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Our $100M Series B

oxide.computer

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Re: Our $100M Series B

#161

Post by Keyframe »

mystraline wrote: post #113
Aurornis wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does everyone at Oxide have the same equity grant? I thought I saw this question answered in a previous thread and the answer was basically “no”, but the question has been avoided a lot. Aspects of equity compensation would inherently need to be different over time due to valuation, fundraising stage, and so on. However I always thought it was strange that they made a big deal about paying everyone the same base sa…

> There was discussion about how they thought candidates asking about compensation to be something of a negative signal because they wanted people who weren’t in it for the money, basically. I've heard this from multiple hiring managers and C levels. The cognitive dissonance is amazing. Do you know why I show up and work? Because I am paid for it, and in this country, medical is also gatekept by employment. If I wasn…

If I wasn't paid, I wouldn't work for them.

While this is true for most of the cases, it's not the case always. There are definitely jobs I'd work for less than I make at the job now and there are jobs which are considered "dream jobs", but ultimately there needs to be a solid base to make you and your family feel comfortable if you're spending at least 1/3 of your day on.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#162

Post by piker »

Aside from the actual product, On the Metal / Oxide and Friends are really great podcasts that manage to make programming topics entertaining and educational. Bryan Cantrill is wildly entertaining and knowledgeable at the same time. His co-hosts and guests are great, too, and I attribute a lot of that to feeding off of his energy and storytelling. Highly recommend, especially for Rust folks.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#164

Post by jasode »

diggan wrote: post #120
darren0 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty fundamental to the personality of people in sales to be driven by getting the sale and getting compensated based on the deal size. If you remove that carrot, it just doesn't work. Some sales people will make millions, some will make nothing.

> If you remove that carrot, it just doesn't work How come it works for basically every other job on this planet? Developers aren't paid per feature implemented/bug fixed, and we still do those things, how come sales people are unable to do things for a fixed monthly salary?

>, how come sales people are unable to do things for a fixed monthly salary?

You have to separate out 2 different ideas of the "theoretical idealized salesperson that works for fixed salary" -vs- "real-world salesperson that works for variable commissions".

The businesses that have attempted to pay fixed salaries for salespeople end up attracting incompetent salespeople who can't sell. They become a negative cost on the company's payroll because they can't bring in any revenue. In contrast, the high-performance salespeople (the "rainmakers") are attracted to the variable high-commission, because they know they have the hard-to-find skills to actually sell and bring in the money. If a salesperson has the skills to get a customer to sign a contract and pay money, they have the leverage to get a percentage of that.

Developers, db sysadmins, tech support staff, etc are not in situations to directly influence and shake the hand of a new potential customer and convince them to write a check.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#165

Post by speed_spread »

diggan wrote: post #120
darren0 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty fundamental to the personality of people in sales to be driven by getting the sale and getting compensated based on the deal size. If you remove that carrot, it just doesn't work. Some sales people will make millions, some will make nothing.

> If you remove that carrot, it just doesn't work How come it works for basically every other job on this planet? Developers aren't paid per feature implemented/bug fixed, and we still do those things, how come sales people are unable to do things for a fixed monthly salary?

Because sales are quantifiable and directly mapped to performance.

To get that kind of proportional payback in engineering you'd need very clear financial objectives for a project. I could see that happening in optimization scenarios where consultants are brought in and get paid for whatever they can trim from operational costs.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#166

Post by bpt3 »

diggan wrote: post #144
bpt3 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that they're unable to; it's that the field attracts people who are financially motivated and other companies have compensation structures that reward personal performance. Top salespeople generally won't work for a fixed salary because they want to make as much as they can, and the way they do that is by having as much of their compensation tied to personal performance as possible. I personally think more e…

> because they want to make as much as they can But that's the same no matter if you work in sales, customer support or many other roles, a lot of people just care about the money with little regards to anything else, yet the sales department are the only ones who must have commission?

> But that's the same no matter if you work in sales, customer support or many other roles, a lot of people just care about the money with little regards to anything else,

It's actually not the same for many roles. See the comments from people in this thread alone who scoff at the notion of maximizing compensation. I don't get it personally, but it's not an uncommon thought.

> yet the sales department are the only ones who must have commission?

I think there's a very high likelihood that a salesperson is primarily driven by compensation, and good salespeople will already be working in a commission-driven compensation model elsewhere.

Why would a top salesperson at Dell, HPE, Oracle, or wherever else a hardware salesperson comes from move to Oxide to take less money and completely decouple their compensation from their performance?

Re: Our $100M Series B

#167

Post by steveklabnik »

benreesman wrote: post #150
steveklabnik wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true in the abstract, but we're talking about a salary of $207,264 in this case. You don't need to be independently wealthy to make it on our salary.

It's still a class thing. With the CoL in most SWE-heavy metros and the outright war on engineer pricing power over the last few years? Just about any engineer who isnt independently wealthy is: - recovering from layoffs and a period of unemployment at a high-COL cost structure - facing layoffs with the above salients - facing an imperative to insulate their fucking house with cash for their turn in the above crossha…

> "200k is plenty to live on" is rich, well-connected guy talk in 2025.

The median US income in 2023 was $39,982 for an individual, and $78,538 for a household.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#168

Post by Etheryte »

mrcwinn wrote: post #13

Everyone at Oxide makes the same salary: >We decided to do something outlandishly simple: take the salary that Steve, Jess, and I were going to pay ourselves, and pay that to everyone. [ https://oxide.computer/blog/compensation-as-a-reflection-of-... ] Does everyone at Oxide have the same equity grant?

Out of curiosity, how would you imagine that working out, technically and specifically? You start out with founders having equity, and maybe some early investors. Then you employ some people and... what happens exactly? Are new shares created, is everyone who was already onboard slowly diluted, what happens when someone joins and leaves? Etc, I don't think there is an approach to this where all sides would be happy, so I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#169

Post by steveklabnik »

Aurornis wrote: post #145
steveklabnik wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true in the abstract, but we're talking about a salary of $207,264 in this case. You don't need to be independently wealthy to make it on our salary.

Exactly. It’s also important to know that they support remote work, so these salaries really are not bad at all. For someone in a non-tech city who doesn’t want to move this would be a great startup job. My only reservation is that I’ve interviewed with or worked for multiple companies that made some claim about paying everyone the same and there was always some loophole: The company might have a fixed base pay but t…

We have salary and equity, no bonuses. Salary is identical, equity is not. I certainly agree with you that that kind of shenanigans can be annoying; I had a former employer who hired people with "oh it's a bonus but you always get 100% of it" and then, we did not get 100% of it.

Re: Our $100M Series B

#170

Post by benreesman »

Aurornis wrote: post #156
benreesman wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still a class thing. With the CoL in most SWE-heavy metros and the outright war on engineer pricing power over the last few years? Just about any engineer who isnt independently wealthy is: - recovering from layoffs and a period of unemployment at a high-COL cost structure - facing layoffs with the above salients - facing an imperative to insulate their fucking house with cash for their turn in the above crossha…

> With the CoL in most SWE-heavy metros They’re a remote company. They’re not targeting HCOL metros. > and inflation has savaged a notional 200k. > "200k is plenty to live on" is rich, well-connected guy talk in 2025. Claiming that $200k is not enough to live on is rich-guy talk. The majority of the country lives on well below $200K. I agree that a single person living in a HCOL metro like SF Bay Area would not find…

Nothing about a remote gig in one job affects the imperstives I highlighted about past layoffs or future uncertainty: pricing relocation into or out of e.g. SFBA at zero is another conversational gambit popular with the out-of-touch. You don't teleport.

It's bad generally, this is a terrible time to be a working person in general. How SWEs stack up against profession X? Depends on profession X.

SWEs are in a job market where a bunch of folks who have been repeatedly prosecuted for wage fixing (most successfully/recently in 2012) are taking another swing at it in a much more lawless regime. That's as precarious as it gets when this cabal monopolizes the front row at the Inaugeration.

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