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šŸ’° 2024 CFO Secrets Compensation Survey

How do you stack up?

A word

When should we make this hire? How much should we pay them?

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We thought youā€™d never ask

I hate negotiating my own compensation.

Donā€™t get me wrong, I love negotiating. Put me on the other side of the table with the companyā€™s money at stake, and Iā€™m in my element.

But when itā€™s my own pocket, I enjoy it less.

Iā€™ve got it wrong a few times. In my first big CFO role, I was young. Almost ā€˜gratefulā€™ for the opportunity. Happy to accept 25% less than the three people who did the role before me - all 20 years my senior.

Twelve months in, I realized Iā€™d been an idiot. I was as well qualified as they were. And had so far done a much better job than any of them. I had to go back to the compensation committee and ask for what I felt I was worth:

ā€œIā€™ve under-called my value significantly. You guys have had a bargain for the last twelve months. I get it. Iā€™m less experienced than my predecessors, but you appointed me for a reason. And Iā€™ve demonstrated now, Iā€™m a better fit for the job here than they were.ā€

The chair of the comp committee laughed and said: ā€œweā€™ve been expecting you.ā€

They put it right, although it still annoys me that I had to ask.

So the question is this: how do you get what you are worth, without looking greedy and p*ssing people off?

Itā€™s a fine balance.

Iā€™ve seen people (even up to the CEO level) who will take every opportunity they can to negotiate a salary increase, bonus potential, or a few extra thousand dollars of expense allowance. Theyā€™ll refuse to take on an extra direct report, or new market responsibility, without a little tickle.

Itā€™s never been my style, but there are plenty that do it that way.

In fact, my approach has always been the opposite. Rather than the ā€˜little and oftenā€™ approach, I prefer ā€˜infrequent but big.ā€™

That means picking moments when your personal stock is hottest. When you have the maximum credits in the bank with the decision-makers. Then cash in, and cash in well.

Hard, but fair.

Taking on a new role is an obvious occasion. But it applies to internal moves too.

If you find yourself taking on expanded responsibilities inside an existing role, pay and benefits become the elephant in the room.

Youā€™ll be thinking: ā€œThanks boss, but am I doing all the extra work for free, or are you going to pay me?ā€

Most get this moment wrong. They either donā€™t say anything, or go the other way and stand in ceremony until the pay is sorted.

Thereā€™s a third way: ā€œThanks boss, yes, of course, Iā€™m happy to give it a go for six months. In return, Iā€™d like your commitment that we will review my pay and benefits in six months for the extra responsibility.ā€

Often your boss will be happy because the can is kicked down the road. In the meantime, you can spend six months demonstrating what a good job you can do with those new responsibilities.

After those six months, your boss wonā€™t want to lose you, and you can cash your credits in.

This is especially true early in your career. You want to get on a parabolic curve, ($ vs time) rather than linear.

The easiest path to this, is to demonstrate significantly more value than you are paid, in front of the right people.

Then pick your moment to negotiateā€¦

Deep Dive

This is a special edition on CFO compensation.

2024 CFO Secrets Compensation Survey

Apparently, there are three things you shouldn't talk about at work: politics, religion, and money.

I've never cared much about my colleague's views on politics or what their beliefs are. But you can be damn sure I've wondered how much they're paid. Especially the ones that barely deserve to be there.

Gen Z is breaking pay taboos, plastering their salary on the internet. And new corporate reporting requirements are making pay more transparent.

But, still, the best way to find out how your pay benchmarks is to participate in a comp survey.

Which is why I launched the 2024 CFO Secrets Compensation Survey last month. There are other comp surveys, but most are run by recruiters or consultants. People with something to sell. This is a comp survey run by CFOs for CFOs.

Whether you are already a CFO. Or climbing the ladder and wondering what the pot of gold at the top looks like, I hope these insights can help.

More than 30k readers of the CFO Secrets newsletter were asked to participate. This was only for CFOs or CFO equivalents. Perhaps we'll get to expand it in future editions, but we have tested it on the core audience for now.

In total, we had over 2,000 respondents.

The data collected includes:

  • Base

  • Bonus

  • Long Term Incentives & Equity

Broken out by the following:

  • Company Size (Revenue & Employee Count)

  • Type of company (i.e. VC backed, PE, public, private non-profit)

  • Location

  • Designations (CPA, MBA, CMA)

We did not get enough respondents in all permutations of these combinations, so have aggregated the analysis as necessary.

As you'll see in the data below (and the full data summary) we've provided upper quartile, median, and lower quartile compensation data.

It's worth noting that by only reporting the upper quartile (and not max), we are eliminating one important population. The respondents included a number of CFOs operating at very large public companies, earning high 7-figure (and in some cases 8-figure) comp packages. However, we did not collect enough data to report meaningful insights from that group. Those respondents are included in the data set, but will naturally be above the upper quartile limit in each group they participate in.

Below are some of the key insights and data points.

These key insights are powered by Runway, the finance platform you don't hate.

Key Insights and Data Points

1) Top of the food chain

I donā€™t think too many of you will be surprised by this, but the CFO role is still very rewarding for those who climb (all the way) up the ladder. The top 10% CFOs of companies with more than $1bn in revenue have total comp in excess of $2 million.

Top Decile Annual Compensation Package for CFOs of $1bn+ Revenue Businesses

Top decile

Note: this is obviously not representative, but is designed to show what good comp looks like towards the top of the profession. It can get even better with the top-earning CFOs achieving 8 figure packages.

Key Takeaways:

  • Top decile compensation for CFOs of $1bn+ revenue companies:

    • $650k Salary

    • 74% Bonus

    • 165% LTIP

2) Like a boss

Wondering what your boss is paid?

The median CFO of a $500m+ revenue company is paid 1.8x their direct reports & 2.5x their next level down. This is for salary and bonus only. So this gap grows when you include LTIP and equity awards.

Comparing Median CFO Compensation (Salary + Bonus) to VP of Finance and Director of Finance (for companies with more than $500m revenue)

Comparing median

3) The best investment is in yourself

Big companies slightly favor MBA vs CPA. But having both pays.

% of CFO with Designation by Company Size

Company size

% of CFO with Designation by Company Type

Company type

Key Takeaways:

  • Among CFOs at the biggest companies, 41% had a CPA and 45% had an MBA

    • 13% of all CFOs had both CPA and MBA - these are the highest earning cohort

  • CFOs are more likely to have an MBA as company size grows. Showing value to large company CFO roles.

  • CPA-only CFOs typically earn 15-20% less than CFOs with a CPA & MBA

  • VC-backed are more likely to have an MBA. Privately owned business CFOs are more likely to have CPAs.

  • Non-profits had a high proportion of MBA CFOs. This is likely an anomaly caused by the small population size.

4) Go public

Public companies are the place to earn the highest current year compensation as CFO.

You can see below how the highest-paid cohort of CFOs at public companies are compensated (95th percentile) well above anyone else.

This further illustrates how pay accelerates rapidly at the top end for the most successful CFOs in the most complex roles.

Quartile Salary Analysis of CFOs by Company Type

Quartile salary

The shape is similar for on-target bonus awards (excluding equity & LTIP). This is unsurprising as PE and VC-backed CFOs generally have a package weighted much more heavily towards equity.

Quartile On Target Bonus Analysis by Company Type

Quartile bonus

Key Takeaways:

  • Median salaries

    • Public company: $250k

    • Private equity-backed: $230k

    • VC-backed: $200k

    • Private/family-owned: $180k

    • Non-profit: $194k

  • Median bonuses (% of Salary), excluding LTIP & Equity

    • Public company: 41%

    • Private equity-backed: 25%

    • VC-backed: 9%

    • Private/family-owned: 19%

    • Non-profit: 0%

5) Equity

Participation in equity remains the best way for CFOs to become seriously rich. So letā€™s check in on equity by company type.

Market Value of Equity Held by CFOs by Business Type

Key Takeaways:

  • 8% of Public company & VC-backed CFOs report having more than $5m of equity in their company

  • 64% of VC-backed CFOs report owning at least $100k of equity in their business

  • 18% of PE-backed CFOs own $1m or more of equity in their business

A couple of health warnings with this data:

  • Public company equity is liquid and therefore those CFOs could have sold equity they owned previously (not included above)

  • Recent IPOs would be reported as public companies even if they were PE or VC-backed when the equity was earned/awarded

6) Cost of living adjustments

New York & San Francisco are the places to be if youā€™re looking for the highest-paid roles. And the highest cost of livingā€¦

Median CFO Salaries by Geography

Key Takeaways:

  • Median CFO salary $290k in NY/SF vs. $235k in rest of US vs. $170k in Europe

Clearly there are wide ranges inside Europe. London salaries were comparable to NY/SF, for example. But the responses collected were not deep enough to separately report Europe by country, or for reporting outside Europe or the USA.

We hope you found our inaugural CFO Compensation Survey valuable. If you enjoyed it, please hit respond and let me know.

Weā€™ll run it every year, and as the audience gets larger we can expand the insights and depth of the report.

If we can get even more respondents next year weā€™ll release the data in a way that allows you to slice by role, country, company type, size, etcā€¦

We are just getting started.

Summary data set

In the meantime, if youā€™re interested in a summary of the underlying data, you can see it by clicking the button below.

Office

Tony C. from NY, NY asked:

Do you have or are you planning on consolidating your newsletters into a book/textbook? I ask this because I am currently printing out your newsletters to be able to reference and the folder I am using is getting quite full!

Hey Tony, thanks for your commitment! When Iā€™m short of time to write these newsletters, and Iā€™m up against a deadline (which is most weeks), the thing that inspires me to get them written is knowing that there are so many people who take them so seriously. Thank you.

Onto your questionā€¦

I am certainly exploring ways to make my content easier to reference. Iā€™ve had a lot of requests for this.

In terms of printed copies, itā€™s something Iā€™ve thought about. It would only be cost-effective if there was enough demand and interest. So I guessā€¦ letā€™s gauge that interest.

If you would be interested in buying a printed compendium of the newsletter (organized by topic), let me know below.

Interested in a print version of CFO Secrets?

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If you would like to submit a question, please fill out this form.

Footnotes

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And Finally

Next week weā€™ll begin a new series on strategy from the CFO seat.

If you enjoyed todayā€™s content, donā€™t forget to check out this weekā€™s sponsor Runway.

Stay crispy,

The Secret CFO

Disclaimer: I am not your accountant, investment advisor, tax advisor, lawyer, CFO, director, or friend. Well, maybe Iā€™m your friend, but I am not any of those other things. Everything I publish represents my opinions only, not advice. And certainly is not investment advice. Running the finances for a company is serious business, and you should take the proper advice you need.

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