101–110 of 169 posts
Open salaries are only great if you’re some introverted, beta developer that can’t speak up for themselves. “Everyone’s the same. Hooray Marxism!” If you’re good and you have any sort of gumption, negotiate hard and take the money the feeble leave on the table.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe they should be afraid of this negative analysis. You don't get a pass on bad decisions just because you're making them openly. From my cursory glance, I have a bunch of problems here: 1) Most egregiously, it looks like they're slashing a bunch of salaries. Not the CEO, of course, but a lot of others seem to be going down. I would be immediately headed for the door in that scenario. Talk about a way to keep only…
We all like to tell ourselves that we are impactful and in the top 1%, but most of us could not land a job for $300k total comp. It would also be a mistake to pay us that much. Negative growth of your runway chart is a quick way to get into the fatal pinch. Those Buffer salaries are quite reasonable for engineers. If you're not looking at them hungrily, then may I suggest you're probably not the customer here? And by…
At any rate, my point isn't that this will kill Buffer, but I suspect it'll be a drag on their performance over the long run. Who knows though. And I don't really care; it's not my company.
What I care about is whether I'd go work for them or advise others to do so. And my answer would be no. I think you can make more with a little bit of effort. And even if you can't, I think working for a company that won't yank the rug out from under you with a paycut like this is worth a premium.
This is interesting. One implication is that if I was in the dating market, I’d be worried my date would google me, find that I work for buffer, and instantly know how much I make. While that information isn’t exactly super important or secretive, I just think I’d rather reveal that kind of info on my own terms.
I strongly disagree with cost-of-living-adjustments when employees have the choice of where to live. People shouldn’t be punished for living in less expensive places. If your company is willing to pay you more for living somewhere else even if they don’t gain anything from it, it means they’re underpaying you right now.
That's not really realistic though. How could I convince someone to pay me $250k in Minneapolis when the market is supporting 115-150k?
SV (and other markets) basically refuse to hire remote (and often refuse to relocate employees). This splits the market up into mini-markets where the slight oversaturation of devs allows the local market to dictate prices (under-saturation would boost salaries even in a small market). This is born out with the fact that those who do work remotely seem to have higher salaries for a given experience level (their market is much bigger and more diverse).
The obvious answer is unions. Joint negotiations would yield immediate effects. No large company could survive even a day or two of IT strikes without extreme losses. Unlike other jobs, you can't simply replace your staff because most of a company's software IP is held in the heads of its employees and is far too complex to decypher before the losses occur.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We all like to tell ourselves that we are impactful and in the top 1%, but most of us could not land a job for $300k total comp. It would also be a mistake to pay us that much. Negative growth of your runway chart is a quick way to get into the fatal pinch. Those Buffer salaries are quite reasonable for engineers. If you're not looking at them hungrily, then may I suggest you're probably not the customer here? And by…
We obviously can't all be the 1%, but I think it's probably more the top 10% who could make $300k? Maybe that's optimistic and out of touch, though. At any rate, my point isn't that this will kill Buffer, but I suspect it'll be a drag on their performance over the long run. Who knows though. And I don't really care; it's not my company. What I care about is whether I'd go work for them or advise others to do so. And…
Also $300k total comp translates to $450k fully-loaded cost to the employer, meaning you can only hire four of those engineers before you burn through $2M funding per year. Are you sure that's worth it?
Here's a question: why doesn't Buffer pay the "low CoL" developers more? It doesn't seem right that "low CoL" workers get paid so little compared to their peers.
I know this is cynical, but this really just reinforces my suspicion: the open salary thing is actually an attempt to underpay through a formula that's presented as objectively fair. Over time, it ends up gravitating your workforce towards average or below-average performers. There's no room for top talent here, because there's no subjectivity in this formula. If you're a fantastic dev (or whatever), why would you wo…
Why do companies continue to pay out higher salaries to devs in high cost of living areas? In this case, their payscale pays out 30-50K more in high cost living areas vs low cost areas. Rather than blow revenue rewarding bad life choices, offer to move them to an area with lower costs of living. Do that for only 10 employees and you have 300-500K EVERY SINGLE YEAR to re-invest into your company. In practically any ot…
How about just pay them to the value they bring? Why did location ever play a part? If the dev works on a rarely used admin app, surprise, you pay them lower.
Why do companies continue to pay out higher salaries to devs in high cost of living areas? In this case, their payscale pays out 30-50K more in high cost living areas vs low cost areas. Rather than blow revenue rewarding bad life choices, offer to move them to an area with lower costs of living. Do that for only 10 employees and you have 300-500K EVERY SINGLE YEAR to re-invest into your company. In practically any ot…
You've got it backwards. They're paying people in low cost of living locations less not the other way around. If you frame it that way the economics make a lot more sense; one of the reasons places like SF and NYC are so expensive is because everyone wants to be there for all the jobs. Competition is high and salaries adjust accordingly. Also, speaking from experience (biased toward the financial side of things), you…
You don't have to be on-site, so the real market is nationwide (if not international). Companies simply pretend it's limited so they can pay less.
Why do companies continue to pay out higher salaries to devs in high cost of living areas? In this case, their payscale pays out 30-50K more in high cost living areas vs low cost areas. Rather than blow revenue rewarding bad life choices, offer to move them to an area with lower costs of living. Do that for only 10 employees and you have 300-500K EVERY SINGLE YEAR to re-invest into your company. In practically any ot…