Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess Europe is out then.
It is tricky right now, yeah. Not impossible, but not easy.
Any other Europeans?
Compensation as a Reflection of Values
81–90 of 96 posts
Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values
#82I like the idea.
I wonder how this changes incentives for most people. In the valley of bottomless snacks and drinks, bottomless PTO, bottomless stock options, how does bottomless pay work on the mental?
What if I want to work a 3 day week?
Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values
#83If 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.
Great piece and thanks for sharing.
Does Oxide face a challenge of feeling the need to creatively compensate especially motivated team members, or do the company values and hiring process promote a general and widespread highly motivated and quality team, with maybe a more consistent level of contributions from each individual than a traditional org structure? Or a different alternative entirely?
Love to hear your thoughts on this as you said you hire people 'if we saw them contributing to the company as much as anyone else', but what if some people just don't contribute as clearly/observably?
Also are we going to get more On the Metal episodes?
Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values
#84If 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.
Great piece and thanks for sharing. Does Oxide face a challenge of feeling the need to creatively compensate especially motivated team members, or do the company values and hiring process promote a general and widespread highly motivated and quality team, with maybe a more consistent level of contributions from each individual than a traditional org structure? Or a different alternative entirely? Love to hear your th…
Taking these in order:
Our hiring process more or less selects for intrinsic motivation at every stage -- that's very important to us. As for "judging" the output of folks: I would say Oxide is just a more extreme example of something that one sees in lots of places, where it is exceedingly difficult (and dangerous!) to make those kinds of comparisons. Not only because the work is highly varied (though certainly that) and not only because it is deeply technical (though that too!), but also because we rely so much on helping one another out. How does one evaluate that? And perhaps a blunter question: what would be the purpose of that evaluation?
When I talk about "seeing someone contribute to the company as much as anyone else", I very much mean in the future tense -- namely, during the hiring process. I think it's not an unfair characterization to say that we would much rather take the energy typically wasted on comp, and spend that energy on careful hiring.
As for more On the Metal, yes definitely: Steve, Jess, and I very much look forward to being vaccinated and back in the garage!
Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
This may be fine for an initial hiring practice, but as you note it will become problematic in the future. Interestingly, you dodge the real source of the problem (and its possible resolution) by hand-waving the "career ladder." Once you have an employee and a history of experiencing their work within the company you have the basis for deciding where pay diverges and what career ladder they wish to follow. The fundam…
Seems like more of a comment than a question?
Piggybacking on that comment - which I interpret to mean that fixed, common salaries are at odds with the unique value each employee brings - is your philosophy that salary should not be a reflection of individual contributions, but (indexed to SF CoL) sufficient to make personal OpEx a non-issue? And that, by extension, employees who differentiate themselves (e.g., founders, not sure who else might see equity) are better rewarded with shares/RSUs?
Can’t say I disagree, if so!
Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values
#86If 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.
I’ll be interested to see how this works out. My 2-cents, I think you should always pay well, but differentiation needs to occur somehow. Perhaps it’s more vacation (because good workers get their work done faster), a bonus at the end of the year, something. I say this because it’s difficult to keep good workers. I work very hard, I work with people who work half as hard, and produce a fourth as much. While some are…
When do you work less in exchange for more time with your family? It seems like super sensible trade, hypothetically, to work 1/4th "as hard" if the reward is only money and 1/4th of it means you're actually better off. All hypothetical of course, but for example, I wouldn't work 4 times as "hard" as I would to make $100k, to instead make $400k, especially if I had a family, but I'm curious how it plays out for you.
Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ll be interested to see how this works out. My 2-cents, I think you should always pay well, but differentiation needs to occur somehow. Perhaps it’s more vacation (because good workers get their work done faster), a bonus at the end of the year, something. I say this because it’s difficult to keep good workers. I work very hard, I work with people who work half as hard, and produce a fourth as much. While some are…
I would say that we're very big on intrinsic motivation and teamwork -- and that these two things (coupled with our transparent compensation) serve to give people reward from their work that is something beyond what differentiation provides.
It’s fascinating to see how many comments here insist rewards must be extrinsic for some kind of score keeping or personal advancement, when bulk of research suggests intrinsic rewards are far more effective provided nobody is exploiting the system.
This suggests (a) rewards for better outcomes can lie in the space of the team asking that out-performer to take on more accountability, so the individual can be on a personal growth, leadership, responsibility path, while the rising tide of performance lifts all boats. And at the same time, that seems to need to be accompanied by (b) fairness, a recognition the team is not a charity and nobody can be slacking and remain part of the effort, such that intrinsic rewards are not undermined.
There’s an opt-in aspect to make this work — not everyone wants to be on the starship Enterprise exploring new worlds without getting paper tokens to count their score “against” peers by. Even if the crew agrees Picard should be captain and have the quarters closest to the bridge, for some folks that’s not enough, they need to “beat” other humans instead of enjoying making the Enterprise better.
FWIW, I categorically disagree on sales commissions. Sales commission culture seems generally toxic to founder values. I’ve never seen a commission structure that doesn’t get gamed in ways beneficial to sales people at either customers’ or the firm’s expense and to its cultural or mission detriment, once the commission plan begins to scale.
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All that said, if there are graduated pay scales, instead of a communal collective at utopian parity, it seems these should be less graduated by org chart level, and more by “toil vs. automation”. How to turn individual or collective labor into individual or collective annuity?
We (tech industry labor) haven’t really grappled with this yet, though you see it upstream of us, in valuations multiples differing between service where an hour of work is needed for a dollar of income versus “-as-a-service” where some code can be run as a utility.
This is what’s behind “do things that don’t scale”: figuring out how to scale these things, how to take the 1:1 toil part out of the equation, replace it with a multiplier or better zero it out.
The craftspeople able to figure these scaling problems out, automate them, are able to generate disproportionate future value per hour, and arguably should be compensated accordingly (think NPV), else in today’s typical system that value accrues to the company management where, frankly, most “management” is probably glorified toil.
Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values
#88My first thought: a startup in the server business shouldn't be also trying to redefine compensation in the world. I say this because I've tried something similar several times, and always regretted it. They're going to have a lot to accomplish. Blogging and interviewing and dealing with the inevitable unforseen consequences of this decision is going to take their collective eyes off the ball. Let a growth-stage comp…
Isn't the point to avoid worrying and talking about it, once these initial posts are written? They decide once for everyone, and they're done, which eliminates a whole class of negotiations and uncertainty.
That may be the point, but when you introduce something radical, it's naive to think that it's "one and done." I would guess that within 6 months, many issues will be raised internally about this policy. It's not that I disagree with the policy itself (though I probably do), but that the weight of a century or so of inertia and policy and expectation will sink it.
I want to point out that it's not that I oppose companies trying radical new things. Quite the opposite. It's just that, having tried it myself several times, I have experience with the practical side of it.
Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say that we're very big on intrinsic motivation and teamwork -- and that these two things (coupled with our transparent compensation) serve to give people reward from their work that is something beyond what differentiation provides.
It’s fascinating to see how many comments here insist rewards must be extrinsic for some kind of score keeping or personal advancement, when bulk of research suggests intrinsic rewards are far more effective provided nobody is exploiting the system . This suggests (a) rewards for better outcomes can lie in the space of the team asking that out-performer to take on more accountability, so the individual can be on a pe…
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Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand your desire for employees meeting more-than-basic needs, while the company equity is currently monopoly money. Is "commitment to excellence" not a value? If one were to join Oxide but was mediocre, they would surely get fired. But on flip side, if they use their unique combination of skills & discipline, potentially at the expense of some personal sacrifice to bring a ton of value to the company, while s…
Well, as a clarification: one doesn't join Oxide, but rather gets hired by Oxide -- and we have a deliberate hiring process that is designed to assess candidates with respect to their fit for our mission and values. This leads to a deeply intrinsically motivated team, which addresses some of your concerns. As for potential upside: yes, everyone has an equity component; if we succeed together, there is more than enoug…
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