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.<p>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 left?<p>Who's going to leave first - your junior sales hire on 170k, or the sales hire that has been with the company 4 years, has a book of business that generates 5x more revenue (that is now helping pay for this salary policy) and has only received 5k raises each year?
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.
I think one unlisted negative of this is leaving people feeling like they can't voluntarily choose to work less. I have seen many people make the conscious decision to take a smaller workload with the expectation of a smaller bonus. I would anticipate in such a workplace that although fewer people will be motivated to work themselves to the bone, that inevitably there will be some people who will anyway either because they like the job or because they have nothing else to do. At best, these people will not be compensated for their greater amount of labor, at worst they will leave the employees with families feeling like they are taking advantage.
This is just an honest feedback from someone who lives in the Bay Area.<p>This will work for literally anyone who doesn’t live in the Bay Area.<p>This might work for Bay Area people who retired early or without a mortgage responsibility.<p>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.
Apparently the domain name provider I use (iwantmyname.com) has a similar structure. They did a 10 year retrospective post a while back on how it had worked out for them.<p><a href="https://iwantmyname.com/blog/the-one-salary-experiment-ten-years-in" rel="nofollow">https://iwantmyname.com/blog/the-one-salary-experiment-ten-y...</a>
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7713916" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7713916</a>
It would be nice to have a bit more detail about the equity part of the total compensation, since it does seem like, from reading the paragraph describing how equity fits into this, that the amount of equity granted to employees is not equal.
The big question of this is if it's creating "culture debt" that carries interest or not. Specifically, when the time comes to introduce varying comp, will there be blowback and possibly worse dynamics than if it had been that way from the beginning? Will anyone ever make less than $175k?<p>I think unless you are certain you want to maintain this forever (and it doesn't sound like Oxide does, they see this as probably changing eventually) then you may be playing with fire for when that day actually comes.<p>I'm really interested to see how that transition goes. The current state of things is just half of the story needed to draw any conclusions about it since the full consequences won't be understood until the company either commits to this being a permanent state of affairs, or successfully introduces variable salaries.
> no three-hundred-and-sixty degree reviews, no stack ranking, no OKRs, no skip-levels, no numerical grades<p>Sign me up now! This is so refreshing I would happily take the pay cut to be rid of the toxic by-products of cutthroat review culture. I seriously hope this gains traction because it's about time we rethink the kind of work life we really want to have, one that is organized to serve the people who do the work.
I really want to see this model scale somehow. I've spoken with friends about this model, and it's hard for them to get past the idea of compensation as a proxy for value. The discussion eventually devolves into<p><pre><code> - X type of employee is more valuable than Y type of employee, therefore they should be paid more.
- There is no mechanism or incentive for growth (a.k.a the career ladder argument).</code></pre>
If the intent is to make sure to pay "enough to not fret when your kids toss the organic raspberries into the shopping cart", shouldn't a salary floor alone be sufficient in achieving the goal? Why a pay ceiling too?
My first thought: a startup in the server business shouldn't be <i>also</i> 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 company take this sort of thing on.<p>My second thought was that this feels like a combo humble brag and first world whining. The organic raspberries bit is particularly grinding.<p>I hate to be negative, but I don't see much high-minded in this, much as the blog post would have me do so.
Huh, turns out I often highlight passages as I'm reading them without realizing it, and this website has text that is literally unreadable while highlighted.<p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/qutKE65.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/qutKE65.png</a>
I like the idea.<p>I wonder how this changes incentives for most people. In the valley of bottomless snacks and drinks, bottomless PTO, bottomless stock options, how does bottomless pay work on the mental?<p>What if I want to work a 3 day week?
The only way I can see an intentionally low comp model working is if the company is doing good for the world and plowing all the profits in good works. Otherwise it's just capital exploiting labor.
This is pure capitalism: they believe that the various benefits accruing to the organisation due to the flat compensation outweighs the various costs.<p>This thesis could easily be correct in a VC funded company that relies upon the minds on the team, and aims to be a unicorn. It couldn’t work in a low-margin business that relies on employee body count.<p>It is intriguing to look at high-margin software businesses and look at revenue per employee (or profit per employee when they become mature businesses). Employee costs are often the biggest expense in tech companies (and tech startups: oxide = 23 employees at $180250 with 20MM VC invested).<p><i>Marginal profit</i> growth of tech companies often requires little marginal increase in employee headcount/costs. The economic consequences of this are often under appreciated by many people.
This is interesting. Anecdotally, I noticed that Coinbase's level-compensation curves on levels.fyi are very much round flat numbers. I don't know enough about the company's comp model to know how much that changes across role, though.
Compensation is simply what people ask for and accept as fair.<p>Too many developers do not negotiate and simply accept lower compensation.<p>If your are a software engineer with a job offer, ALWAYS negotiate for higher salary. Most likely, you will get increase from first offer. If not, go find a company that will offer the higher increase.
I tried to read it.<p>The formatting is weird on mobile and it rambled on for a long time with saying anything before my hand got tired.<p>What's the point of the article?<p>Bryan Cantrill is an amazingly accomplished technical person, so I don't understand how he could written this piece.