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Buffer Layoffs

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Re: Buffer Layoffs

#291

Post by zenlikethat »

dave2000 wrote: post #123
dsacco wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admire Buffer for being so transparent with their salaries, but I don't think I would ever decide to work for a company that mandated it. In my (admittedly limited) experience, mandating salary transparency tends to increase the salaries of low performers and reduce the salaries of high performers. It usually eliminates the potential for negotiating raises and poses difficult questions about paying some employees m…

I think you're going to get perfectly good developers for $150,000. Are you going to get twice as good ones if you pay twice that, or just greedy ones? Have transparency and let someone else pay the darlings. You'll still get your work done.

This exact "greed" rhetoric is what helps businesses keep dev salaries down. You don't get greedy people for that much, you get smart business people (they know their worth and charge for it).

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#292

Post by zenlikethat »

mangeletti wrote: post #126
Declanomous wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I am apparently massively underpaid. And I have to commute to work. Lose-lose.

TBH, that's a win-win. There's nothing better than being content with what you're paid, and then learning that there's huge upside potential. The worst thing ever is finding out that you're in the top 2% of salaries for your role in the industry, and then knowing there's nowhere to go but down from there.

It's not a win win at all. If OP could get a job they were equally happy with in other aspects that paid more and had less commute they would be better off. Their situation is probably fine but it's hard to spin low salary and long commute as positives.

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#293

Post by apetresc »

dave2000 wrote: post #234
shadowfiend wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> moronic drivel ^ why I downvoted you. > how can you bring less than your whole self to work This means basically wanting to be somewhere else rather than at work. i.e., their culture is one of being dedicated to work when you're at work; at least that's how I understand it. > poor English This is not uncommon colloquial English. “Team” and “family” here act roughly like “mind” does in the term “theory of mind”—basi…

I just posted my opinion on an aspect of the post. (I don't care about down votes; if I could hide my scores I would.) I don't need to know anything about a companies culture to know what they're saying is patently specious nonsense. You might be impressed by it, who knows. Do you read a company's mission statement when considering a job and say "company a say they're honest and driven by a desire to put both their e…

If you've been following Buffer at all, you'll know that they actually walk the talk. It's not just a vacuous "mission statement".

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#294

Post by bonafidehan »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #146
k-mcgrady wrote: post #109

I'm curious as to why they had 94 employees. That seems like an insanely high number for a company that does something pretty basic (not dumping on the product, I like it and have used it in the past). What are all of those people doing?

As part of a company of less than 30 in a rural region, I get that feeling a lot. I'm sure I'm wrong but what do 57000 google employees do!? Am I really hitting an immense mechanical turk when I use google? Yet they can't spare a single person to spend a few weeks to convert the flash off of google finance?

I worked at Google some time back. Take a look at the list of products [1] that Google provides. It's pretty long! Of those, 7 products have >1 billion monthly actives: Android, Chrome, Gmail, Google Play, Maps, Search, and YouTube. Things at this scale take a lot of effort.

Alternatively, a quantitative measure of effectiveness is the company's revenue or net income per employee. For 2015, that's $1.2M / Googler or $264K / Googler, respectively.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#295

Post by [deleted] »

a13n wrote: post #196
nilkn wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The $155k salary might be due to the transparency, but could it also be due to a simple inability to pay developers $300k+? That's well over double the CEO's salary. I think it's clear they simply don't have the revenue and cash reserves to pay developers that kind of money. I suspect you'll find this to be true at a lot of smaller startups that rely on actually making money instead of fundraising.

The salary is peanuts compared to what that CEO gets compensated.

[deleted]

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#296

Post by joshdickson »

Arcsech wrote: post #68
hobo_mark wrote: post #10

I certainly appreciate their openness, and like to follow their progress, but... ...could anyone explain to this naive commenter how it takes 90 (80 for that matter) people to run essentially a 'cronjob as a service' business?

Let's do some simple estimation! I haven't really looked at their spreadsheet, so this is just guesswork. The product is fairly simple technologically yes, but the value is provided by making it easy to use so the customer saves time (= money). To do that you need a few UX people plus some developers (especially with web and mobile apps), call that 15 engineers/designers total, plus another 5 for ops. Now you need a…

If anyone reads this comment, FYI it is not remotely accurate. They have 23 just in engineering and 6 designers, with 2 in ops. We have AWS and these guys have incredibly run of the mill needs, why on earth would you need 1 ops person for every 3 developers...

They have nobody doing what you'd classify as a "sales." They have some marketing people, people doing whatever "customer research" is, a number of people working in "community" and a bunch working in customer success.

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#297

Post by tedmiston »

hammock wrote: post #163
jpna66dd wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying it is customary to fly people business class in the Valley, rather than coach? Especially for a team retreat?

I cannot speak for Valley customs. But all of the (non-Valley) companies I'm familiar with extend business class to employees for international travel as a matter of policy.

This is a startup...

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#298

Post by [deleted] »

prebrov wrote: post #266
jes wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say no relationships, including family relationships, should be maintained if they aren't in the long-term self-interest of all parties. In other words, every relationship is a trading relationship, and the currency of the realm isn't always, or even often, monetary in nature.

I really appreciate your further comments. I agree for most part that humans and other living things ultimately act out of self-interest. However, there are circumstances when rationale breaks, like when member of your family develops a terminal decease. A purely rational decision would be to cut emotional and financial losses and abandon them, wouldn't it? Yet, luckily, we don't see that happen. The length to which…

[deleted]

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#299

Post by jes »

prebrov wrote: post #266
jes wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say no relationships, including family relationships, should be maintained if they aren't in the long-term self-interest of all parties. In other words, every relationship is a trading relationship, and the currency of the realm isn't always, or even often, monetary in nature.

I really appreciate your further comments. I agree for most part that humans and other living things ultimately act out of self-interest. However, there are circumstances when rationale breaks, like when member of your family develops a terminal decease. A purely rational decision would be to cut emotional and financial losses and abandon them, wouldn't it? Yet, luckily, we don't see that happen. The length to which…

I'm glad you're enjoying this discussion. I'm enjoying it as well.

My view is a little different.

I don't think abandoning someone who has been a great value to me because they have developed a terminal disease would be consistent with acting in my self-interest. To do such a thing would be to betray the virtues that I hold dear, such as honesty, integrity, justice, pride, etc.

For example, consider honesty. If this person was a great value to me, we would have some kind of understanding that we don't just toss each other overboard in tough times. If they get sick and I do toss them overboard, I would be a liar, and that brings a ton of other negatives with it, such as undercutting my personal integrity.

There's also the issue of justice. If this person has treated me well, if we have fallen in love, would it be just to abandon them when they are in the fight of their life? That sounds like injustice to me, unless there was some kind of (weird) agreement covering this situation.

This reply is getting a bit long, so I'll stop here.

If I haven't explained this very well, please say so and I'll try to be clearer.

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#300

Post by [deleted] »

prebrov wrote: post #266
jes wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say no relationships, including family relationships, should be maintained if they aren't in the long-term self-interest of all parties. In other words, every relationship is a trading relationship, and the currency of the realm isn't always, or even often, monetary in nature.

I really appreciate your further comments. I agree for most part that humans and other living things ultimately act out of self-interest. However, there are circumstances when rationale breaks, like when member of your family develops a terminal decease. A purely rational decision would be to cut emotional and financial losses and abandon them, wouldn't it? Yet, luckily, we don't see that happen. The length to which…

[deleted]
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