A Signing Bonus Won't Fix A Broken Patch — Three Things Worth More

A £30k signing bonus does not fix a broken patch. I've watched it happen enough times to stop pretending otherwise.

The bonus goes in. The candidate signs. Six months later they're on the market again — and the exit is more expensive than the arrival was, because someone else has now normalised the number, and you have to match it for the replacement. If the seat is the problem, the bonus is a painkiller. Not a cure.

Three things worth more to the AE you're actually trying to hire

1. Named accounts on day one. Not "we'll assign the patch in month three when the last person's noise clears."

2. An SDR pod paired to the seat. Not shared across four AEs where the top biller gets the meetings.

3. A comp plan that is not "under review". If comp is in flux, senior candidates read that as risk — because it is.

The temptation to solve a structural problem with cash is understandable — cash is fast and structure is slow. But the AEs worth hiring can read the difference in the first conversation, and the ones who can't are rarely the ones you wanted.