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Oxide’s compensation model: how is it going?

oxide.computer

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Re: Oxide’s compensation model: how is it going?

#51

Post by OJFord »

tptacek wrote: post #18
endianswap wrote: post #2

Wish they would've gone into more detail about the sales exemption - it seems to undermine many of the other points on the page...

Especially if you're doing account manager-type high-touch sales, which I assume Oxide is given its product, it would be difficult to hire strong sales people at all without variable compensation. It's best to think of sales as an entirely different kind of animal as the rest of the company. Like the post says, when they're making lots of money, everybody else is making even more money. One thing people who have neve…

> One thing people who have never managed direct sales teams might not immediately grok is: good sales people are experts at gaming incentive schemes.

Is that just circular though? i.e. I think everyone's like that, it's just unusual that it's tied directly to compensation. e.g. if I feel that my Jira output is being critically monitored, I might push something (or the reporting of something) into the next sprint if it's close and I've already done a lot in this one; I might more diligently create tickets for every little incidental thing that popped up (rather than just quietly getting it done).

I'm not comp'd according to that, but it's the same behaviour, it's just 'a measure becoming a target' really isn't it?

Re: Oxide’s compensation model: how is it going?

#52

Post by zem »

bcantrill wrote: post #5
endianswap wrote: post #2

Wish they would've gone into more detail about the sales exemption - it seems to undermine many of the other points on the page...

Happy to go into it in more detail, but the salient points are in the piece: sales folks are eligible to make more -- but can also make less. This is in keeping with the way enterprise sales is done more or less everywhere: sales is different from every other company activity in that it is very quantifiable. I don't think that there's a whole lot more to say about it?

do sales folks have the option to take the flat salary instead? or is that seen as a lack of confidence in their abilities?

Re: Oxide’s compensation model: how is it going?

#53

Post by setheron »

steveklabnik wrote: post #17
setheron wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. The other aspect that I didn't buy too much was the original blog entry claims the salary is enough since the founders themselves have kids and are living in San Francisco. They are coming from a point of economic safety from prior successful ventures and maybe are on multiple boards with other income streams. Anyways. I like the intent so I won't be too critical.

The Bay Area is expensive, but I assure you that many families with kids live on less than $207,264. That said, everyone has their own personal requirements, and startups aren't for everyone. Around a quarter of the company, last I checked, lives in the Bay area, so while we obviously miss out on some good people who want more money, we haven't had an issue with finding enough people who are happy with the compensati…

I disagree based on my own personal experience of raising kids in California but they are all young and I'm paying quite a lot for preschool :P I'm also carrying a mortgage as I'm younger which is ~30-40% of my take home pay.

Total tangent: 2024 Jujutsu was my favorite tool to learn and your posts helped me learn it. Thank you.

Re: Oxide’s compensation model: how is it going?

#54

Post by lbotos »

abxyz wrote: post #48

I like it a lot and their thoughtfulness about it but it's a little hollow when they're spending investor money. I'd like to see how this model evolves once they're off the vc teat: when there's a bottom line to answer to, does the dynamic shift? Everyone has an on-site chef when the money vc hose is on. Valve's flat structure was exciting because it wasn't 3 vc's in a coat larping as a business, it was an actual pro…

> Support, no matter how valued and important to the organisation it is, is never worth $200k/year on the output of 1 person.

I... think you are thinking more "Customer Support Representative" (how to reset a password) and not Support Engineering.

An engineer that can talk to customers, find bugs, and fix them, is not worth $200k?

One of the Oxide Support engineers was (still is) an INSANELY strong performance engineer who helped solved performance bugs when he was on my team. We were actively using strace weekly to troubleshoot deep process internals to optimize perf.

(Hi Will, I miss you, and you are definitely worth $200k don't listen to this guy. <3)

Re: Oxide’s compensation model: how is it going?

#55

Post by steveklabnik »

abxyz wrote: post #48

I like it a lot and their thoughtfulness about it but it's a little hollow when they're spending investor money. I'd like to see how this model evolves once they're off the vc teat: when there's a bottom line to answer to, does the dynamic shift? Everyone has an on-site chef when the money vc hose is on. Valve's flat structure was exciting because it wasn't 3 vc's in a coat larping as a business, it was an actual pro…

> when there's a bottom line to answer to

Having VC money doesn't mean that you can ignore finances. We are in a relatively capital-intensive business compared to a lot of the startups on HN.

> Support is typically low paid because it's a lot of effort for little reward,

Respectfully, I think this attitude is flat-out wrong. Because of this:

> there's only so much impact they can have on the bottom line.

Directly, sure. But that's the fundamental error. Good support is absolutely worth it, and do bring in value, only indirectly. That customer you kept because when they had an issue, it was resolved quickly and professionally? That's money, even if it's more difficult to quantify than sales. And it's not like support engineers aren't doing engineering as well.

Re: Oxide’s compensation model: how is it going?

#56

Post by zem »

abxyz wrote: post #48

I like it a lot and their thoughtfulness about it but it's a little hollow when they're spending investor money. I'd like to see how this model evolves once they're off the vc teat: when there's a bottom line to answer to, does the dynamic shift? Everyone has an on-site chef when the money vc hose is on. Valve's flat structure was exciting because it wasn't 3 vc's in a coat larping as a business, it was an actual pro…

I think of it as "we have a team developing this product, the product makes money, and we use that money to compensate the team". if the team as a whole needs support people in order to do its work, it seems like a great thing to consider those people full-fledged team members deserving of equal compensation.

to the point that their labour does not scale in the same way a software engineer's does - think of the fact that you need more support people to do the amount of revenue generation that fewer devs could do as part of the cost of running the business, rather than as a measure of the fraction of the rewards that should go to them.

Re: Oxide’s compensation model: how is it going?

#57

Post by dapperdrake »

steveklabnik wrote: post #55
abxyz wrote: post #48

I like it a lot and their thoughtfulness about it but it's a little hollow when they're spending investor money. I'd like to see how this model evolves once they're off the vc teat: when there's a bottom line to answer to, does the dynamic shift? Everyone has an on-site chef when the money vc hose is on. Valve's flat structure was exciting because it wasn't 3 vc's in a coat larping as a business, it was an actual pro…

> when there's a bottom line to answer to Having VC money doesn't mean that you can ignore finances. We are in a relatively capital-intensive business compared to a lot of the startups on HN. > Support is typically low paid because it's a lot of effort for little reward, Respectfully, I think this attitude is flat-out wrong. Because of this: > there's only so much impact they can have on the bottom line. Directly , s…

Long-term growth really seems to come from keeping paying customers.

Thank you, Steve.

Re: Oxide’s compensation model: how is it going?

#58

Post by tgma »

abxyz wrote: post #48

I like it a lot and their thoughtfulness about it but it's a little hollow when they're spending investor money. I'd like to see how this model evolves once they're off the vc teat: when there's a bottom line to answer to, does the dynamic shift? Everyone has an on-site chef when the money vc hose is on. Valve's flat structure was exciting because it wasn't 3 vc's in a coat larping as a business, it was an actual pro…

You hit the nail on the head re sales being the canary in the coalmine. I just read the original post which I found distasteful and on-brand with Cantrill virtue signaling. Everyone is equal but some people are more equal: some get founder equity and some measly basis points. To boot, founders already made their money from Sun Microsystems looking for retirement entertainment and more than 175 or 200k is gonna be taxes anyway. If they hit it big they’ll be billionaires and their employee number 24 will do as much as if they’d gone to FANG with much stress and liquidity concerns along the way.

Re: Oxide’s compensation model: how is it going?

#59

Post by Retric »

abxyz wrote: post #48

I like it a lot and their thoughtfulness about it but it's a little hollow when they're spending investor money. I'd like to see how this model evolves once they're off the vc teat: when there's a bottom line to answer to, does the dynamic shift? Everyone has an on-site chef when the money vc hose is on. Valve's flat structure was exciting because it wasn't 3 vc's in a coat larping as a business, it was an actual pro…

Depends on the business model, cater to high end clients and having a ~1M$/year doctor be the once answering the phone can be a major selling point.

Further you optimize around costs, when having people answer phones is expensive you try a minimize the need for someone to answer a phone. A 5 minute call with someone making 200k is like 8.50$. Empower them to figure out and fix the underlying issue thus avoiding the next 1,000 calls and that looks cheap.

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