Issue 18 of The Pointer Index · Week ending 16 August 2026
This week we cut open the most-posted title on the ANZ GTM boards. Inside were three different jobs.
The numbers
One title, three jobs
Employers have posted 2,439 unique "Account Executive" ads since late March, more than any other GTM title. Among the ones that disclose pay, the bottom tenth advertises $78,750 or less. The top tenth advertises $219,500 or more. Same words on the ad, 2.8x apart. Every other common title holds a far tighter band.
The spread is not noise. It is three jobs sharing a name.
Blend all three and you get the number a comp report calls "market median AE."
If you benchmark: a blended AE median averages a $78,750 job with a $135,000 one, then seasons it with printed on-target figures that reach past $500,000 on enterprise ads. Demand the industry cut or throw the number out.
If you hire: 88% of AE ads do not disclose pay. With a title this ambiguous, candidates guess which of the three jobs yours is, and the expensive ones guess wrong and never apply.
If you face a counter-offer: "$220,000 for an AE" is real and printed. It is also on-target earnings at an enterprise software vendor. Know which job the number belongs to before you match it.
One number to watch
5,673. A third straight weekly decline in the active pool would be the first since April.
Ricky Pearl, Pointer Strategy
pointerstrategy.com/market-data
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*Methodology.* "GTM" means Sales, Account Management, Marketing, CS, Presales, RevOps, Enablement, Partnerships, Growth, PMM, and GTM Engineering. Numbers come from live ANZ job listings scraped from public records. Recruitment agency listings are excluded throughout. Market-index figures are point-in-time snapshots at the close of the reporting week, recorded in an insert-only weekly index that is never recomputed. The live dashboard updates continuously and may differ slightly.
*On the Account Executive analysis.* Every direct-employer ad first seen since 30 March 2026 with "account executive" in the title, deduplicated on title, company and salary band across collection sources: 2,439 unique ads, 11.8% disclosing an AUD range. Figures are midpoints of advertised ranges; 266 fall inside the $40,000 to $400,000 window analysed, which excludes a handful of enterprise ads whose printed on-target ranges run to $566,000. Advertised figures mix base and on-target earnings and the ads rarely say which; the top decile is dominated by enterprise software ads printing package numbers. Segments use description keywords: software/SaaS n=171, insurance/broking n=70, advertising/media/agency n=30 (directional, under our n=50 threshold). Cities: Sydney n=104, Melbourne n=69. The cross-title comparison uses the same window and filters; all seven titles clear n=165.
*On the weekly figures.* Salary medians are advertised AUD bands from 784 disclosing listings (14.3% disclosure): levels, not a movement claim, which is why repricing is only assessed quarterly. Entry-level share and leadership load changed definition on 8 June 2026 and are not comparable before that date; both are within one standard deviation of their post-June averages. Pool readings are like-for-like Sunday snapshots.
*Corrections.* If a number looks wrong, reply to the newsletter or contact us. Corrections run in the next issue.
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