Ask HN: What's an appropriate compensation counter offer in London 2024?
Hopefully this kind of post is allowed, and also helpful to others who find themselves in this situation.

I’ve agreed goals with my employer which if I meet by the end of Q4, I’ll be promoted into a new position. They’ve set a compensation suggestion for this role, but basically suggested that it was open to negotiation. They said they got the number by quickly googling Glassdoor and were a bit surprised it was so low elsewhere. Here’s some more background (trying to keep vague for privacy) before getting into detail:

- B2B SaaS utility & renewable energy startup, nearly 4 years old.
- £3-£5m ARR range, almost profitable. Top 5% fastest growing UK.
- Between 20-50 employees. Multiple cofounders. Dev team <10.
- Many friends and family investors, one large seed, founders still hold >75% of equity.
- Poor competition in sector, but those who are ok have some seed funding too. Lots of future revenue streams, high potential for growth. Target is £10m ARR in 2 years. Founders will look for exits sooner rather than later. Company highly acquirable by some FTSE100.
- London

Context:
- Joined 4yo as a junior full stack. £40k comp, 0.2% equity. Offered role as good friends with founders. 1st employee. No other benefits of note. 21 annual leave days per year.
- Now senior at £75k same equity. Deep domain/ sector knowledge from prior experiences, but also from writing most of the code. Established most processes and infrastructure. Even for a new senior experienced dev, catching up with the infra and sector knowledge would take 1-2 years minimum.

Offer:
- Head of backend/ data to free up cofounder to be more strategic. Manage team of 3. Responsible for pipelines uptime, data quality, future R&D & design research elements when it comes to new datasets to get. We are a data led company so this is critical.
- £85k no extra equity.

Other:
- I have £25k of income from other sources per year, so will be pushing over the £100k mark which here in the UK is a trap which means you pay 62% tax rate on every £ over 100k until £125k where it drops back to 47% for every £ over.
- I am contributing heavily to pension, but maxed out employer contributions. >30yo (edit: fixed typo), have mortgage in LCOL area (Manchester), no kids but one on the way and married.

Two questions:
- What salary feels right to ask for? The stack is in my favour and may never well be so strong for me again. I don’t want to burn bridges as they are friends, but also don’t want to be taken advantage of. There will 100% be a counter offer to consider for. I have an amazing set up with this company, but can afford (financially) to walk away if needed but again don’t want to burn bridges. I also have other ideas to work on in similar sectors if needed.
- Equity is handled via EMI. Should I be pushing for more? 0.2% feels low, but have seen advice here suggesting not to take equity. Should I ask for a lower salary to avoid tax brackets but more equity in return? There is no vesting schedule, so only realised on sale & if you leave its at the companies discretion about if you keep your share.

This is quite a US heavy forum, so would extra appreciate other UK perspectives, but any advice is welcome.