You picked the bottom of the range and didn’t add benefits. Top of the range with cost of benefits, which a contractor would have to pay for themselves is over $100 an hour. Keep in mind we pay for all certifications, exams, college degree programs, 21 days PTO which accumulates to even more, matching 401K, conferences with biz class travel, healthcare, etc.

I won't say too much about pay scales because others have, but 21 days of PTO is not "incredible" by any means, especially if you make people use it for sick time as well. At least if I was looking in a strong market, that would reduce the value of your other numbers downward to me. I recommend explicitly creating separate sick time, or switching to a minimum PTO (making sure employees take that time off).

Amazon, for example, starts at 10 days for FTEs and accrues to a max of 20 days once you've worked for longer than 6 years. We are roughly the same as Facebook and Google who are between 20 to 30 days per year, depending on how long you've worked there.

I am surprised to hear that Amazon is that low (rules them out as a target for me) - but your comp in terms of salary + stock is not competitive with FB/Google, so comparing to them on vacation time is not meaningful either IMO. In my experience, plenty of smaller companies are more flexible on vacation time over 20 days, so those would be the ones you're competing with.

However, if things are working out well for you as an employer with your current pay + benefits stack, you probably grok the market better than I do. Wish you all the best!

Interesting. After ten years in higher-ed, I'm have 24 vacation days, 12 sick days, and 14 paid holidays (all annually), for a total of 50 days of leave per year. One of the few benefits that are better than the private sector. (Yes, unlimited vacation is a thing, but then it's all dependent on the specific company culture whether it's normal to take 40+ days off a year.)