Key Takeaways
- AI startup Lovable recently announced a new policy that gives every employee an automatic 10% salary increase each year on their work anniversary.
- Lovable’s leadership says the policy is designed to support retention and sidestep the tension that often surrounds compensation negotiations.
- Lovable CEO Anton Osika says that employees “shouldn’t have to worry” about getting a raise.
Lovable, a fast-growing AI startup, is incorporating raises into its company policy.
In a recent post on LinkedIn, Lovable’s head of growth, Elena Verna, promised every worker a 10% salary increase on their annual work anniversaries. No need for negotiation and no extra review process — just a built-in raise each year.
“Because we don’t take retention for granted,” Verna explained in the post. “It’s treated as compounding value that is actively recognized and rewarded. You don’t have to re-prove your worth every cycle.”
In most companies, raises depend on performance reviews, manager feedback or company budgets, per TechCrunch. The process can feel unclear. Employees often don’t know what they need to do to earn more and some feel they have to switch jobs to get a meaningful pay increase.
Lovable wants to remove that tension. The company believes steady, predictable raises help people focus on their work instead of worrying about compensation, according to Verna. It also reduces the pressure to constantly prove value in formal reviews.
Some context
Lovable is a vibe coding startup, focused on allowing users to generate code using plain English prompts. The company launched its vibe coding product in late 2024 and has since experienced explosive growth. In December, Lovable raised $330 million in Series B funding at a $6.6 billion valuation. In March, Lovable claimed that it had crossed $400 million in annual recurring revenue.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual raise percentage for U.S. employees is 3.6%, placing Lovable’s raises well above the norm.
Benefits and drawbacks of the raise policy
The company’s 10% raise policy sends a signal to employees that staying is valued. CEO Anton Osika posted on X that “people get more valuable the longer they stay, and they shouldn’t have to worry about getting a raise or not.”
There are other benefits, too: Employees can focus on their work instead of trying to make themselves look good for a raise, according to Verna.
“Everyone can focus on doing the best work of their life, not managing optics,” Verna wrote in the LinkedIn post.
Still, the approach is not without risk. The 10% raise falls under the category of peanut butter raises, or across-the-board pay increases that employers spread evenly like peanut butter on bread. A fixed raise system does not account for performance differences, giving high performers and average performers the same increase and reducing incentives to go above and beyond.
The policy also comes at a time when workplace culture is under intense scrutiny, as employee stress and disengagement reach new highs. Recent surveys show that the majority of U.S. workers report some level of burnout, or a state of physical and emotional exhaustion. In one 2025 survey from Eagle Hill Consulting, 55% of U.S. employees said they were currently experiencing burnout.
Many workers also indicated that they feel demotivated or stuck: according to a Gallup poll, only about 30% of employees reported feeling engaged at work. A December survey conducted by the jobs platform Monster found that 43% of workers said they planned to look for a new job in 2026.
Key Takeaways
- AI startup Lovable recently announced a new policy that gives every employee an automatic 10% salary increase each year on their work anniversary.
- Lovable’s leadership says the policy is designed to support retention and sidestep the tension that often surrounds compensation negotiations.
- Lovable CEO Anton Osika says that employees “shouldn’t have to worry” about getting a raise.
Lovable, a fast-growing AI startup, is incorporating raises into its company policy.
In a recent post on LinkedIn, Lovable’s head of growth, Elena Verna, promised every worker a 10% salary increase on their annual work anniversaries. No need for negotiation and no extra review process — just a built-in raise each year.
“Because we don’t take retention for granted,” Verna explained in the post. “It’s treated as compounding value that is actively recognized and rewarded. You don’t have to re-prove your worth every cycle.”
