71–80 of 96 posts
This will work for literally anyone who doesn’t live in the Bay Area.
This might work for Bay Area people who retired early or without a mortgage responsibility.
But for folks who do have a mortgage or other big monetary responsibilities in the Bay, $175k cash without equities is simply too low. Especially considering how many unicorns are popping the last one year.
The formatting is weird on mobile and it rambled on for a long time with saying anything before my hand got tired.
What's the point of the article?
Bryan Cantrill is an amazingly accomplished technical person, so I don't understand how he could written this piece.
This is just an honest feedback from someone who lives in the Bay Area. This will work for literally anyone who doesn’t live in the Bay Area. This might work for Bay Area people who retired early or without a mortgage responsibility. But for folks who do have a mortgage or other big monetary responsibilities in the Bay, $175k cash without equities is simply too low. Especially considering how many unicorns are poppin…
That said, it's not like the Bay comes up favorably when compared to...everywhere else in the world; given the choice of hiring in the Bay and...everywhere else, in the entire English-speaking world, I think most sensible people would choose the latter (especially when considering how many of the best and the brightest there are in places like the East Coast and Canada who $175k or $180k would seem fantastic to). I'm sure Oxide won't be hurting for talent, and I'm sure its employees won't be hurting for cash, either.
Plus, they are getting equity. Says so right in the blog post.
My first thought: a startup in the server business shouldn't be also trying to redefine compensation in the world. I say this because I've tried something similar several times, and always regretted it. They're going to have a lot to accomplish. Blogging and interviewing and dealing with the inevitable unforseen consequences of this decision is going to take their collective eyes off the ball. Let a growth-stage comp…
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I’ll be interested to see how this works out. My 2-cents, I think you should always pay well, but differentiation needs to occur somehow. Perhaps it’s more vacation (because good workers get their work done faster), a bonus at the end of the year, something. I say this because it’s difficult to keep good workers. I work very hard, I work with people who work half as hard, and produce a fourth as much. While some are…
I would say that we're very big on intrinsic motivation and teamwork -- and that these two things (coupled with our transparent compensation) serve to give people reward from their work that is something beyond what differentiation provides.
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.
What exactly is Oxide doing? Which parts of Sun is it trying to take after? I'm guessing hardware isn't the majority of its focus, since most people who've publicly acknowledged being hired are software people, but the Oxide landing page makes it seem like it is. Love the podcast, by the way! Off-topic, but on the note of retrocomputing and Sun appreciation: Would you consider putting that copy of Spring you have on…
For the parts of Sun that we want to take after: the good bits, of course! ;) There were things that have influenced us with respect to mission, and then also with respect to hardware/software co-design (we are, contrary to the impression you might have, doing a lot of hardware[1]). Lest I sound too rosy about Sun, it had a lot of problems too[2] -- so we're trying not to recreate those! ;)
Thank you for the kind words on the podcast -- very much looking forward to getting back in the garage and recording some new episodes!
Finally, on Spring: yes, I need to find it (we just moved) and then find a CD-ROM drive (feels easier) and then I'll get it uploaded!
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvZA9n3e5pc
[1] https://twitter.com/bcantrill/status/1342294298692206593
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What exactly is Oxide doing? Which parts of Sun is it trying to take after? I'm guessing hardware isn't the majority of its focus, since most people who've publicly acknowledged being hired are software people, but the Oxide landing page makes it seem like it is. Love the podcast, by the way! Off-topic, but on the note of retrocomputing and Sun appreciation: Would you consider putting that copy of Spring you have on…
To take these in order: for what we're doing, I would recommend the talk I gave at Stanford about a year ago.[0] It's a bit dated (and of course we have much much more detail now), but it remains broadly on point. For the parts of Sun that we want to take after: the good bits, of course! ;) There were things that have influenced us with respect to mission, and then also with respect to hardware/software co-design (we…
I love Sun! You can never get rosy enough, unless you're talking about many of its executives in the last twenty years of its life...
I'm glad you guys are taking after Sun on the hardware part (and hopefully avoiding replicating its actions in driving SPARC to the ground with RISC-V)! It will be extremely welcome to have another contender in the hardware space!
Can't wait to listen to new podcast episodes!
And thank you so much on Spring! Any bit of computing history that can be preserved is a win for our field!
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Our job listings have this in it: > We are very supportive of remote work. About half of our team is outside of the San Francisco Bay Area; our only requirement is working hours with a significant overlap with Pacific Time. I myself am in Austin, Texas.
I guess Europe is out then.
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In the business-is-booming scenario you mention... could tech support and physical security be done in such a way that it's feasible to pay those people the same comfortable salary as the senior engineers? Such as with help of technology, and making the positions small in number and high in skill? I haven't thought it through, but my initial gut feel is: possibly, if you did it from the start in an org. My next quest…
> For example, if hiring for a particular role would elevate dramatically the economic situation of a typical person with that skillset, how do you weigh that motivation to hire as many of those people as you can, against, say, better profitability? Even if you had that laudable motivation, I’d argue that if the going rate for drives a golf-cart security is $25K/yr, you do way more good to hire 3 of them at $66K/yr t…
But were that funds limit a bit fuzzy, and we had the option to pay each of those 3-times-the-people at the $200K we decided was the amount to live comfortably in that place, that'd be another option.
(Not to sound all college-frosh socialist. I just suppose I shouldn't get too comfortable with societal compromises, since, if something doesn't bother me, I'm less likely to try to improve it. I also shouldn't congratulate myself on being bothered, and confuse any comfort from that with having actually made any effort on the problem.)