Chief of Staff base salaries range from $180,000 to $300,000, though data is fragmented across company sizes and industries. Startups often add equity while corporate roles like those at Morgan Stanley rely on cash. Companies under 50 employees typically don't need the role yet.
What's the approximate salary range of a chief of staff? And you mentioned that they typically are in these companies of 200+ people. Is that a good benchmark that if you're smaller than 200 people, you shouldn't have a chief of staff? Or if you're smaller than 50, like, is there a you're not there yet kind of—
Here's how I look at the data. It's been a very poorly reported on position. I think the data is not strong because it's all thrown together in the kitchen sink, meaning you're looking at how a chief of staff is paid at a Fortune 10 company to a chief of staff who's supporting, you know, a startup or an entrepreneur. There's no dissection that I am aware of where that data is cut properly. So what we have is a kitchen sink. And the last set of data that I looked at showed that a chief can be paid anywhere from— at the time it was $180,000 to $300,000.
Yeah.
And then they have the regular perks and benefits and whatnot. In the startup community, I do some work in the Valley. A lot of chiefs are getting equity positions. You don't see that as much in Morgan Stanley chiefs of staff, for example, I'm aware of. I don't think that the data supports a finite statement. Where we see most of them right now is in that middle market space.
But they're certainly north of $150,000, $170,000.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, if they're truly doing a chief of staff role.
Exactly. If they haven't been given the title that doesn't match their roles and responsibilities and strategic insight. Right. I think that's the problem that I've seen across even with COOs. We've done a survey of hundreds of second in commands and we pulled a dataset together. that shows the title of the second in command, whether it's COO, VP Ops, GM, whatever, the size of company by number of employees, by salary, where their company is based, male or female, and then what their base comp is and what their bonuses are, etc. And it's really fascinating to see how I think there's a lot of people out there that got titles that are too big for them because it really doesn't match their compensation at all. And I think companies are doing a disservice to themselves and the employee. But I think it would be really cool for you to be able to start pulling that dataset together on the chief of staff.
And I, and I am, I'm in the process of doing research right now. I think it's a murky space. If you look at LinkedIn, I mean, there's hundreds of thousands of people in LinkedIn that are doing chief of staff-like work, but do not have a chief of staff title. And inverse is true as well.
