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Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

open.bufferapp.com

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Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#91

Post by vladimirralev »

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…

This matrix makes sense if you hire your team to be of roughly equal performers (within the seniority range) who value honesty. I doubt they will ever hire a 200K person, because they made a business decision that they don't need one. Even if they need one, they can always review the matrix and add flexibility. It takes a specific approach to hiring when using this structure.

There are some significant advantages in building an open team like this. People know what's their pay-grade and what part of the company they actually represent. If they don't think their cut is fair they can signal it. Many companies have confidential salaries so even when you know you are underpaid you can't argue it without throwing peers under the bus for revealing their salary to you.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#92

Post by humanrebar »

zmitri wrote: post #67
runako wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

$150k is middle class in NYC. If you work in Manhattan, it's a small place with a short commute or a normal-size place (by national standards) with a long commute.

If you don't work in Manhattan or can work from home most of the time, you can have a pretty luxurious lifestyle, yes.

Also, being single with no one to support isn't the average case. I'd argue we should assume that each working person supports one other person. That lines up with American demographics much better.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#93

Post by icambron »

I actually love the radical transparency here, even after reading all the warnings in the HN comments.

What I like less is the salary formula. What's going to happen is that all of the negotiation is going to get packed into the experience and seniority multipliers. It creates the illusion of rigor and possibly does more harm than good.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#94

Post by iandanforth »

JonFish85 wrote: post #85
DominikR wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 m…

Perhaps this is a good thing? One of the leading factors in wage disparity between men and women (other than outright sexism) is a difference in negotiating style. Men ask for more, more aggressively, and more often. If a female employee sees that her direct counterpart is making 15% more than her for some reason, perhaps this would cause her to ask for parity. Or, better yet, by making salaries a function rather than the outcome of a negotiation (as much as one can) perhaps the disparity never arises.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#95

Post by freyr »

Many people here are picking on the senior developers salaries, hovering right around $100K. Maybe this isn't a particularly competitive startup salary, but note that salaries are tied to revenue.

If the company's revenue grows significantly, their salaries could become much more attractive. If, for example, revenues grow from $2M revenue to $20M revenue, senior developers would see their salaries increase by $54k or ~50% over this time.

It could be argued that 10X growth or an $18M increase in revenue is unrealistic for a tweet scheduler, but that's for the employees to determine.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#96

Post by TheCoelacanth »

mberning wrote: post #4
iampims wrote: post #2

It’s one thing to have a transparent salary policy, it’s a whole another world to publicly blog about people’s salary with a link to their Twitter account. I hope all employees agreed to have their salary published on the buffer blog. Kudos to them for trying something different.

Yeah, I think it would have been more than enough to simply explain the formula and provide some anonymized examples. On another note, I am quite surprised at how underpaid some of their positions seem. Senior iOS engineer barely cracking 100k in a very expensive market...

It seems like the bonuses for Senior and Lead are too small. The highest paid engineer is only making 20k more than the lowest paid, and 16k of that difference is because of location.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#97

Post by minimaxir »

blah314 wrote: post #53
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…

You know, you're making a good case for techies publishing their current salary/day rate. In a sellers' market disclosure should drive prices up.

That would only work if everyone discloses. Prisoner's dilemma.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#99

Post by svachalek »

Euro_IT_drone wrote: post #46

Just trying to compare here with my European salary.. How much of this do you get to take home, ie. what part of it can you spend on food, clothing, housing etc. after takes? What about health insurance, is it provided for?

Social security tax is 7.5%, with an annual cap of $113k (taxed) Medicare tax is 2.9%. Federal tax is very complicated but probably in the range of 20-25% for most people. State taxes vary by state. In California it can end up being a third of your federal tax. You really need to save about 10% for retirement. Health insurance may or may not cost you money. Typically it will cost at least a few $thousand/year.

Having talked to a few Europeans about it, my impression is that both the raw salary and the % you keep are quite a bit better in the US, for professional workers, and that most goods cost less. But you are expected to work more hours with less time off and if you get sick or hurt or something really bad happens to your company/town/industry, good luck to you. There are "safety nets" for most of these things but they have a lot of holes in them.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#100

Post by blah314 »

minimaxir wrote: post #97
blah314 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, you're making a good case for techies publishing their current salary/day rate. In a sellers' market disclosure should drive prices up.

That would only work if everyone discloses. Prisoner's dilemma.

s/everyone/a critical mass/
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