Yeah well where I live (Finland) your income (and taxes) are public information. Eg. all persons in a city earning over 150k or some such are published in several tabloid newspapers.
You know so that you can rat on your neighbors if they seem to live beyond their means or something... They could be tax evaders, gasp!
You can very easily obtain this information about your coworkers if you are interested.
Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer
141–150 of 352 posts
Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer
#142Earlier 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…
"You would only be upset because you currently work in a company with a culture that doesn't value transparency as a core value."
So you are saying that when buffer hires someone they are aware that transparency = "we may publish your salary some day"? And that everything is an open book?
Hard to believe that is the case. Or that people didn't feel under pressure to go along with (as some research has show) what they previous may have loosely agreed to (See Cialdini "consistency" principle).
Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Ja…
Worked as an intern once, had one of the full-timers complimenting my work and saying I was just as sharp/skilled as him at the job. I knew he was getting paid a lot more than me. The multiplier was probably a whole number . Yes, he was on-call and I wasn't. Yes, there are always other good reasons too. But it still rankled to be doing close to the same work, and paid so much less. As you say I made sure to stay igno…
Do you think you would if you knew exactly why the other person was paid more, and how you could get to that level? I find the public table a lot fairer than not knowing how much the others make and why.
Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer
#144This doesn't scale well when your company grows to hundreds of employees or even thousands.
Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
And a net worth of $500M is lower class when you restrict your population to that of all people with net worths >= $500M (there are many thousands of such people).
Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
This is so laughable. The median salary in NYC is $50,000 per household. This includes tons of people who work in Manhattan (I've met more people who work in Manhattan and live in other boroughs than otherwise - the daily commute numbers back that up.) As another poster mentioned, even just Manhattanites make $70,000 a year for the household. I personally know many people living in Manhattan making far less.
$150k is most definitely upper middle class. I grew up in Queens my whole life and until I started working professionally, never met someone who made more than $150,000 a year.
Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm not sure I understand the point you're trying to make.
If you're not a founder or in executive management, there is rarely any value in looking at equity "compensation" at an early-stage startup. Again, as can be seen in my example, when you're dealing with sub-1% equity amounts post dilution and liquidity preferences, as most employees are, the numbers simply don't work in your favor. To walk away with a meaningful windfall that is substantially higher than the cash salary earned over your vesting period, you will need an exit that is statistically very unlikely.
Any employee who expects his or her equity stake to be on par with founders and executive management is wet behind the ears, and any individual who has dreams of becoming fabulously wealthy is far more likely to realize those dreams by starting a company than going to work for one.
Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer
#148Earlier 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…
In SF, close to 50% in taxes, cost of living in SOMA, assuming you want to live right by your office (what is it, 3k for a studio?) and those 160k will not get you very far.
> In SF, close to 50% in taxes
When I moved to SF from Alabama, I lost ~1->5% more of my paycheck to taxes. Note that Alabama is a dirt cheap place to live, and that I get so much more from that tax money in SF.
Yes, the taxes here are bad if you compare them to Washington or some other low-tax haven... but they're really not that bad here.
Also, yes, rent is insane in the city. More apartments must be built!
Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer
#149Let'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…
In negotiation, typically the party with the most information has a better negotiating position. Posting salaries is a significant piece of information that will almost certainly help a competitor since it greatly reduces the cost of them acquiring the knowledge.
Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Worked as an intern once, had one of the full-timers complimenting my work and saying I was just as sharp/skilled as him at the job. I knew he was getting paid a lot more than me. The multiplier was probably a whole number . Yes, he was on-call and I wasn't. Yes, there are always other good reasons too. But it still rankled to be doing close to the same work, and paid so much less. As you say I made sure to stay igno…
Do you think you would if you knew exactly why the other person was paid more, and how you could get to that level? I find the public table a lot fairer than not knowing how much the others make and why.
Oh, I knew how to get to that level and I knew for sure at least some of the specific reasons there was the discrepancy.
That doesn't stop unbidden thoughts from creeping into my head at 4AM when the two of us are working side-by-side doing the exact same thing.