Welcome back, aspiring and current Chiefs of Staff!
If you missed our workshop on “Maximizing All Hands and Offsites” two weeks ago, you can check out the recording on our newly launched YouTube channel: youtube.com/@askachiefofstaff. Lindsey Caplan, founder and lead consultant of The Gathering Effect, also wrote this blog post as a follow up to our session, answering some of the questions that we didn’t get to in the session.
But let’s hop right into what everyone is really here for: The Chief of Staff Compensation Survey results are in! You can download the full report below and we’ll highlight a few interesting points in today’s issue.
📣💖 HUGE HUGE HUGE thank you and shoutout to D'azhane (Dee) Cook for setting up the survey, collating the data, and putting it all together in this beautiful presentation. If you’re looking for a no-code expert and someone who can take your operations from 0 to 1, I cannot recommend working with Dee enough. I had the pleasure of working with her full time at On Deck and now in these project settings. Feel free to reach out to her directly at contact@dazhanecook.com
What’s the average salary for a Chief of Staff?
Unsurprisingly, but frustratingly, a Google search for Chief of Staff salaries can give you a range from $75,000/year up to $325,000/year (or more!). Along with the still largely unknown “official” job description of a Chief of Staff, information about Chief of Staff salaries is still very unclear. In the last month, we surveyed over 300 current Chiefs of Staff to help both current and aspiring Chiefs of Staff know their market value and use this information to help negotiate or re-negotiate their current salaries.
The full report is available for download in the link at the top of this newsletter, but in this issue, we’ll be highlighting a few specific trends and points of interest. And for our EMEA and APAC folks, we have specific charts for your geographies as well (albeit much smaller sample sizes).
The gender wage gap is real - Of our 300+ participants surveyed, over 200 of them identified as female. When looking at the average salaries of female vs. male, female Chiefs of Staff are earning 63.7% of what their male counterparts are earning, which is lower than the US economy’s overall gender pay gap of 83%. At first, I thought there might be a stark difference between the number of females working in earlier stage startups which might account for lower salaries, but 44.5% of female respondents reported working at early stage startups (Seed to Series D) and a comparable 46.53% of male respondents reported the same stages of companies. Turns out, women are getting the short end of the stick in this role, much like many others in the workforce.
You don’t need an MBA to be a Chief of Staff - One of the top questions I get from aspiring Chiefs of Staff is, “Should I go back to school and get my MBA if I want to be a Chief of Staff?” My answer to them is always, “No, unless you really want to go back to school.” A Chief of Staff role is often compared to a crash course, hands on MBA. When it comes to salaries, having an MBA doesn’t get you that much further ahead as shown in the data below. My advice: skip the MBA and get the hands on experience as a Chief of Staff if you’re interested in learning more about how a company runs. That “on the ground” experience is going to be much more valuable than any case study.
Chief of Staff are older and wiser - Ok, ok, 34 isn’t that old in the grand scheme of things (this is coming from a 31 year old who is desperately holding onto that millennial youth), but the one thing I wanted to call out is that as exciting as a Chief of Staff role can be to take on, don’t feel a rush to step into the role right after school or even right after your first role. While there are Chiefs of Staff who are new grads and very successful (check out the role I’m hiring for below!), I find that some of the most well rounded Chiefs of Staff have a bit of career experience under their belts before taking on the Chief of Staff mantle. I likely attribute this to the fact that someone in the mid stages of their career have (hopefully) become more self aware of their own working styles, strengths and weaknesses, and have a general sense of corporate structures, hierarchies, and operating rhythms. You can read more about why I think self awareness is a top attribute of successful Chiefs of Staff in issue 2 of this newsletter.
For the full report, download the Chief of Staff Compensation Survey pdf with the link at the top of this newsletter. What surprised you? What other questions do you have? Reply to this newsletter and I’ll follow up the next issue with insights that could be interesting for everyone else to read as well.
👀 Sneak peek: next issue will be a “holiday grab bag” of sorts where I’ll answer a handful of the questions that I’ve received in short paragraphs. If you have a question about being a Chief of Staff, submit it below!
Open Chief of Staff Roles:
I’ll be sharing a few of the roles that I’m working on each issue. If you’re interested in any of these positions, reply to this newsletter with a copy of your resume and I’ll follow up!
Triple.com - Chief of Staff to the Co-Founder
Industry: SEO, Search Ranking
Bootstrapped, looking for their first full time hire
Location: New York
Preferred Qualifications:
New grads preferred - 1-2 years out of school
Excitement about to run your own business vertical
Excitement to learn how to become GM of a business unit in the future
MYNDY - Chief of Staff to the CEO
Industry: Mental Health and Wellness
Location: New York
Preferred Qualifications:
3-5 years of experience in a relevant customer-facing role or operations role
Experience working in an early-stage startup environment, are excited own the end-to-end build of an early-stage company, and are consumers of mental health and wellness products and services
Additional Chief of Staff Related Reads:
What a Chief of Staff Should Be Doing for Your Company
Workshop: Scaling Startups Through Strategy & Operations
If you’ve enjoyed this issue, consider subscribing and sharing. Additionally, feel free to reply to this email with feedback on whether this was helpful to you and any suggestions you might have.
👋🏼 Until the next issue,
Clara
PS: I’m going to work hard to keep all the content in my newsletter free so that it’s accessible for everyone, but if you want to help support my writing endeavors, you can buy me a matcha 🍵 Special shoutouts to Holly, Pamela, Brian, and Renee for supporting the last issue!