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The boss who put everyone on 70K

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Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#311

Post by rootusrootus »

fahadkhan wrote: post #279
alexbanks wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious where this poster got that figure. I haven't found anything like it, in fact a pretty consistent 145k average salary. I would also be wary of average vs. median, as there's some real crazy outliers out there.

Pedantic note. You probably mean mean (or mode) vs median. They are all different types of averages (amongst others).

I'm guessing OP did in fact mean median, since the point is that outliers at the top can really skew the mean. Median gives a more realistic idea of what people are typically earning.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#312

Post by claire-ah »

Mikhail_Edoshin wrote: post #89

As far as I know, there was an Argentine tango orchestra (one of five great tango orchestras) led by Osvaldo Pugliese that used a similar approach. Pugliese was indeed a communist, a member of Communist Party of Argentina, I believe, and in his orchestra they divided all the earnings equally among members. Was one of the most stable tango collectives.

As a gravity employee and tango aficionado, I find this comment extremely relevant

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#313

Post by cerberusss »

leetcrew wrote: post #129
benibela wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, having money makes me less productive, since I spend more time caring about the stock market. Like yesterday alone my long ETF lost 2000€ worth, and I bought a short ETF for balance, which went up 200€. Should have bought the short ETF earlier, but I was at work. Here I am actually losing money by going to work

I don't mean this as a jab, but have you ever compared your overall gains with the s&p over the same period? unless you're really smart/lucky, it's probably not worth the stress. I also "lost" a lot of money this week, but I'm not leveraged and I have positive monthly cashflow, so it's no big deal. I just bought a little more of my favorite broad market etf than usual and went back to my life.

I agree with you. Just keeping with the S&P is pretty great, with the benefits that you can maintain concentration during the day.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#314

Post by j8014 »

Pfhreak wrote: post #267
zacharycohn wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are typically luxury units, which are not affordable to most people outside the tech sector. Meanwhile, despite high salaries many people in the tech sector (rightly) don't want to pay luxury prices, and so they are also competing for lower priced housing.

Oh, 100%. We need to incentivize affordable housing. It should be in the developers interest to house as many as possible rather than as lushly as possible (until we're all comfortably housed.)

How? Why would a developer want to lose money housing as many people as possible? At the end of the day your looking to sell or rent for the highest $ per SQ FT possible in your market, with the least amount of risk. If your rent to 50 @ $500, your gross monthly rent income is 25,000. If you rent to 10 @ 2,500 you have the same totals. You are much less profitable with 50 units @ $500 because of maintenance/repairs, tenant issues & labor. It takes a whole lot more to keep 50 units operating than 10.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#315

Post by woozyolliew »

dominotw wrote: post #272
bloblaw wrote: post #241

I used to work at Gravity. Dan (owner of Gravity) is sincere and frankly the real deal. Dan Price really is like what is presented in this article. He actually cares about his employees and is being genuine here. He's a good person, making a private business decision to increase the pay of frankly his lowest paid workers. In a city where the average tech worker earns $275k a year, he believes its the right thing to d…

>average tech worker earns $275k a year I need to move to bay area this year. thats my sole mission this year.

That really seems like a high average, even for the Bay Area. I suspect median total comp is lower, even for FAANG. Also, the company in the article is in the Seattle area. Lastly, even at the extraordinary level of income of $275k, cost of living means that while you’ll be comfortable, you won’t feel especially kingly.

I’d add Portland, Austin, Minneapolis, etc. to your consideration. Comp is 25% lower, but cost of living is even lower than that.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#316

Post by macspoofing »

It seems like a good initiative, but two thoughts immediately come to my mind:

1) Him making $1million salary at a small-medium company is quite a bit, but that may be because ...

2) ... the company is clearly making a lot of money (as in a lot of profit) and/or growing quickly. When you're growing and making huge profits at a software company, you can afford to pay above the market rate because you have spare cash. At some point that will change. The growth rate will plateau and they will cut salaries (maybe not for existing employees, but for new hires), or layoff expensive staff.

But props to Dan to get this done when he had the chance to.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#317

Post by macspoofing »

curiousguy wrote: post #180

I wonder how long it will take for the salaries to normalise comparing with market rate. The salaries increased to 70k minimum, so they’re paying above market rate for a few roles. The hiring quality will also increased. For example, with a 40k salary, the company could hire someone with 5 years of experience, with 70k, they can find someone with 10 years of experience. So in a few years the company will get rid of l…

>I wonder how long it will take for the salaries to normalise comparing with market rate.

When they stop growing and increased competition will cut into their margins, and especially if they start losing money. At that point, they'll be looking at efficiencies everywhere - and those expensive employees will probably be laid off.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#318

Post by macspoofing »

Pfhreak wrote: post #162
WalterBright wrote: post #34

Since it's working for Dan and his company, great! > in Seattle that wasn't enough to afford a decent home. Because the population in Seattle has grown by leaps and bounds, if everyone could afford one of the supply of homes, the prices would go up until demand equals supply.

Alternatively, we could push to make housing not a commodity. Build more public housing, upzone and regulate what gets rebuilt to ensure more units, put laws in place to advantage renters, make building affordable units a higher roi than building luxury units, etc.

Or make housing a commodity.

>make building affordable units a higher roi than building luxury units, etc.

Every luxury unit that is built lessens the pressure on housing demand.

So the key is: just build more housing.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#319

Post by sailfast »

appleiigs wrote: post #286
anentropic wrote: post #253

> Two senior Gravity employees also resigned in protest. They weren't happy that the salaries of junior staff had jumped overnight, and argued that it would make them lazy, and the company uncompetitive. The mentality of these people...! Not people you want in your company

> he rented his house out on Airbnb to help stay afloat. As senior employees, maybe they had stakes in the company. Maybe they didn't want to go through the above.

From the article it doesn’t sound like he was forcing them to take the base salary but rather making that the minimum salary for everyone at the company.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#320

Post by codegeek »

skookum wrote: post #300
Apocryphon wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon/Microsoft TC, probably. Base salary is a different story.

I don't know why there is always this nitpick. I just take it for granted that when someone talks about tech "salaries" they mean "total comp". Virtually everyone in my peer group makes more than half of their total comp from non-salary compensation. Sure that portion varies somewhat due to market forces, but there seems little point in discussing base salaries.

Because Cash is king. Everything else can be taken away or reduced or diluted or what not.
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