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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?

#181

Post by JonChesterfield »

anonfordays wrote: post #166
everial wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The completion of a formal education is much more important than the institution From https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0003 -- which was top of mind since I started looking at the postings after reading the article. ;-)

That section is comedic gold. It reads like a character from Silicon Valley opining on hiring "only the finest." Poe's Law hilarity.

Looks coherent and well considered to me. Oxide can't really get away with hiring friendly-but-incompetent. I liked this section from the written part, that looks worth doing as a self reflection exercise.

> What work have you found most challenging in your career and why?

> What work have you done that you are particularly proud of and why?

> When have you been happiest in your professional career and why?

> When have you been unhappiest in your professional career and why?

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

#182

Post by plorkyeran »

lolinder wrote: post #161
plorkyeran wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that's unusual about sales is that it's the only metric that anyone's ever found that's (mostly) an exception to Goodhart's Law. Companies would love to pay a lot more people on commission if you could find a way to calculate commissions that gave the desired incentives.

It's not really that it's an exception to Goodharts Law, it's that Goodhart's Law only applies to measured proxies. If the goal of a company is first and foremost to make money, then sales is the only organization within the company that can be measured exactly according to the primary goal of the company rather than a proxy. Goodhart's Law still applies to the extent that companies have other goals and sales's incen…

Making sales and making money aren't the same thing. They're close and clearly related, but sales going up while money goes down is very possible!

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

#183

Post by JonChesterfield »

whazor wrote: post #91

I have personally followed the same strategy, but at the expense of my ‘career development’. Trying to perform well or getting a promotion can be a lot of unproductive effort. I think the only downside of 100% uniformity is that you don’t hire and train junior engineers, which should also be like a duty. While you could pay juniors the exact same salary, this might give that person a lot of stress (“ concerned that t…

If you picked the junior carefully they'd be fine in terms of added value.

Training useless junior engineers is excruciating. There's a strong sense of pouring time into the void. Good juniors are a different game. Someone that understands new stuff on the first try and asks piercing questions about what stops a given approach from working is great.

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

#184

Post by JonChesterfield »

hinkley wrote: post #130
whazor wrote: post #91

I have personally followed the same strategy, but at the expense of my ‘career development’. Trying to perform well or getting a promotion can be a lot of unproductive effort. I think the only downside of 100% uniformity is that you don’t hire and train junior engineers, which should also be like a duty. While you could pay juniors the exact same salary, this might give that person a lot of stress (“ concerned that t…

I’ve worked with a lot of engineers who punch down and what they all have in common is that they don’t have a clue how to make lemonade from “lemons”. They just want people who can read their minds. Tough shit. Never going to happen. New people ask questions and make mistakes that reveal organizational problems that would help everyone if fixed. As a company grows there are more parts added to the system and at some…

There's a really sad failure mode for talented raw engineers that get no feedback in the first few years. They write a lot of code, and it's trash, but noone steers them in a better direction. Wait maybe three years on zero feedback and they've convinced themselves that their work is great and this new critical feedback they're getting can't possibly be right. You end up with clever and productive and shite, all mixed up in one indignant bug farm.

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

#185

Post by pm90 »

lolinder wrote: post #160
lbotos wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 engin…

This is a very interesting point. I wonder how many roles there are like this: low valued because they are low valued, in a vicious cycle. We hire people to fill a prescribed low-value role and don't expect much of them so we don't pay them much and so we don't get much out of them, because we designed the role to be low impact. If we treat every role as a $200k/yr role, it makes sense that the first thing that would…

So much this. We also underestimate how motivated people can be in these roles when they make an atypical comp; my experience has been that people push themselves hard to prove they’re worth that rather than coast.

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

#186

Post by pm90 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #176
mastax wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also some of their customers are airgapped so if they’ll let you touch the machine that’ll make debugging a lot easier.

> some of their customers are airgapped I'm not doubting you, but where did you hear that? Wow, what kind of data center installation is air-gapped in 2025, except for ... maybe military industrial complex (maunuf + military) and spy agencies?

well those are pretty big customers…

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

#187

Post by parrit »

steveklabnik wrote: post #152
mrcwinn wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the same equity, I assume?

No, it’s variable. This is covered in this thread and in the original article.

Eye roll. I get capitalism. It's OK. Just say "we do capitalism". Why pretend otherwise?

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

#188

Post by scargrillo »

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.

This reads more like a reflection of how we’ve historically designed support roles than a fundamental truth about them.

Oxide’s approach seems to invert the premise: instead of paying people based on a low-leverage job description, they design roles where every team member is expected to operate at high leverage — including support engineers. That means hiring differently, scoping differently, and building a product that aligns with that structure.

It’s fair to be skeptical of anything cushioned by VC — but skepticism cuts both ways. Just because traditional comp structures haven’t empowered support doesn’t mean they can’t. We’ve seen engineering, design, and even ops roles evolve dramatically when companies raised the bar. Why not support?

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

#189

Post by throwaway2037 »

Aeolun wrote: post #139
ralph84 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine they had to introduce variable comp for sales because they weren’t able to hire even a single good enterprise sales rep for a flat $200k. It’s not a culture thing, it’s just the market rate for the role. If they paid a flat $500k they’d stand a better chance of avoiding variable comp.

I find the whole variable comp for sales so bizarre. It’s like people trying to claim that the only way to get decent work out of programmers is by giving them comp on lines of code written. Why can’t a salesperson be properly motivated by just, you know, doing their job?

Below, we see lots of interesting replies, but none mention the fact that nearly all sales jobs have variable comp. Thus, if you do not offer variable comp, the best sales will never work for you. A good way to think about variable comp: It allows you to attract and retain superstars. In some sense, big tech already does this with their top 5-10% of technical staff by paying regular, large cash/share bonuses.

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

#190

Post by TZubiri »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #176
mastax wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also some of their customers are airgapped so if they’ll let you touch the machine that’ll make debugging a lot easier.

> some of their customers are airgapped I'm not doubting you, but where did you hear that? Wow, what kind of data center installation is air-gapped in 2025, except for ... maybe military industrial complex (maunuf + military) and spy agencies?

Maybe not all the datacenter, but why wouldn't you airgap backup and long term cold storage?
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