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

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

#51

Post by yieldcrv »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #42
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone was paid the same as the CEO, at many startups everyone would quit.

Fair, but perhaps they’d also work as hard as the CEO if they were paid the same and had equal preferred founder shares instead of common shares. Also, when was the last time you heard of employees with equity getting a secondary to take money off the table vs founders getting to do so? It’s not the disparity per se (because at some point, there is a demarc between the population willing to sleep on the floor and eat…

Many times the founders don't have preferred shares and just common as well

VCs many times being the only winners or only ones to get any money back

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

#53

Post by nebula8804 »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #14
slap_shot wrote: post #6

> the three of us live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Steve and I each have three kids; we knew that the dollar figure that would allow us to live without financial distress – which we put at $175,000 a year Putting aside the fact that is terrible way to determine the rate of pay for anyone, let alone every single person in a company - how on earth did they come up with such a lower number for such a high cost of…

Yeah... $190k sounds a lot except in any HCOL area (SF, NY, LA, Seattle, heck even Portland has skyrocketed) it's going to feel very tight with three kids.

190 isn't enough for LA? I was thinking of moving there while making ~120k. Granted I have no kids or anything but I thought 120k could make it in LA?

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

#54

Post by rvnx »

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #27

"Everyone paid same as CEO" seems great as a morale boost at a startup of 23 employees. Even if it's not a lot, startups are often not flush with extra cash and equity is the main incentive to join one rather than a tech giant. I like the mature "this may not scale and it doesn't have to for now" admission.

191'000 USD / yr "even if it's not a lot" ?

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

#55

Post by ClumsyPilot »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #36
cat_plus_plus wrote: post #27

"Everyone paid same as CEO" seems great as a morale boost at a startup of 23 employees. Even if it's not a lot, startups are often not flush with extra cash and equity is the main incentive to join one rather than a tech giant. I like the mature "this may not scale and it doesn't have to for now" admission.

If everyone was paid the same as the CEO, at many startups everyone would quit.

Has this ever happened in real life?

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

#56

Post by [deleted] »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #36
cat_plus_plus wrote: post #27

"Everyone paid same as CEO" seems great as a morale boost at a startup of 23 employees. Even if it's not a lot, startups are often not flush with extra cash and equity is the main incentive to join one rather than a tech giant. I like the mature "this may not scale and it doesn't have to for now" admission.

If everyone was paid the same as the CEO, at many startups everyone would quit.

[deleted]

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

#57

Post by mmcclure »

paxys wrote: post #31

I assume they are all giving every employee the same % of equity as the founders? No? The article very conveniently skips that whole discussion.

> Some will say that we should be talking about equity, not cash compensation. While it’s true that startup equity is important, it’s also true that startup equity doesn’t pay the orthodontist’s bill or get the basement repainted. We believe that every employee should have equity to give them a stake in the company’s future (and that an outsized return for investors should also be an outsized return for employees), but we also believe that the presence of equity can’t be used as an excuse for unsustainably low cash compensation. As for how equity is determined, it really deserves its own in-depth treatment, but in short, equity compensates for risk – and in a startup, risk reduces over time: the first employee takes much more risk than the hundredth.

There's an entire bullet point dedicated to it. They even used the same words you used, so searching the page should have gotten you to this section.

If you don't agree with the specifics of their argument here, then that would be an interesting addition to the conversation.

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

#58

Post by ramesh31 »

jchonphoenix wrote: post #9
slap_shot wrote: post #6

> the three of us live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Steve and I each have three kids; we knew that the dollar figure that would allow us to live without financial distress – which we put at $175,000 a year Putting aside the fact that is terrible way to determine the rate of pay for anyone, let alone every single person in a company - how on earth did they come up with such a lower number for such a high cost of…

I'm curious how they make this work in sf unless they own a home or bought a long while back.

>I'm curious how they make this work in sf unless they own a home or bought a long while back.

Comment shows how warped our expectations really are. It's still a 90th percentile household income in the SFBA: https://www.vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/income

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

#59

Post by nonethewiser »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #17

> The truth is that companies pay people less in other geographies for a simple reason: because they can. We at Oxide just don’t agree with this; we pay people the same regardless of where they pick up their mail. So, look. I completely agree with this, and it’s an admirable ideal. If I were in a position to make this kind of decision, I’d make the same decision or one that looks a lot like it. But if you’re anticipa…

It’s also not quite true that companies can just pay local rates. In my experience someone from low COL can easily find a position where the “local” pay band for their level is higher than the local rate. It’s virtually impossible for an engineer with 2 or 3 YOE from LCOL to find a local job paying 125k+, but not hard at all to find such a remote opportunity.

Furthermore, not all jobs are equal. If Google moves their headquarters to Detroit they won’t suddenly pay Detroit wages.

And finally there is another force at play here - companies need to fill the position and what they pay HCOL candidates establishes what they’re willing to pay for the work. Living in Beverly Hills doesn’t make you a better engineer. This isn’t a bargaining chip you can use, but it’s a fact you can benefit from if you’re persistent.

The markets just arent siloed as much as people want to pretend.

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

#60

Post by paxys »

mmcclure wrote: post #57
paxys wrote: post #31

I assume they are all giving every employee the same % of equity as the founders? No? The article very conveniently skips that whole discussion.

> Some will say that we should be talking about equity, not cash compensation. While it’s true that startup equity is important, it’s also true that startup equity doesn’t pay the orthodontist’s bill or get the basement repainted. We believe that every employee should have equity to give them a stake in the company’s future (and that an outsized return for investors should also be an outsized return for employees), b…

> As for how equity is determined, it really deserves its own in-depth treatment

AKA skipping the discussion

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