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Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did

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Re: Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did

#101

Post by ChuckMcM »

I think this is a great idea, but it has its risks. The risk I would worry about is that a person would adjust their life style 'burn rate' to their salary. Then, when they lost their job there isn't any other job in the area that will pay them what dhh was paying. So now they have to scale back in a radical way. Can they? Will they?

What is perhaps a similar challenge that I do have direct experience with are people who have been at a company and had a series of raises and gotten to a healthy salary. Then they get laid off or lose their job for other reasons and now they are looking for work. But the jobs they can find aren't paying what they need to make to support their current expenses. Sometimes I've seen people hold out for that higher paying job and burn right through all of their savings. Leaving them vulnerable to future economic shocks.

I admire Basecamp for making this decision, I hope it doesn't screw things up for people.

Re: Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did

#102

Post by 659087 »

pc86 wrote: post #79
659087 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instagram bragging is so incredibly cliche at this point that it actually makes me sad for those who engage in or with it. It's like a race to see who can appear more desperate for the approval of strangers.

People with money have nice things. I don't think anybody is surprised by this. DHH is also someone that people want to follow, whether for Rails, or business, or whatever. It's not necessarily bragging. I don't know much of anything about DHH's personality, so maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But come on, the dude is loaded. Is he supposed to move his desk to the other side of the room so that people don't carp on him f…

I wasn't talking about the desk picture.

Re: Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did

#103

Post by sidlls »

I remarked in the earlier submission related to this that this is a great event. It should encourage workers at other companies to take note and demand better compensation from their employers. There's no good reason for pay in this industry to be tied to geography.

Re: Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did

#104

Post by overcast »

compumike wrote: post #97
overcast wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way on this earth, $150,000 is anywhere near normal in the Bay Area, let alone in other less expensive metros. Most people are absolutely not making that much money writing code. People have serious tunnel vision on HN.

(Disclosure: I work for Triplebyte and helped publish our salary dataset recently.) $150K is below the median base salary offer we see for senior software engineers. See https://triplebyte.com/software-engineer-salary -- with a few notes: * This is base salary only. Total compensation is significantly higher once you include factors like equity compensation, bonuses, benefits. * This does vary a lot with stage of com…

Thanks for the response, like you said, you're very selective, and this is for only senior roles. Of course everyone is not a senior, the vast majority I suspect.

Re: Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did

#105

Post by mjmahone17 »

phantom_oracle wrote: post #52

It definitely makes sense to not hire for a certain period to see how this salary bump impacts the company as a whole. Anecdotal mention: https://open.buffer.com/layoffs-and-moving-forward/ Fast Hiring at that salary level is probably why SV startups burn through money so quickly. I doubt they will see major performance boosts with the salary increase. If they don't, it indicates the team is already working optimally…

Or they stop seeing a bunch of their employees interviewing with Bay Area companies. For a team of 55, losing 5 key people to higher Bay Area salaries could cost tens of millions of dollars in lost opportunity. In that context, bumping everyone’s salaries even 30% (say on average 60k*55 = 3.3 million) is not such a big deal. Especially if revenue and income over the past year grew a lot more than that.

Re: Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did

#106

Post by Edd314159 »

Every time I see a post from the Basecamp guys and how well they treat their team, it's more depressing than uplifting - just because I know I'll never be good enough to work there, and that they're so unique that no other employer will ever do the same.

Re: Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did

#107

Post by compumike »

overcast wrote: post #104
compumike wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Disclosure: I work for Triplebyte and helped publish our salary dataset recently.) $150K is below the median base salary offer we see for senior software engineers. See https://triplebyte.com/software-engineer-salary -- with a few notes: * This is base salary only. Total compensation is significantly higher once you include factors like equity compensation, bonuses, benefits. * This does vary a lot with stage of com…

Thanks for the response, like you said, you're very selective, and this is for only senior roles. Of course everyone is not a senior, the vast majority I suspect.

You're welcome. I can't share the numbers, but I believe most software engineers are eventually operating at the senior engineer level within under a decade of professional engineering experience.

Re: Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did

#108

Post by BoorishBears »

overcast wrote: post #96
BoorishBears wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not implying everyone is the best talent and making 150k, quite the opposite. But I definitely don’t agreee the peak is below 150k...

I mean ryandrake above just stated glassdoor and salary.com showing $110,000 as the medium. So below $150k.

Median being 111,000 doesn’t say anything about the peak...

Re: Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did

#109

Post by sidlls »

leecarraher wrote: post #75

I agree that many companies should pay more competitive salaries , but doesn't this disproportionately hurt people in higher cost of living areas? Everyone else gets a pay increase, the company's bottom line tightens, and higher cost of living area folks get nothing for it. I live in an area with a relatively low cost of living, and the only way I would consider moving elsewhere would be if the salary were increased…

If anything the scenario you describe is helpful to those of us who choose to live in high cost of living areas. Folks like you aren't going to move here, and some who are here will happily move to a lower cost of living area to bank the difference. The net here is a decrease in local labor supply.

Re: Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did

#110

Post by nwatson »

pc86 wrote: post #41
rplnt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you actually pay as little as possible to keep the employee happy and working for you. The living expenses move with this lower bound. More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16051409

In my experience employers often pay less than it takes to keep the employee happy and working. Most of the full-time jobs I've quit have been for pay and little else.

Interesting ... I've usually quit when I've been reasonably OK with the pay but the work no longer is interesting, the company culture changes, or I'm disturbed by the company's direction and don't think it will last. The switch has always translated to higher compensation as well.
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