4 ms·

I'd actually love to see more jobs that offered the opportunity to work with a small base salary but increased compensation levels based on measurable results.

by tom_b 16y ago

I'd actually love to see more jobs that offered the opportunity to work with a small base salary but increased compensation levels based on measurable results. I'm really curious about non-startup work models that would encourage this. So far, the easiest path would seem to be via consulting, where you sold your services as business services that happened to be software-based rather than as a "warm body" to staff some open slot somewhere. It seems that overall, startups are probably lower expected value to the early employees in pure financial terms than having compensation tied to measured results for work done for some other company. I remember essays by both PG and Joel that mentioned the "value effect", PG talking about a "monster of productivity" hacker who added a bunch of value to Viaweb in a single day and in Joel's case, a summer intern who (I vaguely recall) suggested and then built the joelonsoftware jobs board. I think fogcreek offered the intern some type of stock option bonus for joining fulltime. I don't remember if the Viaweb hacker got something or already had equity of some sort.

rwmj 16y ago
Surely you can just invest a large proportion of your salary in company stock and achieve the same end?
- infinite8s 16y ago
  Usually company stock is offered on much better terms when it is part of your pay package.
  - redrobot5050 16y ago
    Most corporations don't offer enough stock in their employee stock ownership plans for this to really be effective. You have vesting (which means you have to wait before it can be sold) and dilution. You can also have situations in large corporations where your performance was incredible, and by every measurement you brought millions into the company. However, some guy in division X lost billions and the stock tanked. There was an AIG employee who wrote to the NYTimes about how his bonus was retroactively taxed 95%, and he claimed it was because of this exact situation. He had nothing to do with AIG's collapse. He was part of a highly profitable division, and was asked to stay on to help turn AIG around faster. That people were upset that he got his contractual 1.2 million bonus was lost on him.
- coliveira 16y ago
  With stocks, if you can't have control over how the company is managed, you're just playing lottery.
  - maigret 16y ago
    With stocks you have to control the company management, of course proportionally to the the percentage of stocks you're owning. Too sad most investors forget that, you can see an example with BP.
GBond 16y ago
>I'd actually love to see more jobs that offered the opportunity to work with a small base salary but increased compensation levels based on measurable results. Many sales positions are like this (eg. Enterprise Software). The key of such pay model is being easily measured down to the individual (which sales is). It doesn't apply to most cases because it is hard to accurately measure contributions of individual's performance of a product/result that is comprise of a team of peers. The "body shop" biz model is also easily measured (sit on seat 1 hr = pay for 1 hr).
- matwood 16y ago
  "Sales" isn't that easy to measure. Sure, the sales person might have been the face to the other company, but were they the real reason the sale closed? I've written a bunch of small pieces of software for my current company and many new clients have said the only reason they picked my company over a competitor was my value add software. Did I see any of the sale commission? Nope.
- maigret 16y ago
  Right, but still sale is a job only certain people can do (it's the same for programming I think) - so switching to sale is not that easy for most developers. Also if you are a very good programmer, switching to a whole other job you will not be able to reuse your programming skills like you could for a better paid gig in a slightly similar programming topic.

by tom_b 16y ago

rwmj 16y ago

Surely you can just invest a large proportion of your salary in company stock and achieve the same end?

infinite8s 16y ago
Usually company stock is offered on much better terms when it is part of your pay package.
- redrobot5050 16y ago
  Most corporations don't offer enough stock in their employee stock ownership plans for this to really be effective. You have vesting (which means you have to wait before it can be sold) and dilution. You can also have situations in large corporations where your performance was incredible, and by every measurement you brought millions into the company. However, some guy in division X lost billions and the stock tanked. There was an AIG employee who wrote to the NYTimes about how his bonus was retroactively taxed 95%, and he claimed it was because of this exact situation. He had nothing to do with AIG's collapse. He was part of a highly profitable division, and was asked to stay on to help turn AIG around faster. That people were upset that he got his contractual 1.2 million bonus was lost on him.
coliveira 16y ago
With stocks, if you can't have control over how the company is managed, you're just playing lottery.
- maigret 16y ago
  With stocks you have to control the company management, of course proportionally to the the percentage of stocks you're owning. Too sad most investors forget that, you can see an example with BP.

GBond 16y ago

>I'd actually love to see more jobs that offered the opportunity to work with a small base salary but increased compensation levels based on measurable results. Many sales positions are like this (eg. Enterprise Software). The key of such pay model is being easily measured down to the individual (which sales is). It doesn't apply to most cases because it is hard to accurately measure contributions of individual's performance of a product/result that is comprise of a team of peers. The "body shop" biz model is also easily measured (sit on seat 1 hr = pay for 1 hr).

matwood 16y ago
"Sales" isn't that easy to measure. Sure, the sales person might have been the face to the other company, but were they the real reason the sale closed? I've written a bunch of small pieces of software for my current company and many new clients have said the only reason they picked my company over a competitor was my value add software. Did I see any of the sale commission? Nope.
maigret 16y ago
Right, but still sale is a job only certain people can do (it's the same for programming I think) - so switching to sale is not that easy for most developers. Also if you are a very good programmer, switching to a whole other job you will not be able to reuse your programming skills like you could for a better paid gig in a slightly similar programming topic.