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Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

open.bufferapp.com

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Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#81

Post by JonFish85 »

rcoder wrote: post #68
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…

>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.

Currently this screws "Niel" (to stick with the example). He wants to move someplace else and is convinced that he is worth $140k. He's convinced he's underpaid right now. He interviews at, say, Google (random example), who does a bit of research and hey, he's only making $88k. Suddenly they don't have to offer him market rate, they only have to offer him a raise on what he makes now.

Obviously this only works if one company (Google in this example) isn't as open about their salaries.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#83

Post by freehunter »

swombat wrote: post #65
bjpless wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 chang…

I work at a pretty conservative company, and even I wish salaries were open, at least internally. I don't believe that salary should be determined by how effective of a negotiator you are, but rather what your skills are worth to the company. If you knew they were low-balling you compared to your coworkers, how would you feel?

I wish job postings more often had salary information, too. How am I supposed to know if an interview is worth my time when I don't know if the pay will be higher or even competitive with what I'm making now?

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#84

Post by oijaf888 »

swombat wrote: post #65
bjpless wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 chang…

How much do you get paid? I don't see a blog post on GrantTree publishing employee's salaries. (I didn't spend a ton of time looking though, so apologies if I did miss it)

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#85

Post by JonFish85 »

DominikR wrote: post #70
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 sa…

No, the fear would be that employees look at someone with a 3x salary differently than they would if they didn't know what his salary was. It's just a distraction. I don't know how much my boss makes. It could be half what I make, it could be triple. I don't really care. If I found out suddenly that it's triple what I make, then maybe I'd look at him differently. Does he bring in 3x value to the company compared to me? Maybe in my opinion he doesn't--do I talk to the CEO to say "hey, we can replace this guy cheaply"? It just seems like pandora's box at that point.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#86

Post by tootie »

ricardobeat wrote: post #35
danso wrote: post #12

Wow...the engineering salaries are significantly lower than I would've expected for a well known startup in the Bay Area...at least compared to the perceived range for such things. Note: a less cynical take is this: GodDAMN buffer employees must be happy working there if they tolerated transparency to this level...which, really, is the best win-win for all kinds of transparency scenarios.

They have engineers in the UK, Taiwan, Ireland and Colorado. If they all lived in SF the salaries would be above $100k.

I'm one of maybe 10-12 architects at some stupid company and I make more than everyone at Buffer including the CEO.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#87

Post by oijaf888 »

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…

What if the company is profitable? Should CEO co-founders still be paid the bare minimum to live? (living expenses + 25% works out to living expenses after taxes) If they are burning investor money and will require 2-3 more rounds to become profitable, then it would be a pretty big negative.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#88

Post by thenmar »

DominikR wrote: post #70
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 sa…

I think the fear is that it will create animosity by making the information so accessible. On some level, the junior-level dev knows he's not making as much as the guy with the PhD in an esoteric mission critical topic, but he has a kind of plausible deniability that lets him avoid thinking about it. If everyone's making 80k and everyone knows that Jane The Expert is making 300k, there's going to be friction. "Hey Jane, why don't you pay for the dinner."

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#90

Post by invalidOrTaken »

untog wrote: post #21
ra3 wrote: post #9

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 upvoted you, but now I regret it. Not because this was a bad comment, but because I realize now that I disagree.

"Chief" and "highly compensated" are not necessarily joined at the hip. It should be possible to have a C-level exec with most of their compensation variable and dependent on company performance or certain metrics, rather than a whopping base salary.

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