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New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

open.buffer.com

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Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#121

Post by aantix »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #43
aantix wrote: post #22

Open salaries are only great if you’re some introverted, beta developer that can’t speak up for themselves. “Everyone’s the same. Hooray Marxism!” If you’re good and you have any sort of gumption, negotiate hard and take the money the feeble leave on the table.

Unhelpful if you're a female: PDF https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/cfawis/bowles.pdf Even trying to put yourself in a position to negotiate doesn't work: PDF https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/orsc.1110.069...

I appreciate the citations.

>"Unhelpful if you're female"

3.7 billion women in the world, and not a single female is successful in negotiating a higher salary?

Of course not. In fact, when comparing men vs women at the same level, company and profession, wage differences disappear. So there's obviously women that are quite successful in negotiating their salary. https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/08/daily-...

And the initial point is that you don't want (or even need) the crutches that the average person requires (transparency).

You're not average. You can find a way to negotiate more that plays to and exemplifies your strengths.

You have desires for your life (e.g. travel or a family or a cool hobby) - push hard, demand more for yourself and don't apologize.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#122

Post by andylei »

dyeje wrote: post #52
eximius wrote: post #12

Wow, this is really terrible. This looks like a PR explanation for why they're slashing everyone's salaries. A cursory glance shows everyone either staying the same or dropping. > One of the toughest decisions we made with the new formula was to remove the annual 3% loyalty increase given to teammates for each anniversary from their start date. > We looked at a lot of options and in the end decided to remove it as it…

This is delusional. How does someone have the nerve to put a paragraph like this in a blogpost about how they're giving almost every employee a paycut? The question on everyone’s mind was “Can we afford this?” and “is this sustainable?” When we sought input and advice from those outside of Buffer we also were asked, “Why would you pay your team members with more generosity than you need to?” As it turns out, our answ…

except the CEO and the director of people. their salaries magically stayed exactly the same

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#123

Post by peshooo »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #19

Another company that does open salary calculations is Gitlab: https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/developer/#compensation (this is a random developer job, you can check out other positions @ https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/ ) Here's the feature ticket: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/issues/831 Disclaimer: I don't work for Gitlab, but I am a pretty biased rabid fan.

For senior position, you get 150k USD more in SF than in Eastern Europe. The rent difference is not even close to 150k USD...

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#124

Post by hajile »

ensignavenger wrote: post #113
hajile wrote: post #8

Why do companies continue to pay out higher salaries to devs in high cost of living areas? In this case, their payscale pays out 30-50K more in high cost living areas vs low cost areas. Rather than blow revenue rewarding bad life choices, offer to move them to an area with lower costs of living. Do that for only 10 employees and you have 300-500K EVERY SINGLE YEAR to re-invest into your company. In practically any ot…

Why do companies continue to under pay employees in lower cost of living areas by not paying them as much as their counterparts in higher cost of living areas?

The real key is to unify all the smaller markets into one big market. When everyone has to compete with everyone (rather than being the big company in the small market) salaries will go up everywhere except high-cost areas due to market pressure.

Both negative (taking away) and positive (adding) responses are beneficial to devs.

If if a company chooses to raise everyone's salary, Awesome! Now companies that lower salaries must compete.

If a company chooses to lower everyone's salary, Awesome! Devs in high-cost areas will be forced to move which will unify the market at which point devs in traditionally lower-wage areas will now be able to compete in a larger market and negotiate for more pay.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#125

Post by sidlls »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #118
fogetti wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it have to do with the openness of the formula/salary data if another company pays more? > there's no subjectivity in this formula Yes, there isn't. Because subjectivity in favour of someone, is to the detriment of another employee (because the budget is limited). It just usually happens to be the case that the employers somehow "magically forget" to communicate this to the employees. So you are basically k…

Because subjectivity in favour of someone, is to the detriment of another employee (because the budget is limited) This is not how salaries work. Companies don't have a pool of $x for y employees. They try to hire every employee at as low a cost as possible. If you accept a salary at $10,000 below what they were willing to pay for that role, it's not like you can rest easy knowing that the other employees will get th…

> I'd like to better understand why we don't.

My view: most workers just want a paycheck and at the end of the work day leave work at work. That isn't compatible with running a company. Besides, even in worker-owned companies an implicit hierarchy emerges and gains its own inertia until eventually "ownership" is technically true but doesn't mean much.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#126

Post by anonacct37 »

sidlls wrote: post #106

The transparency is great. Here's a question: why doesn't Buffer pay the "low CoL" developers more? It doesn't seem right that "low CoL" workers get paid so little compared to their peers.

I agree. The first step to fixing or avoiding a problem is knowing it's there.

It's great to be able to have a little more understanding of what companies are thinking when they try to judge an employees value based on location rather than... value provided to the company.

I think the dynamics are pretty interesting. Forgive me if this seems like a not so humble brag, but I'm remote and paid way more than anyone at buffer. I also have a pretty decent network of remote friends at my company and at other good companies.

With that in mind I can tell you that the practical effect of Buffer's policies is that they have decided to self-select for developers who are currently underpaid and historically have not had their pick of good jobs. Because otherwise they'd be taking a pretty big paycut to work at buffer and, while possible, it seems unlikely that social media management is a dream job for many developers.

So the entire open policy, no matter it's surface intent, is basically a policy to grab sub-par talent. Especially insecure talent who is willing to buy into "radical transparency".

Meanwhile, my base is pretty close to their CEO's compensation, but I live in a low COL area. It turns out that the marketplace is competitive enough right now that it's a viable bargaining technique to say "pay me X, where X I guess that was a really long winded way of saying that buffer has implemented policies that self-screen out the best developers, which is fine. You probably don't need the best developers to send tweets on a schedule.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#127

Post by hajile »

joshuamorton wrote: post #108
aantix wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about just pay them to the value they bring? Why did location ever play a part? If the dev works on a rarely used admin app, surprise, you pay them lower.

This creates perverse incentives among your employees. Now every employee is fighting to work on the "moneymaker" applications. And I don't really believe that a company will be able to accurately assess the value that every application used brings it.

The weakest link in the chain. If a company's working on a bad project that will never contribute, it's good to kill it. If you work on a money-center, that's obviously good, but if you work on the thing that allows the money-center to continue to be a money-center, that's just as good even if not as obvious.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#128

Post by ryanwaggoner »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #105
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We obviously can't all be the 1%, but I think it's probably more the top 10% who could make $300k? Maybe that's optimistic and out of touch, though. At any rate, my point isn't that this will kill Buffer, but I suspect it'll be a drag on their performance over the long run. Who knows though. And I don't really care; it's not my company. What I care about is whether I'd go work for them or advise others to do so. And…

It's probably mistaken to say that 10% of the software engineering workforce could become millionaires within 3.3 years if {condition}, for all values of condition ruling out survivorship bias. Also $300k total comp translates to $450k fully-loaded cost to the employer, meaning you can only hire four of those engineers before you burn through $2M funding per year. Are you sure that's worth it?

It's probably mistaken to say that 10% of the software engineering workforce could become millionaires within 3.3 years if {condition}, for all values of condition ruling out survivorship bias.

Have you ever earned $300k in a HCOL? Because I have (NYC) and you're doing very well if you get to save $100k of that. If you're single, by default you lose $120k to taxes, so then you need to keep your budget under $6700 / month. Which isn't really that hard, but most don't. Granted, tax-advantaged retirement savings and other things can change the math here, but my point is that it would take more like 8-10 years (depending on market growth), not 3.3.

And my point wasn't that 10% of engineers are doing that, but just that they are capable of getting that kind of job with some effort. If all 10% of them tried, that would push the market down, so I'm really just talking capability, not whether 10% of devs could all be simultaneously making that.

Finally, I'd like to see a breakdown of the $300k to $450k number. The premium that employers pay to get to fully-loaded cost isn't a fixed percentage, it goes down as comp rises. So yes, it might cost $120k fully loaded to employ an $80k engineer ($40k on top of their salary), but why does it cost $150k for someone making more?) The cost for office space and healthcare are two of the biggest costs of employing someone, and they're relatively fixed, right? $450k might be realistic, just seems high to me.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#129

Post by [deleted] »

sidlls wrote: post #125
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because subjectivity in favour of someone, is to the detriment of another employee (because the budget is limited) This is not how salaries work. Companies don't have a pool of $x for y employees. They try to hire every employee at as low a cost as possible. If you accept a salary at $10,000 below what they were willing to pay for that role, it's not like you can rest easy knowing that the other employees will get th…

> I'd like to better understand why we don't. My view: most workers just want a paycheck and at the end of the work day leave work at work. That isn't compatible with running a company. Besides, even in worker-owned companies an implicit hierarchy emerges and gains its own inertia until eventually "ownership" is technically true but doesn't mean much.

[deleted]

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#130

Post by kowdermeister »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #98
kowdermeister wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As worker in Eastern-Europe, their salaries look totally awesome to me. You'd be surprised for this money how many good people you could find.

Let me be clear: from one perspective, I get paid a ridiculous amount of money for what I do. I push buttons and think for a living. I spend a few hours per day doing it, I really enjoy it, and I can do it anywhere in the world from my laptop. It's crazy that someone is willing to pay me $100k / year, and I'm super grateful for that. Really. However, that doesn't mean that $100k / year (or whatever the minimum I'd be…

I get that, my point is that with their "lower" salary I could get the best of both worlds like staying in my current city (Budapest) and earning as much as a good CEO here.

I get offers from companies, but if the job/product is boring, a higher salary does not justify the switch for me.

I don't disagree with you, I tend to gravitate towards a high pay :) We will soon have a salary formula refactor too, but I think the raise might be a rounding error compared to remote pays.

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