Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer • Hacker News Board

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#71

Post by jmduke » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 7:27 PM UTC

digz wrote: post #47

untog wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Chief Anything Officer should probably be paid more than engineers, or they shouldn't have the words Chief and Officer in their title. And that seems like a very developer-centric viewpoint. Yes, good customer service can add a lot to a company's bottom line. Some companies have huge engineering issues and need engineers to solve them. Some companies have huge sales issues and need sales people to solve them. Some…

Disagree. The founders of my company (including me) are paid less than almost everyone else that works with us. I know few rigorous investors that would stand to pay their CEO/founders more than ~80k a year, at least until it's clear the company is maturing. Also, as a founder with significant equity, I'd much rather put as much of my salary that I can spare (My wife and I need to eat, pay rent, etc.) to go towards b…

Buffer is posting $2M annual revenue this year, if I recall correctly. Their paychecks aren't being signed by investors -- they're being signed by customers.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#72

Post by esja » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 7:28 PM UTC

As they grow they will need to hire more people. I wonder whether this policy will prevent some otherwise excellent hires from joining them.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#73

Post by BadassFractal » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 7:28 PM UTC

runako wrote: post #52

kapilkale wrote: post #37

Seems unwise to have a CEO co-founder be the highest salaried employee at a startup. That person's equity position is probably at least an order of magnitude higher than the other employees. As an investor or employee, I'd find this alarming. http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/08/peter-thiel-best-predictor-... Call me old fashioned, but I think co-founders should be paid living expenses + 25%, even in a series-A funded st…

>> co-founders should be paid living expenses + 25%, even in a series-A funded startup It's risky to comment without knowing the specifics of Joel's situation. But it seems that his $158k salary isn't outside those bounds if he lives in e.g. San Francisco or NYC. Hard to know someone's living expenses without drilling way into their personal financials, and again this is not unreasonably high. Thiel, from the link yo…

In SF, close to 50% in taxes, cost of living in SOMA, assuming you want to live right by your office (what is it, 3k for a studio?) and those 160k will not get you very far.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#74

Post by untog » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 7:29 PM UTC

benihana wrote: post #36

This sounds like absolute hell > Every internal email sent between any 2 people on the team has a certain list cc’ed that is accessible for everyone: For example if 2 engineers email with each other, they cc the engineers list, if it’s people on our customer support team they have a support email list cc’ed. Stripe was a great inspiration for this. (More about this) Openness and transparency and honesty are great. Bu…

It also seems like a bad use of technology. If any engineer e-mail also has to be CCed to the list then you should use a discussion board, or a chat room, or... anything that doesn't mean spamming everyone's inbox.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#75

Post by humanrebar » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 7:29 PM UTC

mrkmcknz wrote: post #19

Very humbling that no one at Buffer would call themselves a "Master", indeed many would probably but Joel at that level but he sits there on a 1.2x multiplier. I once had a conversation with an old hat who said "If you call yourself a python master you better be fucking Guido."

Hmmm... that's an unfortunately worded quote.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#76

Post by sgk284 » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 7:30 PM UTC

zmitri wrote: post #30

I have a question: Why would the founders take such high salaries? Seems to go against everything I would think was important for a company that is venture-backed.

Their salaries are actually still fairly low. An engineer in SF can easily make more than $150k base per year.

Venture backed companies should pay their employees well though. If you're worried about food / shelter or constantly wondering if a shift in jobs would give you a disproportionate gain in quality of life then you're not focused on the startup. The biggest advantage of raising a lot of money is so that you can pay a lot of money and not have your team worrying about "I'd have loved to do that trip to Paris, but can't afford it. If I quit for Google, then I'd be good to go.

That said, I'm a believer that founders shouldn't be the highest paid employees.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#77

Post by BadassFractal » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 7:30 PM UTC

zmitri wrote: post #30

I have a question: Why would the founders take such high salaries? Seems to go against everything I would think was important for a company that is venture-backed.

Frequently, and I'm not saying it's Buffer's case, it's to offset the fact that founders have gone, possibly heavily, into debt over years of not paying themselves a salary.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#78

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 7:32 PM UTC

zmitri wrote: post #30

I have a question: Why would the founders take such high salaries? Seems to go against everything I would think was important for a company that is venture-backed.

[deleted]

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#79

Post by ronaldx » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 7:32 PM UTC

zmitri wrote: post #30

I have a question: Why would the founders take such high salaries? Seems to go against everything I would think was important for a company that is venture-backed.

Why wouldn't founders take such salaries, which are not outrageous?

Saying that founders shouldn't take a fair salary - comparable to what they might get elsewhere - puts them in a untenably risky position that would limit the pool of founders to the independently wealthy and the foolish.

That limitation would not be to the benefit of the backers.

Re: Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

#80

Post by owenmarshall » Thu, Dec 19, 2013, 7:32 PM UTC

JonFish85 wrote: post #43

JonFish85 wrote: post #29

Let's say I'm a competitor, and I find that Niel (randomly picked) is someone I want to hire. All else being equal, I offer him $100k (website says he's making $88k). He comes to his boss to say "I like it here, can you match it?" What does his boss do? Especially, if he's valuable to the company... What if I have a very specialized skill that doesn't fit nicely into your matrix? Let's say market pay for my skill is…

To add on top of that, who says that this kind of transparency breeds trust? Transparency is great in some areas, terrible in others. Take away bathroom stalls to find an area where this isn't as true (extreme example). I trust co-workers when they do what they say they will, when they are respectful & smart, when they show up on time, when they tell me when I screwed up in a nice way, etc. I could care less what the…

>I could care less what they make--to me it would be a distraction.

Are you 100% sure that you've valued yourself accurately?

I played "show me yours and I'll show you mine" with a coworker once and he discovered that we were both working the same position but he was paid $8K less than me. The difference was that I negotiated my salary like crazy and he didn't.

Information asymmetry is the best way for companies to ensure their employees are underpaid. While it could cause a bit of awkwardness between peers, at the end of the day I think it's better to know what others are making & let them know what I make, because it strengthens everyone's position.