I find the idea of equity that is quickly spreading deeply flawed.
Equity is not equality, which is giving everybody the same opportunities, like the same starting salary and the same objective performance reviews (which I fully support).
Equity means equality of outcome regardless of merits. It means you have to actively discriminate against your most productive members and reward others for their poor choices.
This usually has two effects: the most productive people leave for places that reward their productivity and others have no incentive of being more productive [1]
You can see this in their formula:
* Location base: did you chose to live in a place that cost more? No problem. Here is a bunch of money completely unrelated to your performance.
* Cost of living correction: we didn't reward you enough for your expensive choices, so here is some more money on top of that.
* Loyalty: did you stay here for a long time, maybe because you have no other choice, or because we give you money to live in an expensive place? Here is another bunch of money again unrelated to your performance.
At least they have multipliers for role value and experience, which sort of reward the ability of each individual.
But what if a person is more productive than others in the same role with the same experience? Can they negotiate a higher salary? Given the existence of a formula, I doubt. Although I might be wrong.
And yes, these people could be promoted, but there are not enough higher positions for everyone (there is only one team lead in each team), not everybody has the skills for a different role (managing people is different from writing code) and not everyone has even interest in changing roles.