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Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

open.bufferapp.com

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Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#61

Post by bjpless »

suprgeek wrote: post #55

Excellent concept - but one major Caveat. Why in the world would you publish it for all the world to see? Keep it internal to the company - you have an expectation of privacy from your employer and this post just ruined it completely. I hope they got written signed releases from every one of those folks whose private info they broadcast to the world.

Seconded. Hard to imagine all employees signing off on this release for the sake of a HN article. But I hope that they did. I would be very upset if my salary were published unbeknownst to me.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#62

Post by swombat »

dsugarman wrote: post #18

I have a feeling you will regret this soon. There are certain benefits in having a firm salary structure sponsored by a transparent system, but the loss of flexibility will hurt in ways you haven't experienced. Also, letting everyone know what their peers make can cause disgruntled employees.

My company, GrantTree, is also run with open salaries (internally, though I posted the salary scale in an HN comment before). There was some disgruntlement when everyone was underpaid, but there's been remarkably little disgruntlement from individuals asking for more money for just themselves. This had been so for over a year now, so not conclusive, but starting to accumulate some data.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#63

Post by [deleted] »

kapilkale wrote: post #37

Seems unwise to have a CEO co-founder be the highest salaried employee at a startup. That person's equity position is probably at least an order of magnitude higher than the other employees. As an investor or employee, I'd find this alarming. http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/08/peter-thiel-best-predictor-... Call me old fashioned, but I think co-founders should be paid living expenses + 25%, even in a series-A funded st…

[deleted]

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#64

Post by carsongross »

7Figures2Commas wrote: post #48
carsongross wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct, I was being SV-centric. Edited.

Even in Silicon Valley, the "vast majority of compensation" is not tied up in options because again, statistically, most employees will never realize significant gains from their options. 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 p…

Are you OK with "In some companies"?

And my point isn't about average engineers. My (corrected, I admit I was overstating things with the original phrasing) point is that, in some companies, the really huge comp differentials come from non-salary compensation. So just looking at salaries is not, in those cases, a complete or honest picture.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#65

Post by swombat »

bjpless wrote: post #61
suprgeek wrote: post #55

Excellent concept - but one major Caveat. Why in the world would you publish it for all the world to see? Keep it internal to the company - you have an expectation of privacy from your employer and this post just ruined it completely. I hope they got written signed releases from every one of those folks whose private info they broadcast to the world.

Seconded. Hard to imagine all employees signing off on this release for the sake of a HN article. But I hope that they did. I would be very upset if my salary were published unbeknownst to me.

You would only be upset because you currently work in a company with a culture that doesn't value transparency as a core value.

If you worked in a company like Buffer or GrantTree, you'd be wondering why others are so secretive about their salaries, and find yourself more and more disliking the idea of working for a company which is not transparent.

Habit is a powerful thing. Change your surroundings and you'll change your habits.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#66

Post by joeframbach »

benihana wrote: post #36

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…

I would last 5 minutes with that policy. First order of business would be writing an email rule to delete anything that's not specifically sent directly to me.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#67

Post by zmitri »

runako wrote: post #52
kapilkale wrote: post #37

Seems unwise to have a CEO co-founder be the highest salaried employee at a startup. That person's equity position is probably at least an order of magnitude higher than the other employees. As an investor or employee, I'd find this alarming. http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/08/peter-thiel-best-predictor-... Call me old fashioned, but I think co-founders should be paid living expenses + 25%, even in a series-A funded st…

>> co-founders should be paid living expenses + 25%, even in a series-A funded startup It's risky to comment without knowing the specifics of Joel's situation. But it seems that his $158k salary isn't outside those bounds if he lives in e.g. San Francisco or NYC. Hard to know someone's living expenses without drilling way into their personal financials, and again this is not unreasonably high. Thiel, from the link yo…

I worked in finance and made less than that in salary.

It's enough for a luxurious existence in NYC provided you don't have children. I'm not sure whether or not they have children, but that's a lot.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#68

Post by rcoder »

JonFish85 wrote: post #29

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…

Three things:

First, most recruiters/hiring managers ask for current comp (or at least a salary range) early in the discussion, so it should be easy for them to offer well over someone's current pay. This simply removes one bargaining tools (lying about current comp) for an employee considering a move elsewhere.

Second, matching outside offers very quickly becomes a slippery slope. Anyone who figures out that such a policy exists will quickly come to the realization that the easiest way to get a raise is to put themselves onto the market. That's toxic, not to mention unsustainable.

Finally, equity. The one-year cliff exists for a reason, and if you're playing for keeps with an early-stage startup, you're probably expecting (or at least hoping) for your ownership stake to be worth a lot more in the long run than your salary.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#69

Post by JonFish85 »

ricardobeat wrote: post #38
JonFish85 wrote: post #29

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…

"All else being equal" is a huge assumption. Will your company offer the same environment, flexibility, openness, remote work? You should first assume that Buffer keeps their employees very happy to be able to openly publish their salaries.

That's great, but what if Niel has a kid? Suddenly priorities are shuffled in a big way. Maybe he needs a 5% raise to afford ? Is it worth it to the company to lose the employee over 5% of salary?

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#70

Post by DominikR »

JonFish85 wrote: post #29

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…

> 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?

This happens all the time anyways, hiding the salary of the employee isn't going to make any difference in most cases.

And is it so hard to guess what some (say iOS engineer) earns? The salaries that Buffer pays are in the range of what I expected them to be anyways.

> 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 $200k. Do you create a new category for me? Do I get dirty looks from all of my co-workers because I have a valuable skillset that most people don't?

I'd expect the founder of the company should be able to justify paying someone $200k to his employees when he can justify this to himself and his investors.

I mean it's not like anyone will be blown away by the fact that there are people (VPs, managers) that earn 3x to 100x of what they earn themselves.

What is your fear? That the employees will seize the property of the company and turn it into a communist collective?

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