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Compensation as a Reflection of Values

oxide.computer

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Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values

#31

Post by wwww4alll »

darth_avocado wrote: post #3

Isn't this like, socialism? Everyone gets paid the same regardless of what they bring to the table? Like union jobs.

It’s more recruiting and marketing tactic, the company is saying how fair they treat everyone by paying same salary.

It may work in short term, when everyone is part of product and tech team, and building product and valuation.

It will become a problem when junior people are paid same as senior level people that’s delivering more impact. And, when the company grows and have to hire support staff. Will they pay same salary to the receptionist?

Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values

#32

Post by bcantrill »

__jem wrote: post #30
bcantrill wrote: post #29

If folks are interested (and in the spirit of keeping things positive), I'm happy to answer any questions here about our comp philosophy or about Oxide more generally.

For those of us who are only Rust hobbyists and don't have the hardware experience to work at Oxide, are there other companies you know that are pushing similar values? I'd take a major pay cut to have this kind of transparency and focus on culture.

That's a great question. I hear too often that our values (and, more disturbingly, our principles!) are differentiators -- but they honestly shouldn't be: I would encourage any company (but especially startups) to be very frank about their values. Of course, this requires those values to be a fair representation of the organization (namely, describing values that are actually held, not virtues aspired to), and then further requires ongoing and honest conversations about reflecting those values in daily life -- but these are solvable problems.

To answer your question: I don't have a long list, though companies like Stripe certainly come to mind. I'm sure there are others out there. Perhaps others can point to companies that are models in this regard?

Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values

#33

Post by petr_tik »

bcantrill wrote: post #29

If folks are interested (and in the spirit of keeping things positive), I'm happy to answer any questions here about our comp philosophy or about Oxide more generally.

Unrelated to comp. I have seen several of your talks and I cannot wait to hear you speak at a rust conference of some kind.

On that note, how involved will Oxide be in the rust foundation?

Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values

#34

Post by majormajor »

smasher164 wrote: post #15
vecplane wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an employee's impact is more valuable, why shouldn't that employee demand to be paid more? If a job or position is less valuable, why shouldn't that position be paid less?

The question could be flipped around as "why should they be paid more/less?" The goal is to treat the salary as a necessary (evil?) for "what you need to feed your family, buy a house, etc..." and not as the primary motive for work. An employee who makes a valuable impact does so because they want to see the company/product succeed.

> The goal is to treat the salary as a necessary (evil?) for "what you need to feed your family, buy a house, etc..." and not as the primary motive for work.

This seems shortsighted. Even after your immediate needs are covered, you can be a long way away from being comfortably able to feed your family next year, in ten years, in twenty years, even if things change.

An employee who demands as high a salary as they can get for the work they do may just be thinking more long-term.

Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values

#35

Post by dvnguyen »

bcantrill wrote: post #29

If folks are interested (and in the spirit of keeping things positive), I'm happy to answer any questions here about our comp philosophy or about Oxide more generally.

Thank you for sharing. I’m curious if you include equity as a part of the compensation package?

Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values

#36

Post by darth_avocado »

wwww4alll wrote: post #31
darth_avocado wrote: post #3

Isn't this like, socialism? Everyone gets paid the same regardless of what they bring to the table? Like union jobs.

It’s more recruiting and marketing tactic, the company is saying how fair they treat everyone by paying same salary. It may work in short term, when everyone is part of product and tech team, and building product and valuation. It will become a problem when junior people are paid same as senior level people that’s delivering more impact. And, when the company grows and have to hire support staff. Will they pay same s…

But why then even write an article on it, if your experiment is only valid for a very specific set of people, and the minute you start hiring more people or different skillsets or age groups or experience or pretty much anything else, it fails?

Like literally anyone can start a team of few people that are all paid the same. It's not really that hard, nor does it require that much attention. You only need to write about it, if it successfully stays that way for a long period of time or if it scales when parameters change.

Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values

#37

Post by robocat »

This is pure capitalism: they believe that the various benefits accruing to the organisation due to the flat compensation outweighs the various costs.

This thesis could easily be correct in a VC funded company that relies upon the minds on the team, and aims to be a unicorn. It couldn’t work in a low-margin business that relies on employee body count.

It is intriguing to look at high-margin software businesses and look at revenue per employee (or profit per employee when they become mature businesses). Employee costs are often the biggest expense in tech companies (and tech startups: oxide = 23 employees at $180250 with 20MM VC invested).

Marginal profit growth of tech companies often requires little marginal increase in employee headcount/costs. The economic consequences of this are often under appreciated by many people.

Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values

#38

Post by sam_bristow »

Apparently the domain name provider I use (iwantmyname.com) has a similar structure. They did a 10 year retrospective post a while back on how it had worked out for them.

https://iwantmyname.com/blog/the-one-salary-experiment-ten-y... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7713916

Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values

#39

Post by fhrow4484 »

bcantrill wrote: post #29

If folks are interested (and in the spirit of keeping things positive), I'm happy to answer any questions here about our comp philosophy or about Oxide more generally.

I understand your desire for employees meeting more-than-basic needs, while the company equity is currently monopoly money.

Is "commitment to excellence" not a value? If one were to join Oxide but was mediocre, they would surely get fired. But on flip side, if they use their unique combination of skills & discipline, potentially at the expense of some personal sacrifice to bring a ton of value to the company, while still being full of honesty, integrity and decency, then no upside? Or is variable equity refresh the answer to this scenario?

Otherwise "Measuring people impact is hard, so nobody gets paid more" seems a bit crab mentality.

Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values

#40

Post by wwww4alll »

darth_avocado wrote: post #36
wwww4alll wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more recruiting and marketing tactic, the company is saying how fair they treat everyone by paying same salary. It may work in short term, when everyone is part of product and tech team, and building product and valuation. It will become a problem when junior people are paid same as senior level people that’s delivering more impact. And, when the company grows and have to hire support staff. Will they pay same s…

But why then even write an article on it, if your experiment is only valid for a very specific set of people, and the minute you start hiring more people or different skillsets or age groups or experience or pretty much anything else, it fails? Like literally anyone can start a team of few people that are all paid the same. It's not really that hard, nor does it require that much attention. You only need to write abo…

It’s way to get noticed. It landed on front page of HN, so it worked somewhat.
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