If folks are interested (and in the spirit of keeping things positive), I'm happy to answer any questions here about our comp philosophy or about Oxide more generally.
Assuming 2 employees join at the same time, would they get equal equity too?
Compensation as a Reflection of Values
51–60 of 96 posts
Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values
#52Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The goal is to treat the salary as a necessary (evil?) for "what you need to feed your family, buy a house, etc..." and not as the primary motive for work. This seems shortsighted. Even after your immediate needs are covered, you can be a long way away from being comfortably able to feed your family next year, in ten years, in twenty years, even if things change. An employee who demands as high a salary as they can…
Presumably at Oxide’s stage, the equity is the towards financial independence vehicle and the salary is covering the bills until that lottery ticket is scratched off and its value determined. In this case, you are being paid $15K per month to work to make that ticket pay off.
Does everyone have equity? Does everyone have the same amount? Does everyone have the same terms?
If not, then the differentiation in compensation just moved to whatever liquidity event.
Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Presumably at Oxide’s stage, the equity is the towards financial independence vehicle and the salary is covering the bills until that lottery ticket is scratched off and its value determined. In this case, you are being paid $15K per month to work to make that ticket pay off.
Does everyone have equity? Does everyone have the same amount? Does everyone have the same terms? If not, then the differentiation in compensation just moved to whatever liquidity event.
Bryan hinted pretty strongly in the article that the answer was “yes” to the first and “no” to the second.
Why should it be the same? If I join a year after you, I sure as hell hope you have more, all else being equal. If we join the same day and you are twice as critical to the success, I hope you have more, because your incentive pulls my outcomes higher.
Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values
#55Do you support anywhere remote? Can you setup a smart lab for remote systems SWEs?
Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values
#56Do you support anywhere remote? Can you setup a smart lab for remote systems SWEs?
Our job listings have this in it:
> We are very supportive of remote work. About half of our team is outside of the San Francisco Bay Area; our only requirement is working hours with a significant overlap with Pacific Time.
I myself am in Austin, Texas.
Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does everyone have equity? Does everyone have the same amount? Does everyone have the same terms? If not, then the differentiation in compensation just moved to whatever liquidity event.
Bryan hinted pretty strongly in the article that the answer was “yes” to the first and “no” to the second. Why should it be the same? If I join a year after you, I sure as hell hope you have more, all else being equal. If we join the same day and you are twice as critical to the success, I hope you have more, because your incentive pulls my outcomes higher.
OK, sure, but you can make versions of those exact same arguments for salary as well. The point is that the Oxide team has made a point of not making them, or even making the counterarguments.
However, amount of and terms around equity are part of the overall compensation package, and if the principles espoused in the document are relevant to salary, then they should also be relevant to the equity component of compensation as well, no?
Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values
#58I really want to see this model scale somehow. I've spoken with friends about this model, and it's hard for them to get past the idea of compensation as a proxy for value. The discussion eventually devolves into - X type of employee is more valuable than Y type of employee, therefore they should be paid more. - There is no mechanism or incentive for growth (a.k.a the career ladder argument).
If an employee's impact is more valuable, why shouldn't that employee demand to be paid more? If a job or position is less valuable, why shouldn't that position be paid less?
> If an employee's impact is more valuable, why shouldn't that employee demand to be paid more?
Because the valuation of an employee's contribution to an organization, as assessed by management, is usually bullshit.
If the product succeeds, all the employees benefit, and if the product fails, all employees suffer together.
Now, for a large organization, the ability for individual employees to influence revenue or profit at the organization level is negligible, so you need different strategies for compensating your employees. And the article concedes their approach won't scale past a certain company size.
Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bryan hinted pretty strongly in the article that the answer was “yes” to the first and “no” to the second. Why should it be the same? If I join a year after you, I sure as hell hope you have more, all else being equal. If we join the same day and you are twice as critical to the success, I hope you have more, because your incentive pulls my outcomes higher.
OK, sure, but you can make versions of those exact same arguments for salary as well. The point is that the Oxide team has made a point of not making them, or even making the counterarguments. However, amount of and terms around equity are part of the overall compensation package, and if the principles espoused in the document are relevant to salary, then they should also be relevant to the equity component of compen…
IMO, not to the same degree. If you view salary as the necessary good to offset the daily evil costs of life, it makes sense for that to be the same and linked such that everyone gets raises at the same time and amount.
For equity, earlier grants are at a riskier time (and where your contributions are more concentrated and influential). Earlier employees should get more (not just have more after 2 years compared to the new joiner, but for their first grant to be vesting more next year than today’s joiner’s first grant).
There’s are things that I personally wouldn’t like about the scheme, but I think it’s quite hard to make a “it’s too unfair” principles-based argument against it.
Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
What type of research did you do before you made this compensation choice? I understand lawfirms have a similar comp model for associates (7 years of lockstep pay increases before partner). Did you find any other industries that gravitate to this structure? If so, what did they have in common? What benefits do they see from this choice and what are the drawbacks?
Honestly, none -- it really just came out of our own experience (e.g., I have always been a believer in not paying people differently by geography), and it evolved exactly the way I described in the blog entry. And indeed, we had no intention of writing about this at all, but when asking for how we could improve our hiring process, one of the consistent pieces of feedback was that we didn't specify the pay -- and tha…
You made Oxide a first choice company on every engineer's list, worldwide, by adopting that policy.
Post Covid is going to be a huge gold rush for remote talent, as some big players start playing games with CoL and lose some of their core contributors over it.