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Buffer Layoffs

open.buffer.com

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Re: Buffer Layoffs

#61

Post by dahdum »

compiler-guy wrote: post #36

This may be a little cynical but: "With our culture of bringing our whole selves to work and seeing team as family, with shared values we live by,..." In the American business world, you are an employee until you aren't. Confusing being an employee with being "family" is a mistake, both for the company and the employee. When times get bad, companies do what it takes to survive, including throwing employees overboard.…

"Buffer may have thought it was different, but that flow-chart of how they decided who to layoff was entirely about how an employee can help the company, not how the layoff would affect the employee."

I read that chart differently, they are retaining their longest tenure staff in each area without regard for ability. Seems a lot more "family" like to me.

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#62

Post by pbreit »

I have mixed emotions with Buffer's shtick. On the one hand there's something fresh and unique about it. On the other, I think: just put your heads down and get to work serving customers!

I'm guessing the main benefit of the open-ness is marketing. I doubt it helps the company much beyond that.

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#63

Post by Declanomous »

danso wrote: post #7

FWIW, here's their public spreadsheet of salaries and calculations. Not sure if it's been recently updated (on closer look, seems to reflect the founders' stated pay cuts, and new hires as recent as last month): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l3bXAv8JE5RB9siMq36-... edit: Adding links to their blog posts: https://open.buffer.com/transparent-salaries/ https://open.buffer.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffe…

Well, I am apparently massively underpaid.

And I have to commute to work. Lose-lose.

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#64

Post by jdavis703 »

hobo_mark wrote: post #10

I certainly appreciate their openness, and like to follow their progress, but... ...could anyone explain to this naive commenter how it takes 90 (80 for that matter) people to run essentially a 'cronjob as a service' business?

At my company we had non-technical staff that had to update a YAML file to post editorial content to the homepage and mobile apps. For an engineer, IT person, etc, this is trivial. Not so for other people. I had to spend so much time supporting this I replaced it with Contentful (an API-based CMS). These are the kind of pain points that companies like Buffer try to solve.

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#65

Post by yuncun »

danso wrote: post #7

FWIW, here's their public spreadsheet of salaries and calculations. Not sure if it's been recently updated (on closer look, seems to reflect the founders' stated pay cuts, and new hires as recent as last month): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l3bXAv8JE5RB9siMq36-... edit: Adding links to their blog posts: https://open.buffer.com/transparent-salaries/ https://open.buffer.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffe…

What are Happiness Heros? Customer service or HR?

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#67

Post by beachy »

jes wrote: post #52
compiler-guy wrote: post #36

This may be a little cynical but: "With our culture of bringing our whole selves to work and seeing team as family, with shared values we live by,..." In the American business world, you are an employee until you aren't. Confusing being an employee with being "family" is a mistake, both for the company and the employee. When times get bad, companies do what it takes to survive, including throwing employees overboard.…

I'd say no relationships, including family relationships, should be maintained if they aren't in the long-term self-interest of all parties. In other words, every relationship is a trading relationship, and the currency of the realm isn't always, or even often, monetary in nature.

Perhaps true, in a real super rational techy view of the world, as long as by long term you mean the entire life of all the family members.

But not a particularly useful observation, just as the concept that "giving to charity is an act of selfishness, since people only only do it to feel better about themselves" might be true but is not useful.

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#68

Post by Arcsech »

hobo_mark wrote: post #10

I certainly appreciate their openness, and like to follow their progress, but... ...could anyone explain to this naive commenter how it takes 90 (80 for that matter) people to run essentially a 'cronjob as a service' business?

Let's do some simple estimation! I haven't really looked at their spreadsheet, so this is just guesswork.

The product is fairly simple technologically yes, but the value is provided by making it easy to use so the customer saves time (= money). To do that you need a few UX people plus some developers (especially with web and mobile apps), call that 15 engineers/designers total, plus another 5 for ops. Now you need a sales team since your real money will be in selling to enterprises - call that 15 people. And on top of that you need customer support, and call that another 20 people. Now that we're up to 55 people, we need another 10 people worth of HR and 5 bean counters, that takes us to 70. Now cap it off with 10 managers/executives and we're up to 80, and I'm sure there's some things I was off about or forgot.

It's easy to forget about all the non-engineering resources you need for a medium-sized business.

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#69

Post by joosters »

"We had just come out of a long experiment with self-management, where we fully leaned in to ..."

What on earth does 'fully leaned in' mean? It's not the greatest of metaphors, I pictured someone falling on their face.

Re: Buffer Layoffs

#70

Post by nilkn »

dsacco wrote: post #45
danso wrote: post #7

FWIW, here's their public spreadsheet of salaries and calculations. Not sure if it's been recently updated (on closer look, seems to reflect the founders' stated pay cuts, and new hires as recent as last month): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l3bXAv8JE5RB9siMq36-... edit: Adding links to their blog posts: https://open.buffer.com/transparent-salaries/ https://open.buffer.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffe…

I admire Buffer for being so transparent with their salaries, but I don't think I would ever decide to work for a company that mandated it. In my (admittedly limited) experience, mandating salary transparency tends to increase the salaries of low performers and reduce the salaries of high performers. It usually eliminates the potential for negotiating raises and poses difficult questions about paying some employees m…

The $155k salary might be due to the transparency, but could it also be due to a simple inability to pay developers $300k+? That's well over double the CEO's salary. I think it's clear they simply don't have the revenue and cash reserves to pay developers that kind of money. I suspect you'll find this to be true at a lot of smaller startups that rely on actually making money instead of fundraising.
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