I think the overall sentiment is right for an early stage company: you don’t want any employees (including the founders!), worrying about covering their expenses.<p>Personally, however, I would be more fluid than “constant dollars”. Some people need more cash, and others need less. There are definitely people who would say “I basically don’t want any cash, just get me health insurance and more lottery tickets” while others would say “Look, I would love to do this, but my family needs take home pay above this level”.<p>Letting employees trade off equity versus cash comp at <i>their</i> discretion via a formula seems fair to me. Anyone who reduces their salary is effectively reducing the amount of money needed for fundraising or time to needing funding (and vice versa, for more cash). For that reason, the trade off is also non-linear for the company: early dollars are worth a lot more than later dollars (though the price per share sort of reflects this). Said another way: if you had a $175k baseline salary, but let all employees also exchange $$s-for-shares at the current valuation up to some limit, you should probably do it! (Large company ESPPs are sort of this). Doing this exchange <i>ahead</i> of time is just more tax efficient than “first we pay you cash, then you buy shares from the company”.
>we pay people based on their work<p>No, companies pay based on the supply/demand economics of the particular job and the individual. The work done merely sets a maximum that the company is willing to pay and still get a profit out of the deal. How much you get offered below that is set by the market. The place you live impacts the market of jobs available to you.
This feels more practical rather than ideological, which I intend as a compliment. Small team, get people focused, pay enough to not worry about personal financial stress, and let equity act as the primary reward system.
There was good discussion when this came out.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26348836" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26348836</a>
As a side effect, I imagine that this will lead to a very high hiring bar.<p>Without the ability & incentive to hire someone "junior," every interviewer will compare the new hire to their inflated view of themselves.
I cringe every time I read startups proudly writing about their unique compensation philosophies.<p>Almost without exception, they have to end up changing it and ending up with typical corporate structures. Because there is a reason for them. Because all employees are not equal. Because some people put in much more work than others.<p>Would be a huge red flag for me, it's typically a special type of arrogance leading people to believe it's not enough to build something new, they also are special enough to re-invent the wheel on every organizational aspect.<p>In a sense I suspect there is a deep immaturity: Not wanting to deal with the realities of having to treat people differently, of struggling to figure out how to reward high performers, how to allocate finite resources. This is then justified in hindsight by coming up with some nonsense like:<p>'Some will say that this doesn’t offer a career ladder. Uniform compensation causes us to ask some deeper questions: namely, what is a career ladder, anyway? To me, the true objective for all of us should be to always be taking on new challenges — to be unafraid to learn and develop.'<p>This literally does not mean anything. It's just handwaving around not wanting to deal with employee issues. Stay way.
Sounds good; doubt that policy would fit everywhere but that is a <i>lovely</i> expression of the notion.<p>I wonder how many contractors and consultants this business will be using and how it can extend this attitude to their work? "Day rate salary"?
> Companies spin this by explaining they are merely paying people based on their cost of living, but this is absurd: do we increase someone’s salary when their spouse loses their job or when their kid goes to college?<p>Good to have this pointed out again!
Interesting read but they hand waved the scaling problems this can create. What do you do when you have to change the compensation system?<p>Do you lower people’s salaries or pay them less than new hires? They’re not going to like that.<p>Do you leave early employees in a legacy system forever? That can reinforce an in crowd/out crowd dynamic among employees which can damage team cohesion.
I like this approach a lot because it aligns people around commitment to the mission instead of being laborers. I missed where it said they do variable comp with equity on top of the flat salary, as that would be a truly a next level win-win.<p>I might also contract out anything below a threshold, which would make the whole thing even more efficient.
Would CEO's stop with their visionary cultural moralizing?<p>Why is it when people get in power they do this?<p>Just ask that your team has 'x,y,z as important behaviours' maybe put a few things in place to help that - get over yourselves and get to 'making'.
I used to consider Cantrill’s position on values to be authentic but after he supported Joyent’s discontinuation of service to Gab solely based on their commitment to freedom of speech, I think his whole “values” shtick isn’t much more than virtue signaling. I say this as someone who deeply disagrees with at least 50% of the people on Gab but nevertheless is committed to liberalism and human rights.