Which is interesting to me, because once you get to staff inside such a company, how would you move to a different company? Are you locked to the company because any other move would be a drastic reduction in comp (because it would be a drastic reduction in value)?
Or are there transferable skills that are valuable enough that a transfer could happen at roughly the same comp level?
I don't know but this is an interesting question in terms of human capital and labor mobility.
Pay bands are usually wide. You might find a role that's a step down title-wise but a sideways step comp-wise, though of course that's less likely the more you have in current comp. The top companies like their golden handcuffs.
You have to think about what you want to be doing. I think a strategy that's (company) tribal-knowledge dependent is a risky one, since it's going to be very hard to transfer. Industry-level tribal knowledge can be much more valuable, since you could move to competitors. Technical domain-level knowledge can be even valuable still, but if you're doing more soft-skill architectural guidance and mentoring you might still run into a shortage of companies willing to pay the same premium you're currently getting for that. Some companies may not need it, others may need hands on speed more at the moment. But in that case, they probably do need soft skill technical expertise + management, which at a small, young company is going to be much different than big-co management anyway, so that's an option too.
This is not true in engineering contractors for aerospace in Europe or the USA, and it's also totally not true in the oil industry worldwide and in some of the big manufacturing firms. You can get double digit percent promotions by getting into roles that require a lot of travel, dealing with big outsourced contracts, have cross-country responsibilities, or other particular skills or layers of hardened skin that are hard to come by and at a premium.
Senior levels often have pretty wide bands, partially due to this. If you're moving to an organization that hires as senior, you'll almost certainly be able to negotiate your comp pretty far up
Or are there transferable skills that are valuable enough that a transfer could happen at roughly the same comp level?
I don't know but this is an interesting question in terms of human capital and labor mobility.