Oxide’s compensation model: how is it going?

I think a lot of people here are in a tizzy about this blog post because it's against the norm of how companies view compensation. I'm willing to bet most readers haven't fought for salary transparency personally or professionally or perhaps they are on the negative side of inequitable compensation. Granted, that's perfectly fine and I hope readers reflect on their career and make the positive change they need but don't berate companies for spending money however they choose to. Especially when that spending is truly equitable across employees, barring sales of course but that's already been discussed and I'd be hard pressed to find an Oxide employee that's angry about sales people making commission.

I personally took a pay cut to join Oxide. The uniform salary across the board has saved so much time that would otherwise be spent propping up metrics to get a promotion during review season based on some arbitrary goal that's set. Time that I get to spend doing actual work. It also motivates me to stay productive because I know all my teammates count on me the way I count on them to deliver work to sell Oxide racks. If other teammates are doing their best for their $207k salary I need to be doing my best for my $207k salary. On the equity side I'm sure I didn't get as much equity as the people that have been here for years but those people took more risk than I did so who cares? I'm gonna do what I can to help Oxide equity be worth so much that we all come away with a fantastic pay day and I'm sure my teammates are doing the same. Not that it's all about the money but every startup wants their equity to be worth something one day.

(I'm actually not sure if we hire a cleaning service for the office, actually...)

Paying your support staff well is virtue signaling to be sure but as someone who’s always had a soft spot for top shelf QA and support folk, that’s not a bad thing.

There is a reason and it's based on the external market dynamics that the company itself can't control. The potential candidate salespeople can see/compare how other companies pay for sales.

Whatever principled stance the company wants to take on compensating salespeople in a different way than "industry standard" e.g. "same salary + same bonus as the devs" or "flat salary no commission" etc ... those idealistic plans still have to compete in the marketplace with other companies paying high sales commissions. Therefore, if the more egalitarian sales comp structure means the "rainmakers" are choosing other companies instead of yours, it's a moot point.

E.g. 0xide's comp plan for recruiting good salespeople still has to be competitive with everybody else such as: https://www.cbinsights.com/company/oxide-computer/alternativ...

Sales commissions aren't an "industry standard" just because they're an "industry standard" type of circular reasoning. It's an industry standard because other compensation methods for salespeople that pay them like all the other non-salespeople don't work so most successful companies converge on paying high commissions for high performers. A lot of non-salespeople don't understand this so it seems like paying commissions for sales positions is arbitrary and unnecessary and therefore, "unfair". As a dev, I used to think sales commissions that exceeded my salary were ridiculous but having attempted sales myself, it now makes perfect sense.

Salespeople don't want to be paid like devs with an annual bonus. You have to treat them differently: https://a16z.com/why-must-you-pay-sales-people-commissions/