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Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

oxide.computer

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Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#141

Post by epolanski »

bcantrill wrote: post #124
jedberg wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a result of the industry being on a downswing, and a lot of unemployed engineers, who have recently seen rank and file getting laid off while execs get bonuses. People are very bitter about comp right now, so it's spilling over into this discussion.

But you would think that such folks would see the value in the model? I mean, I get that trust is at a very low point but wouldn't folks see the value in a model that focuses on (among other things) fostering mutual trust? There is clearly a lot of anger out there, and I don't know if that's part of a broader trend or not.

Readers here live in a bubble where the only reason to build a company or join a startup is to get rich, god forbid someone wants to build something, likes a challenge and countless other personal reasons.

No, in this sad place it's either discussing how to move up through corporate ladders or joining startups with insane funding and equity. God forbids, again, anyone has personal professional goals beyond being rich.

Fwiw I like your model and opennes and I find it super fair equating equity with risk. Moreover, I feel like no comments go beyond the money to actually see the goal which is to have people collaborate over compete, remove all the bs that ruins most jobs.

Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#142

Post by jedberg »

bcantrill wrote: post #138
jedberg wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people are just going straight for "what's the catch", "how does this create greater benefits for the founders?". I even replied to someone who said "I was waiting for the other shoe to drop" and the complained about the 100% insurance coverage being unfair. People are super bitter at execs right now, and the vitriol here is not justified. FWIW I really like it, although I would love to know more about how eq…

Equity has been purely formulaic based on arrival at the company. And speaking personally (though I don't think that I'm an outlier at Oxide in this regard), this is the best team I've ever had the pleasure of working with -- extraordinary in its breadth and depth.

Interesting. Have you ever had a candidate turn down the offer because the equity was too low? Do you have any issues getting senior people to join with this comp plan?

I'm just thinking for senior people, do you have trouble getting them in the door? Like, would you be willing to work at Oxide at the equity levels you're offering today?

Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#143

Post by epolanski »

ivraatiems wrote: post #90
epolanski wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the letter addresses this perfectly: equity depends on risk you take, the earlier you joined the more you get seems very reasonable.

Except that undermines some of the core points of the letter. They talk about transparency, but are still being quite opaque. They talk about teamwork, but as employee 50, how am I supposed to feel like I'm on the same team as employee 10, when he stands to make several times more than I do if we succeed?

As employee 10 why would I have to take more risks, put hard work if I m going to make as employee 1000 who did little?

Anyway, the beauty of such transparency is that you can decide whether it is fair for you or not.

Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#144

Post by nonethewiser »

rubiquity wrote: post #29
btheshoe wrote: post #4

Very interesting approach to gaining a comparative advantage in the labor market: pay everyone less.

Pay has never been an accurate reflection of skill and skill has never been an accurate reflection of what a person can bring to a company. Big Tech thought they could use a combination of paying more and a stringent interviewing process to get the best talent. It turns out in the era of gamified interviewing (LeetCode and friends) that they were wrong and now are laying off tens of thousands of people. Having done o…

It most certainly is correlated. Look at averages not individual data points. Clearly a junior engineer makes less than a mid level which makes less than senior, etc. I agree completely that there is a lot of noise within that though.

Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#145

Post by xvector »

seattle_spring wrote: post #112
eganist wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't share datapoints from where I work, but competitive datapoints I've gotten vary from 300k total comp to 800k total comp for senior, staff, principal engineers as well as managers in SF, LA, and DC (though DC is on the lower end). To your point, salaries tend to swing between 150 and 350, but the rest is made up with bonuses and especially stock comp. Netflix recently advertised an eng mgr role for appsec with a…

Nothing about this article or thread is taking about total comp. It’s talking about specifically base salary. ~$200k is in-line with plenty of companies’, even large ones’, bands for L5 FTEs.

Pre-IPO stock is vapor money.

Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#146

Post by refurb »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #72
refurb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My perspective is the COL difference is mostly housing. There are other things that are more expensive than MCOL cities like gas, utilities, childcare, but it's pretty much housing that makes up most of the higher costs. And housing costs are quite different between the peninsula south of SF and the East Bay, so it's not easy to answer your question. But if the expectation is that a family of 5 owns a home and the 3…

That fits my experience. If your W-2 income is 200k+ you should be able to afford everything including a place to live (old beaten-down shithole house in a bad neighborhood with a long commute, or old beaten-down tiny shithole condo close to work) Of course, it's easy to look at that and say "Oh, I'm coming out way ahead by making 150k in $NormalCity instead", but realistically _everything_ after that base 200k is go…

Exactly. Once you cover the essentials, everything above that is cash in your pocket.

People say "oh my god, housing is double in the Bay Area"? And yeah it is. But if you're renting and it doubles from $2,000 to $4,000, that's an extra $24,000 post-tax per year.

If you're getting a salary bump of >$36,000 per year (pre-tax) then you'll still be ahead paying double for rent.

Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#147

Post by zamnos »

nebula8804 wrote: post #119
zamnos wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people do . $190k's just this ridiculous "from first principles" logic game on how much money you need to "survive" there, but it really means "not panic over money or going hungry and bank a little in an emergency fund and a retirement account" level of living, and not "If I eat ramen for a week I can afford the concert ticket" level of subsistence.

But is 120k at least somewhat comfortable for a single person? These different levels you described really hit different as you age. Yeah I could be ramen level but if the option is to not be ramen level at 120k elsewhere then moving to LA is not worth it but if there is a minimum level of comfort then other things make it worth making the move.

LA and the surrounding area isn't cheap to live in. It really all depends on what you do with your money and how lavishly you want to live but I'd say $120k is actually quite reasonable if you're able to live reasonably. Given the choice of $120k in LA or $120k elsewhere, I'm not going to lie, the $120k is going to go further elsewhere (except for, like, SF or New York), but then you're not in LA.

I also don't mean to impugn ramen either, as LA's got some really really good ramen restaurants. It all comes down to if you want to or not. LA's got a lot to offer but it's not for everybody.

Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#148

Post by SkyPuncher »

newaccount2023 wrote: post #120
seniortaco wrote: post #86

Salary is not the same as compensation. If we look at Amazon, they do something very similar as they have a salary cap which most employees hit at L6. They can then say 'Even the CEO hits this same salary cap' when in reality the former CEO was the wealthiest person in the world. Oxide is clever in being provocative here but this is part of a totally normal compensation model.

pretty obvious...Oxide can't offer scheduled RSUs...

I'm probably being to "but technically..."

Oxide can offer RSU. It just wouldn't make financial sense for anyone to take those.

Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#149

Post by panick21_ »

nebula8804 wrote: post #46

Looking at the careers page once again it seems like I am behind the curve. They are probably hoovering up the best engineers Google laid off: people who rode the ZIRP wave and are probably already wealthy as heck and are now jumping onto the next big thing that normie techies will latch onto after it too becomes cliche. It seem like reading HN is only if you want to know what has happened not what is currently happe…

Oxide has been on HN since very early on and they have been very public for 3 years now. The literally started the company doing a podcast. The opposite of hard to find.

https://oxide.computer/podcasts/on-the-metal/teaser

4 Nov 2019

Re: Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

#150

Post by panick21_ »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #3

How many "non-privileged" companies (tech or not) can't charge the margins tech can (due to whatever market they're in/competition/"that's just the way it is"/customer's wouldn't pay those prices) which enables them to do stuff like this?

First of all, tech isn't always high margin. Second, there are many types of companies that 'could' do this. And even if you are not a 'privileged' company (whatever that is) you can do the same scheme with lower salary.
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