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Let's say I'm a competitor, and I find that Niel (randomly picked) is someone I want to hire. All else being equal, I offer him $100k (website says he's making $88k). He comes to his boss to say "I like it here, can you match it?" What does his boss do? Especially, if he's valuable to the company... What if I have a very specialized skill that doesn't fit nicely into your matrix? Let's say market pay for my skill is…
Do they really think they can ban private emails between engineers? it would have been much easier to simply load eavesdropping software on their computer if management doesn't trust them.
I really like Buffer but I'm a little worried about them.
Let's say I'm a competitor, and I find that Niel (randomly picked) is someone I want to hire. All else being equal, I offer him $100k (website says he's making $88k). He comes to his boss to say "I like it here, can you match it?" What does his boss do? Especially, if he's valuable to the company... What if I have a very specialized skill that doesn't fit nicely into your matrix? Let's say market pay for my skill is…
I trust co-workers when they do what they say they will, when they are respectful & smart, when they show up on time, when they tell me when I screwed up in a nice way, etc. I could care less what they make--to me it would be a distraction.
Can't say a lot of good things about a company that pays a "Chief Happiness Officer" more than most of its engineers. I know plenty of startups that seem to be doing alright in the customer service department without an overpaid exec heading it. Does she really contribute more to the bottom line than any of the other 4 underpaid engineers?
Implied Revenue: $2.0M [1]
Total Salary: $1.7M
[1] ((158.8 - 22)/1.2 - 75×1.2)/12
Can't say a lot of good things about a company that pays a "Chief Happiness Officer" more than most of its engineers. I know plenty of startups that seem to be doing alright in the customer service department without an overpaid exec heading it. Does she really contribute more to the bottom line than any of the other 4 underpaid engineers?
A Chief Anything Officer should probably be paid more than engineers, or they shouldn't have the words Chief and Officer in their title. And that seems like a very developer-centric viewpoint. Yes, good customer service can add a lot to a company's bottom line. Some companies have huge engineering issues and need engineers to solve them. Some companies have huge sales issues and need sales people to solve them. Some…
I know few rigorous investors that would stand to pay their CEO/founders more than ~80k a year, at least until it's clear the company is maturing. Also, as a founder with significant equity, I'd much rather put as much of my salary that I can spare (My wife and I need to eat, pay rent, etc.) to go towards bringing in (and keeping) top sales or technical talent. If you believe in my company, the math works out very well.
I also do the occasional angel investment, and frankly, I'd be pissed to see a business I invested in run like this. Two annual international offsite trips? What?! You're building an app to schedule tweets. This is not rocket science. Get to work!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The vast majority of compensation in software companies is tied up in options... That's absolutely not true. Most companies never have a liquidity event, a significant number of stock options never vest (employees leaving before they're fully vested is very, very common at startups) and even when a company delivers an exit, the vast majority of employees with equity will, at best, walk away with what amounts to a m…
You are correct, I was being SV-centric. Edited.
Take a senior engineer at a startup with a $125,000/year salary. He has options that are fully vested after four years. Let's say his options represent a .5% equity interest in the startup after dilution and there are no liquidity preferences to deal with (a highly unlikely scenario). His company would need to have a $100 million exit for him to walk away with a pre-tax amount equivalent to his gross salary over those four years ($500,000). In 2012, according to CB Insights, over half of startup exits were less than $50 million, and more than 80% were less than $200 million.
Let's say I'm a competitor, and I find that Niel (randomly picked) is someone I want to hire. All else being equal, I offer him $100k (website says he's making $88k). He comes to his boss to say "I like it here, can you match it?" What does his boss do? Especially, if he's valuable to the company... What if I have a very specialized skill that doesn't fit nicely into your matrix? Let's say market pay for my skill is…
This sounds like absolute hell > Every internal email sent between any 2 people on the team has a certain list cc’ed that is accessible for everyone: For example if 2 engineers email with each other, they cc the engineers list, if it’s people on our customer support team they have a support email list cc’ed. Stripe was a great inspiration for this. (More about this) Openness and transparency and honesty are great. Bu…
But an effect of this "you're being watched" is that you will modify your behavior to at least meet the spirit of the law, and this modificAtion can be I itself beneficial. Trivial example: I used to cuss a LOT...but volunteering in family friendly jobs forced me to not do that, or at least start using "gosh" and "shucks". I found out (as Orwell might attest to) that my mood overall improved without reverting to the negativity so reflexively.
In the case of Buffer...OK, some kinds of very important communication may be stifled. But a whole lot of non productive behavior (idle chatting via email) may be stifled. And then there are benefits of transparency, in which everyone realizes they have to start out in a consensus building mood.
And for the cases where you need to take someone to the woodshed, so to speak? Do it in person. That alone mitigates some problems that come from misinterpretation through the written word