owns pivotal trial execution. Enrollment velocity, site relationships, and protocol design that survives FDA. A six-month enrollment delay is priced in capital and competitive position, not in salary. Companies routinely hold that role inside a band and then end up spending multiple times over in a second bridge round. Another is manufacturing scale-up and technology transfer, and it is most acute when a strategic sits on the cap table and is the likely acquirer. That leader is hired against deliverables and dates written into a deal document. The comp set is not other startups. It is the acquirer's own operations bench and the top of the manufacturing world. Nobody in that compensation set is looking for a lateral move at your band with your risk. A third is imaging and navigation platforms. Registration, sensor fusion, real-time reconstruction, perception. These are skills that were not common in this market five years ago and in many cases still are not. The talent has to be priced to come inside a market it has no history in, from semiconductor, aerospace, autonomy, and academic imaging groups. This is market price from outside and should not be subject to an internal comparison. There will be the HR objection is that you cannot pay one engineer three times the band. That objection carries more weight than it did five years ago, and the reason is legislation. Pay range disclosure in California, Colorado, New York, and now the EU directive was written with reasonable intent. And as is the case with most legislation, it goes too far and punishes the outlier scenarios, which is where excellence always resides, and turns the outlier hire into a compliance exposure. The way through is not band-busting. It is designating the role outside the banded structure and pricing it against a named external comp set far in advance. This is a simple market observation and makes it is defensible. You are not claiming the person is three times better, you are preemptively documenting what the skill costs where it currently lives. It has been my experience that preparing and documenting this hire way earlier and then not needing it, rather than needing it and not having it already positioned for the internal team and the external board and compensation committee. Do not look for parity or fairness on the critical path to success. Fairness is a distribution question, and winning is a concentration question. They are not the same discipline and treating them as one is how you compromise and come in second. Read original article here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/medtech-bands-price-roles-markets-skills-joe-mullings-0jzwe/?trackingId=bWgpL%2Fmdqs3nlX2vty4t6w%3D%3D