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There is a lot of typical HN negative analysis in this discussion. Let's step back and applaud the fact that this is open. Who else does that? People don't do i

There is a lot of typical HN negative analysis in this discussion. Let's step back and applaud the fact that this is open. Who else does that? People don't do it because they are afraid of this type of negative analysis. This is a very cool comparison for those who don't have concrete numbers to take into HR. Thanks for sharing Buffer!

romanovcode 9y ago
I would not applaud if my company would decide to make my salary open.
- clp16 9y ago
  Why?
  - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
    Not everyone wants their family and friends to be able to look up their salary. Or to know that they're the lowest (or highest) paid person in their department, etc.
    - carlmcqueen 9y ago
      STLtoday keeps a database of how much the teachers make in the Missouri school systems, while its not entirely accurate when you talk to teachers (sometimes the data is super stale, sometimes they have other 'responsibilities/commmities' that offer more money) I always felt wrong being able to look at it when they could not look at mine.
      - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
        Agree. I get the need for public accountability for government salaries, but I feel like having the data be anonymized would be better. The public needs to know the salary distribution, but not what Susan Baker made last year.
        conanbatt 9y ago
        I disagree at this point. Anonymization is not perfect and it introduces less accountability while also increasing the costs of maintenance and auditability.
      - nsxwolf 9y ago
        They're public employees, paid with everyone else's tax dollars. That's why you get to know their salaries.
        conanbatt 9y ago
        That has not made it hard for the government to take employees tho.
    - conanbatt 9y ago
      Pure FUD. Millions of people have their salary in the open in the US, from CEO's to government employees. If you wish to pay for your privacy go ahead, but price transparency can only help the workers.
      - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
        How is this FUD? I'm telling you that I don't want that. A lot of people don't want that. We have CEOs and government employees who have public salaries for the specific purpose of public accountability, not just because we're curious or because we're entitled to know the price of everything at all times. Now, a world with perfect price transparency in the labor market might make sense, but two points: 1) We don't have that universal transparency now, so being the 1% of firms that does (or their employees) can put you at a disadvantage. Why do you think some places are passing labor-friendly laws that make it illegal to ask what previous salary was? 2) Price transparency doesn't have to mean that we get those prices from an "objective" formula that has no room for flexibility based on the facts and circumstances of each case, right? How is this different from mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines, or whatever? I think that price transparency would probably help the average worker by bringing low performer salaries up and high performer salaries down, and it would probably harm overall productivity by harming incentives. But I'm not an economist.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    The information asymmetry puts you at a competitive disadvantage as a candidate when you start looking for your next gig. California law prohibits employers from asking, but Buffer is nevertheless releasing the data publicly. It's terrible corporate behavior. On the other hand, this is great material for both internal and external recruiters to start poaching away Buffer employees to orgs that have the budget to pay them market rate. "I see you're making ~20-30% below market rate. Would you be interested in talking about a new role?"
ryanwaggoner 9y ago
Maybe they should be afraid of this negative analysis. You don't get a pass on bad decisions just because you're making them openly. From my cursory glance, I have a bunch of problems here: 1) Most egregiously, it looks like they're slashing a bunch of salaries. Not the CEO, of course, but a lot of others seem to be going down. I would be immediately headed for the door in that scenario. Talk about a way to keep only the poor performers who can't get another job. 2) Related to the above, what signal does this send to future hires? "We'll pay you $X based on this fancy formula...until we decide to change the formula and slash your salary by 20%." 3) Large COL adjustments make no sense to me. So I work for a remote company and choose to live somewhere cheaper and they think that the value I'm providing is less? The end result of this is that remote devs get screwed on average, while the best remote devs avoid companies like this, rightfully so. 4) I didn't look very carefully, but they definitely seem to be underpaying in general. An advanced engineering manager (mobile) in a HCOL area gets $145k? I'm a senior mobile developer and I'm pretty confident I could significantly outearn the CEO if I lived in SF or NYC.
- Swizec 9y ago
  > I'm pretty confident I could significantly outearn the CEO if I lived in SF or NYC. Yes you could. But not for a company the size of Buffer. Here's the thing a lot of us often forget to realize: The value you bring to the company is proportional to the value the company extracts from the market. Can your code improve Walmart's revenue numbers by 0.001% per year? Awesome, that's worth $4,858,700 based on Wikipedia numbers. I'm pretty confident you can get a gigantic salary with those results. Can your code improve Buffer's revenue by 3% per year? Awesome, that's worth $468,000 according to their dashboard[1] That's still a lot of money and I don't know if Buffer would negotiate because they like to use their formula. My point was that the value of your contribution can be orders of magnitude different for the same amount/quality/level of work and skill. [1] https://buffer.baremetrics.com/ https://buffer.baremetrics.com/
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
weego 9y ago
I don't know why this being open is a laudable thing. I just honestly don't see any value at all for the wider world looking in. I'm sure at some point there was an ideal or a vision here but it seems misplaced to me.

romanovcode 9y ago

I would not applaud if my company would decide to make my salary open.

clp16 9y ago
Why?
- ryanwaggoner 9y ago
  Not everyone wants their family and friends to be able to look up their salary. Or to know that they're the lowest (or highest) paid person in their department, etc.
  - carlmcqueen 9y ago
    STLtoday keeps a database of how much the teachers make in the Missouri school systems, while its not entirely accurate when you talk to teachers (sometimes the data is super stale, sometimes they have other 'responsibilities/commmities' that offer more money) I always felt wrong being able to look at it when they could not look at mine.
    - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
      Agree. I get the need for public accountability for government salaries, but I feel like having the data be anonymized would be better. The public needs to know the salary distribution, but not what Susan Baker made last year.
      - conanbatt 9y ago
        I disagree at this point. Anonymization is not perfect and it introduces less accountability while also increasing the costs of maintenance and auditability.
    - nsxwolf 9y ago
      They're public employees, paid with everyone else's tax dollars. That's why you get to know their salaries.
      - conanbatt 9y ago
        That has not made it hard for the government to take employees tho.
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    Pure FUD. Millions of people have their salary in the open in the US, from CEO's to government employees. If you wish to pay for your privacy go ahead, but price transparency can only help the workers.
    - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
      How is this FUD? I'm telling you that I don't want that. A lot of people don't want that. We have CEOs and government employees who have public salaries for the specific purpose of public accountability, not just because we're curious or because we're entitled to know the price of everything at all times. Now, a world with perfect price transparency in the labor market might make sense, but two points: 1) We don't have that universal transparency now, so being the 1% of firms that does (or their employees) can put you at a disadvantage. Why do you think some places are passing labor-friendly laws that make it illegal to ask what previous salary was? 2) Price transparency doesn't have to mean that we get those prices from an "objective" formula that has no room for flexibility based on the facts and circumstances of each case, right? How is this different from mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines, or whatever? I think that price transparency would probably help the average worker by bringing low performer salaries up and high performer salaries down, and it would probably harm overall productivity by harming incentives. But I'm not an economist.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  The information asymmetry puts you at a competitive disadvantage as a candidate when you start looking for your next gig. California law prohibits employers from asking, but Buffer is nevertheless releasing the data publicly. It's terrible corporate behavior. On the other hand, this is great material for both internal and external recruiters to start poaching away Buffer employees to orgs that have the budget to pay them market rate. "I see you're making ~20-30% below market rate. Would you be interested in talking about a new role?"

ryanwaggoner 9y ago

Maybe they should be afraid of this negative analysis. You don't get a pass on bad decisions just because you're making them openly. From my cursory glance, I have a bunch of problems here: 1) Most egregiously, it looks like they're slashing a bunch of salaries. Not the CEO, of course, but a lot of others seem to be going down. I would be immediately headed for the door in that scenario. Talk about a way to keep only the poor performers who can't get another job. 2) Related to the above, what signal does this send to future hires? "We'll pay you $X based on this fancy formula...until we decide to change the formula and slash your salary by 20%." 3) Large COL adjustments make no sense to me. So I work for a remote company and choose to live somewhere cheaper and they think that the value I'm providing is less? The end result of this is that remote devs get screwed on average, while the best remote devs avoid companies like this, rightfully so. 4) I didn't look very carefully, but they definitely seem to be underpaying in general. An advanced engineering manager (mobile) in a HCOL area gets $145k? I'm a senior mobile developer and I'm pretty confident I could significantly outearn the CEO if I lived in SF or NYC.

Swizec 9y ago
> I'm pretty confident I could significantly outearn the CEO if I lived in SF or NYC. Yes you could. But not for a company the size of Buffer. Here's the thing a lot of us often forget to realize: The value you bring to the company is proportional to the value the company extracts from the market. Can your code improve Walmart's revenue numbers by 0.001% per year? Awesome, that's worth $4,858,700 based on Wikipedia numbers. I'm pretty confident you can get a gigantic salary with those results. Can your code improve Buffer's revenue by 3% per year? Awesome, that's worth $468,000 according to their dashboard[1] That's still a lot of money and I don't know if Buffer would negotiate because they like to use their formula. My point was that the value of your contribution can be orders of magnitude different for the same amount/quality/level of work and skill. [1] https://buffer.baremetrics.com/ https://buffer.baremetrics.com/
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ryanwaggoner 9y ago

weego 9y ago

I don't know why this being open is a laudable thing. I just honestly don't see any value at all for the wider world looking in. I'm sure at some point there was an ideal or a vision here but it seems misplaced to me.