Compensation as a Reflection of Values • Hacker News Board

Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values

#91

Post by true_religion » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

fblp wrote: post #11

This company looks to be pre-revenue and raised a $20mil seed in late 2019. Although I like the ideal of everyone being valued the same - this may be easier to do when the company has plenty of VC cash and just needs to make cool stuff. Over time, people who are more committed and more experienced will emerge. Are the founders going to get the same pay as the new admin hire in year 4 when there's only 1 year's runway…

When there is only one year of runway, founder would probably take a pay cut to €0 and the admin will continue making market salary.

Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values

#92

Post by gmatejka » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

bcantrill wrote: post #84

gmatejka wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great piece and thanks for sharing. Does Oxide face a challenge of feeling the need to creatively compensate especially motivated team members, or do the company values and hiring process promote a general and widespread highly motivated and quality team, with maybe a more consistent level of contributions from each individual than a traditional org structure? Or a different alternative entirely? Love to hear your th…

Taking these in order: Our hiring process more or less selects for intrinsic motivation at every stage -- that's very important to us. As for "judging" the output of folks: I would say Oxide is just a more extreme example of something that one sees in lots of places, where it is exceedingly difficult (and dangerous!) to make those kinds of comparisons. Not only because the work is highly varied (though certainly that…

Thanks for your input, glad to see a company actually care about principles and not just use them as a break room poster.

Please keep these blog posts coming. Really shows people Oxide stands for something and what your values look like in practice.

Makes up and coming engineers happy when they feel like some tech companies will actually care about them as a human.

Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values

#93

Post by bcantrill » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 9:08 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #87

bcantrill wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s fascinating to see how many comments here insist rewards must be extrinsic for some kind of score keeping or personal advancement, when bulk of research suggests intrinsic rewards are far more effective provided nobody is exploiting the system . This suggests (a) rewards for better outcomes can lie in the space of the team asking that out-performer to take on more accountability, so the individual can be on a pe…

It is indeed fascinating how many of the comments here run to extrinsic rewards -- and makes me want to immediately ask the follow-up for so many of the posters here: why are you an engineer? Maybe another way at getting at the same question: if you could be on any engineering team at anytime in history, what do you pick and why?

I can tell you from a year of observing Oxide: team members inspire one another. Someone sees someone else demo'ing something exciting, and they are inspired to themselves drive to an exciting demo -- not to compete with them, but out of their own sense of teamwork and mission. And to the degree that we're seeking extrinsic rewards beyond satisfied customers, frankly nothing feels better than to hear a colleague say: "Wow, that's really neat!"

Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values

#94

Post by wonderingse » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 11:16 PM UTC

bcantrill wrote: post #93

Terretta wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s fascinating to see how many comments here insist rewards must be extrinsic for some kind of score keeping or personal advancement, when bulk of research suggests intrinsic rewards are far more effective provided nobody is exploiting the system . This suggests (a) rewards for better outcomes can lie in the space of the team asking that out-performer to take on more accountability, so the individual can be on a pe…

It is indeed fascinating how many of the comments here run to extrinsic rewards -- and makes me want to immediately ask the follow-up for so many of the posters here: why are you an engineer? Maybe another way at getting at the same question: if you could be on any engineering team at anytime in history, what do you pick and why? I can tell you from a year of observing Oxide: team members inspire one another. Someone…

I love this response. I've been asking this question a lot lately (to myself and others): why are you a solution engineer?, why are you here ($curjob)?, where would you want to work, and why? etc.

Sprinting to a coworker's desk (or chat thread in COVID times) and helping them out on whatever roadblocks they run into is pure fentanyl, straight to the jugular. Even if it's just providing moral support by looking over their shoulder, indeed nothing feels more rewarding than hearing a colleague say: "wow, thanks wonderingse!"

Oxide's mission, principles, and values mirror my own, almost comically so. It seems a bit early to ask but:

When will Oxide start hiring pre-sales solution engineers?

Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values

#95

Post by bcantrill » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 4:05 AM UTC

wonderingse wrote: post #94

bcantrill wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is indeed fascinating how many of the comments here run to extrinsic rewards -- and makes me want to immediately ask the follow-up for so many of the posters here: why are you an engineer? Maybe another way at getting at the same question: if you could be on any engineering team at anytime in history, what do you pick and why? I can tell you from a year of observing Oxide: team members inspire one another. Someone…

I love this response. I've been asking this question a lot lately (to myself and others): why are you a solution engineer? , why are you here ($curjob)? , where would you want to work, and why? etc. Sprinting to a coworker's desk (or chat thread in COVID times) and helping them out on whatever roadblocks they run into is pure fentanyl, straight to the jugular. Even if it's just providing moral support by looking over…

One day in the not-too-distant future! We intend to build a big company here, and while that will certainly take some time, we are going to want everyone to find a calling in our mission, principles, and values. So please stay tuned!

Re: Compensation as a Reflection of Values

#96

Post by fblp » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 5:45 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #16

fblp wrote: post #11

This company looks to be pre-revenue and raised a $20mil seed in late 2019. Although I like the ideal of everyone being valued the same - this may be easier to do when the company has plenty of VC cash and just needs to make cool stuff. Over time, people who are more committed and more experienced will emerge. Are the founders going to get the same pay as the new admin hire in year 4 when there's only 1 year's runway…

We are pre-revenue, and the sales people example you mention is explicitly in the blog post as an example of how we may end up changing things eventually as time goes on. (you can control-f for "sales") (I wrote this comment before you edited a few times, but I think it still works even with the extra you added)

Hey thanks for this response - i didn't read the that as an explicitly example of how you'd handled it. More the blog acknowledged that it might not scale to this. Good luck!