I hired developers into investment banking for 18 years. If we gave somebody a low number, the next bank would poach them in 1-2 years, wasting all the time we spent training them. After I learned this the hard way, I always went as high as I felt able to on the initial salary, because raises were much harder later on.
That was my experience as well. If you want to pay your team well, the best option is to bring people in at the highest number you can justify.
Raises were always harder to arrange, but it was a lot easier when we had evidence that new hires were costing us 20% more than our existing high performers were paid
