Yup - top talent is already making more. Gitlab needs to recruit with purpose (this is what we're doing and why), environment (remote first, transparency, etc), and pay (we can match 70% of what you'd get at XYZ Company). Right now, it feels like they're capped at 30-50% of what someone could make at a big org, which is just a drop in salary most people would never take, regardless of the company values/purpose.

One alternate idea would be to hire consultants on a temporary basis. You may not be able to pay $250k a year, but you could pay a one time $40k fee to review the architecture and come up with prioritized strategy for disaster recovery and scalability.