8 ms·

Compensation as a Reflection of Values

145 points by timf 6y ago

__jem 6y ago
This is so cool and so important. We shouldn't be ashamed about talking about compensation, ever!
darth_avocado 6y ago
Isn't this like, socialism? Everyone gets paid the same regardless of what they bring to the table? Like union jobs.
- xvedejas 6y ago
  It sounds more like values of tribalism to me. They're benefiting the in-group (employees of their company) but they're still existing in a society where not everyone gets paid the same as them. And unless they're a perfect reflection of society (is this possible?) then they're still perpetuating whichever inequalities they tend to hire for.
- dan-robertson 6y ago
  I don’t think that’s an accurate description of socialism.
- steveklabnik 6y ago
  While "everyone gets paid the same" is a thing that some people say about socialism and/or union jobs, and while socialists are often concerned with the effects of pay disparity, it is not really a foundational characteristic of any form of socialism I can think of, no. I think successfully arguing that any venture-capital backed enterprise is socialist is difficult, to be honest.
- cestith 6y ago
  Socialism would be more like every employee getting the same share of ownership of the company as every other employee. These folks are explicitly looking for mid to late career, highly skilled people. Those they don't hire they're not arguing need to be paid the same. I'm pretty sure they don't have a pool of receptionists and custodial staff making the same as the founders. Those positions, if they exist, are likely done by temps or contractors. When they mention that the pay may not stay uniform, they might be talking about creating junior positions and operational positions like technical support at a lower rung, even if the ladder stays to very few rungs.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  Unions are more like, everyone gets paid based on how many times your body has been around the sun.
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  Seems a bit more like collectivism to me. Remember, everyone is choosing to and agreeing to be paid the same by choosing to work at this firm. If they disagreed, they'd be voting with their feet. Socialism is a society level compact that cannot be unwound the same way if at all.
- wwww4alll 6y ago
  It’s more recruiting and marketing tactic, the company is saying how fair they treat everyone by paying same salary. It may work in short term, when everyone is part of product and tech team, and building product and valuation. It will become a problem when junior people are paid same as senior level people that’s delivering more impact. And, when the company grows and have to hire support staff. Will they pay same salary to the receptionist?
  - darth_avocado 6y ago
    But why then even write an article on it, if your experiment is only valid for a very specific set of people, and the minute you start hiring more people or different skillsets or age groups or experience or pretty much anything else, it fails? Like literally anyone can start a team of few people that are all paid the same. It's not really that hard, nor does it require that much attention. You only need to write about it, if it successfully stays that way for a long period of time or if it scales when parameters change.
    - wwww4alll 6y ago
      It’s way to get noticed. It landed on front page of HN, so it worked somewhat.
smasher164 6y ago
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 - 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).
- vecplane 6y ago
  If an employee's impact is more valuable, why shouldn't that employee demand to be paid more? If a job or position is less valuable, why shouldn't that position be paid less?
  - acegopher 6y ago
    How do you measure impact?
  - smasher164 6y ago
    The question could be flipped around as "why should they be paid more/less?" The goal is to treat the salary as a necessary (evil?) for "what you need to feed your family, buy a house, etc..." and not as the primary motive for work. An employee who makes a valuable impact does so because they want to see the company/product succeed.
    - Jtsummers 6y ago
      > An employee who makes a valuable impact does so because they want to see the company/product succeed. With most companies, this is a comical assertion only applicable to 20-somethings who haven't realized that their employer will betray their trust one day. At least in the US. Until companies start rewarding longevity and favoring employees over executive bonuses when budget crises occur, employees will also be mercenary and seek out better compensation if they have the opportunity. US companies, by and large, will slash staffing or employee bonuses before cutting management or executive positions and/or bonuses during difficult times, even when they have the capital to avoid those cuts if the so-called leaders would be willing to make a personal sacrifice. Now in the case of the posted article, the compensation is already good. So that changes the calculus ($180k/year may not be the best SV salary out there, but it's very good across most of the US, even for developers). And by leveling the pay at an already good salary it can further change the motivation of employees. But try fixing the salaries at, say, the median household income of central GA (depending on which county somewhere between $30k and $45k). Sure, the boss can say, "I'm suffering with you." But the employee is still going to seek out better pay.
dataangel 6y ago
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.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Over long periods of time, I’d prefer my very valuable engineers and product leads limit their work to 20 hours of the deepest possible thinking and work they can do per week (maybe in 4 or 5 4-5 hour chunks) and then stop, attend to the inevitable non-product, shallow-thinking-OK busywork that also comes with a company or large team structure. I believe I’ll get more out of teams and individuals working in that model than I will from teams grinding out 60 hours a week of keyboard pounding with hands and foreheads. My job as an engineering leader is not to get that 20 hours of focused work up to 30. It’s to get the busywork from 20 (or 30!) down to 12 so my teams can crush it while working only 32 hours per week.
JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
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?
fblp 6y ago
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 left? 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?
- steveklabnik 6y ago
  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)
  - fblp 6y ago
    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!
- true_religion 6y ago
  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.
_e21c 6y ago
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.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kevinherron 6y ago
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. https://i.imgur.com/qutKE65.png https://i.imgur.com/qutKE65.png
- steveklabnik 6y ago
  We've gotten this feedback from a few folks; to be honest, we've been pretty product focused, and our website is not our product. That said, we should totally tweak this. Thanks for bringing it up.
  - kevinherron 6y ago
    Meh, totally understandable. Just caught me off guard.
yowlingcat 6y ago
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.
scrozier 6y ago
My first thought: a startup in the server business shouldn't be also 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. My second thought was that this feels like a combo humble brag and first world whining. The organic raspberries bit is particularly grinding. 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.
- readflaggedcomm 6y ago
  Isn't the point to avoid worrying and talking about it, once these initial posts are written? They decide once for everyone, and they're done, which eliminates a whole class of negotiations and uncertainty.
  - scrozier 6y ago
    That may be the point, but when you introduce something radical, it's naive to think that it's "one and done." I would guess that within 6 months, many issues will be raised internally about this policy. It's not that I disagree with the policy itself (though I probably do), but that the weight of a century or so of inertia and policy and expectation will sink it. I want to point out that it's not that I oppose companies trying radical new things. Quite the opposite. It's just that, having tried it myself several times, I have experience with the practical side of it.
czep 6y ago
> no three-hundred-and-sixty degree reviews, no stack ranking, no OKRs, no skip-levels, no numerical grades 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.
gfodor 6y ago
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? 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. 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.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  If I think as a leader who has seen an org policy change or ten, I predict that they’ll make that change slightly too late, such that it will be obvious to everyone why it’s practically mandatory to do so. If it’s done from a position of strength and obvious need (“we’re growing so fast that we need to bring on a commissioned sales team!” or “we now have thousands of customers who need support but aren’t willing to pay their share of then-$200K to get basic support questions answered” or “we’re expanding into a new office compound where we have to have a security team patrolling to keep the campus safe and we’ve decided to make them employees and give them equity so that they can share in the upside of our company!”), then it will be totally fine. If it’s done from weakness and spiraling downwards, well, it’s just one more bummer speedbump along that road, but it’s the road that sucks not that particular speedbump.
  - neilv 6y ago
    In the business-is-booming scenario you mention... could tech support and physical security be done in such a way that it's feasible to pay those people the same comfortable salary as the senior engineers? Such as with help of technology, and making the positions small in number and high in skill? I haven't thought it through, but my initial gut feel is: possibly, if you did it from the start in an org. My next question: if you're successful with creating that warm-fuzzy equitable utopia, but it can't be extended to the whole of society (due to scalability, entrenched interests, conventions, or whatever), then what's the moral and emotional situation around hiring going to be like? For example, if hiring for a particular role would elevate dramatically the economic situation of a typical person with that skillset, how do you weigh that motivation to hire as many of those people as you can, against, say, better profitability? For an emotion example related to that, let's say you can only hire one person, but there are multiple awesome candidates. This is not an unusual situation, and one normally feels a bit bad, but how much worse will you feel, if you're turning people down for a dream job that's "well above market" that they won't find anywhere else? (I'm not suggesting one shouldn't become a doctor because they'll feel bad when they can't heal all their patients, but the question seems worth considering. And maybe the question helps to better understand or articulate what it is everyone believes and wants to do, and what the scope it. Is it explicit that we think such-and-such is a good model for humanity, and we've decided can best tackle that within our little microcosm and whatever example (and market pressure) it sets, and so we're scoping it this-and-that?) BTW, I'm not so worried about retaining the senior engineers, when the person with the (in some ways harder, some ways easier) job of custodian makes as much money as them. If the salary is good, and the work is good, I suspect there's plenty of highly-skilled engineers who'd want to work in a cultural environment like that. And who knows what all effects that might have, or what other crazy, appealing ideas might be pursued there.
wwww4alll 6y ago
Compensation is simply what people ask for and accept as fair. Too many developers do not negotiate and simply accept lower compensation. 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.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  There are companies who will offer you $X - $10K and negotiate up to $X if you fight them for it. There are other companies who will offer you $X + $5K and never negotiate. For multiple reasons, it’s nicer to work at the second, but your algorithm ensures you’ll always choose the first type.
bcantrill 6y ago
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.
- __jem 6y ago
  For those of us who are only Rust hobbyists and don't have the hardware experience to work at Oxide, are there other companies you know that are pushing similar values? I'd take a major pay cut to have this kind of transparency and focus on culture.
  - bcantrill 6y ago
    That's a great question. I hear too often that our values (and, more disturbingly, our principles!) are differentiators -- but they honestly shouldn't be: I would encourage any company (but especially startups) to be very frank about their values. Of course, this requires those values to be a fair representation of the organization (namely, describing values that are actually held, not virtues aspired to), and then further requires ongoing and honest conversations about reflecting those values in daily life -- but these are solvable problems. To answer your question: I don't have a long list, though companies like Stripe certainly come to mind. I'm sure there are others out there. Perhaps others can point to companies that are models in this regard?
- petr_tik 6y ago
  Unrelated to comp. I have seen several of your talks and I cannot wait to hear you speak at a rust conference of some kind. On that note, how involved will Oxide be in the rust foundation?
  - bcantrill 6y ago
    Yes! We love everything that's happening with the Rust Foundation and want to find a way to be involved that's helpful to them -- and in fact you're reminding me that I have an e-mail to follow up on! ;)
- 6y ago
robocat 6y ago
This is pure capitalism: they believe that the various benefits accruing to the organisation due to the flat compensation outweighs the various costs. 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. 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). Marginal profit 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.
sam_bristow 6y ago
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. https://iwantmyname.com/blog/the-one-salary-experiment-ten-years-in https://iwantmyname.com/blog/the-one-salary-experiment-ten-y... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7713916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7713916
person_of_color 6y ago
Do you support anywhere remote? Can you setup a smart lab for remote systems SWEs?
- steveklabnik 6y ago
  Our job listings have this in it: > We are very supportive of remote work. About half of our team is outside of the San Francisco Bay Area; our only requirement is working hours with a significant overlap with Pacific Time. I myself am in Austin, Texas.
  - person_of_color 6y ago
    I guess Europe is out then.
    - steveklabnik 6y ago
      It is tricky right now, yeah. Not impossible, but not easy.
      - person_of_color 6y ago
        Any other Europeans?
didip 6y ago
This is just an honest feedback from someone who lives in the Bay Area. This will work for literally anyone who doesn’t live in the Bay Area. This might work for Bay Area people who retired early or without a mortgage responsibility. 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.
- caslon 6y ago
  Oxide is in the Bay Area, and its employees so far seem to be doing fine. That said, it's not like the Bay comes up favorably when compared to...everywhere else in the world; given the choice of hiring in the Bay and...everywhere else, in the entire English-speaking world, I think most sensible people would choose the latter (especially when considering how many of the best and the brightest there are in places like the East Coast and Canada who $175k or $180k would seem fantastic to). I'm sure Oxide won't be hurting for talent, and I'm sure its employees won't be hurting for cash, either. Plus, they are getting equity. Says so right in the blog post.
lupire 6y ago
I tried to read it. The formatting is weird on mobile and it rambled on for a long time with saying anything before my hand got tired. What's the point of the article? Bryan Cantrill is an amazingly accomplished technical person, so I don't understand how he could written this piece.
lupire 6y ago
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.
therockspush 6y ago
I like the idea. 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? What if I want to work a 3 day week?

145 points by timf 6y ago

__jem 6y ago

This is so cool and so important. We shouldn't be ashamed about talking about compensation, ever!

darth_avocado 6y ago

Isn't this like, socialism? Everyone gets paid the same regardless of what they bring to the table? Like union jobs.

xvedejas 6y ago
It sounds more like values of tribalism to me. They're benefiting the in-group (employees of their company) but they're still existing in a society where not everyone gets paid the same as them. And unless they're a perfect reflection of society (is this possible?) then they're still perpetuating whichever inequalities they tend to hire for.
dan-robertson 6y ago
I don’t think that’s an accurate description of socialism.
steveklabnik 6y ago
While "everyone gets paid the same" is a thing that some people say about socialism and/or union jobs, and while socialists are often concerned with the effects of pay disparity, it is not really a foundational characteristic of any form of socialism I can think of, no. I think successfully arguing that any venture-capital backed enterprise is socialist is difficult, to be honest.
cestith 6y ago
Socialism would be more like every employee getting the same share of ownership of the company as every other employee. These folks are explicitly looking for mid to late career, highly skilled people. Those they don't hire they're not arguing need to be paid the same. I'm pretty sure they don't have a pool of receptionists and custodial staff making the same as the founders. Those positions, if they exist, are likely done by temps or contractors. When they mention that the pay may not stay uniform, they might be talking about creating junior positions and operational positions like technical support at a lower rung, even if the ladder stays to very few rungs.
missedthecue 6y ago
Unions are more like, everyone gets paid based on how many times your body has been around the sun.
yowlingcat 6y ago
Seems a bit more like collectivism to me. Remember, everyone is choosing to and agreeing to be paid the same by choosing to work at this firm. If they disagreed, they'd be voting with their feet. Socialism is a society level compact that cannot be unwound the same way if at all.
wwww4alll 6y ago
It’s more recruiting and marketing tactic, the company is saying how fair they treat everyone by paying same salary. It may work in short term, when everyone is part of product and tech team, and building product and valuation. It will become a problem when junior people are paid same as senior level people that’s delivering more impact. And, when the company grows and have to hire support staff. Will they pay same salary to the receptionist?
- darth_avocado 6y ago
  But why then even write an article on it, if your experiment is only valid for a very specific set of people, and the minute you start hiring more people or different skillsets or age groups or experience or pretty much anything else, it fails? Like literally anyone can start a team of few people that are all paid the same. It's not really that hard, nor does it require that much attention. You only need to write about it, if it successfully stays that way for a long period of time or if it scales when parameters change.
  - wwww4alll 6y ago
    It’s way to get noticed. It landed on front page of HN, so it worked somewhat.

smasher164 6y ago

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 - 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).

vecplane 6y ago
If an employee's impact is more valuable, why shouldn't that employee demand to be paid more? If a job or position is less valuable, why shouldn't that position be paid less?
- acegopher 6y ago
  How do you measure impact?
- smasher164 6y ago
  The question could be flipped around as "why should they be paid more/less?" The goal is to treat the salary as a necessary (evil?) for "what you need to feed your family, buy a house, etc..." and not as the primary motive for work. An employee who makes a valuable impact does so because they want to see the company/product succeed.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    > An employee who makes a valuable impact does so because they want to see the company/product succeed. With most companies, this is a comical assertion only applicable to 20-somethings who haven't realized that their employer will betray their trust one day. At least in the US. Until companies start rewarding longevity and favoring employees over executive bonuses when budget crises occur, employees will also be mercenary and seek out better compensation if they have the opportunity. US companies, by and large, will slash staffing or employee bonuses before cutting management or executive positions and/or bonuses during difficult times, even when they have the capital to avoid those cuts if the so-called leaders would be willing to make a personal sacrifice. Now in the case of the posted article, the compensation is already good. So that changes the calculus ($180k/year may not be the best SV salary out there, but it's very good across most of the US, even for developers). And by leveling the pay at an already good salary it can further change the motivation of employees. But try fixing the salaries at, say, the median household income of central GA (depending on which county somewhere between $30k and $45k). Sure, the boss can say, "I'm suffering with you." But the employee is still going to seek out better pay.

dataangel 6y ago

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.

sokoloff 6y ago
Over long periods of time, I’d prefer my very valuable engineers and product leads limit their work to 20 hours of the deepest possible thinking and work they can do per week (maybe in 4 or 5 4-5 hour chunks) and then stop, attend to the inevitable non-product, shallow-thinking-OK busywork that also comes with a company or large team structure. I believe I’ll get more out of teams and individuals working in that model than I will from teams grinding out 60 hours a week of keyboard pounding with hands and foreheads. My job as an engineering leader is not to get that 20 hours of focused work up to 30. It’s to get the busywork from 20 (or 30!) down to 12 so my teams can crush it while working only 32 hours per week.

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago

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?

fblp 6y ago

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 left? 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?

steveklabnik 6y ago
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)
- fblp 6y ago
  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!
true_religion 6y ago
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.

_e21c 6y ago

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.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

kevinherron 6y ago

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. https://i.imgur.com/qutKE65.png https://i.imgur.com/qutKE65.png

steveklabnik 6y ago
We've gotten this feedback from a few folks; to be honest, we've been pretty product focused, and our website is not our product. That said, we should totally tweak this. Thanks for bringing it up.
- kevinherron 6y ago
  Meh, totally understandable. Just caught me off guard.

yowlingcat 6y ago

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.

scrozier 6y ago

My first thought: a startup in the server business shouldn't be also 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. My second thought was that this feels like a combo humble brag and first world whining. The organic raspberries bit is particularly grinding. 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.

readflaggedcomm 6y ago
Isn't the point to avoid worrying and talking about it, once these initial posts are written? They decide once for everyone, and they're done, which eliminates a whole class of negotiations and uncertainty.
- scrozier 6y ago
  That may be the point, but when you introduce something radical, it's naive to think that it's "one and done." I would guess that within 6 months, many issues will be raised internally about this policy. It's not that I disagree with the policy itself (though I probably do), but that the weight of a century or so of inertia and policy and expectation will sink it. I want to point out that it's not that I oppose companies trying radical new things. Quite the opposite. It's just that, having tried it myself several times, I have experience with the practical side of it.

czep 6y ago

> no three-hundred-and-sixty degree reviews, no stack ranking, no OKRs, no skip-levels, no numerical grades 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.

gfodor 6y ago

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? 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. 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.

sokoloff 6y ago
If I think as a leader who has seen an org policy change or ten, I predict that they’ll make that change slightly too late, such that it will be obvious to everyone why it’s practically mandatory to do so. If it’s done from a position of strength and obvious need (“we’re growing so fast that we need to bring on a commissioned sales team!” or “we now have thousands of customers who need support but aren’t willing to pay their share of then-$200K to get basic support questions answered” or “we’re expanding into a new office compound where we have to have a security team patrolling to keep the campus safe and we’ve decided to make them employees and give them equity so that they can share in the upside of our company!”), then it will be totally fine. If it’s done from weakness and spiraling downwards, well, it’s just one more bummer speedbump along that road, but it’s the road that sucks not that particular speedbump.
- neilv 6y ago
  In the business-is-booming scenario you mention... could tech support and physical security be done in such a way that it's feasible to pay those people the same comfortable salary as the senior engineers? Such as with help of technology, and making the positions small in number and high in skill? I haven't thought it through, but my initial gut feel is: possibly, if you did it from the start in an org. My next question: if you're successful with creating that warm-fuzzy equitable utopia, but it can't be extended to the whole of society (due to scalability, entrenched interests, conventions, or whatever), then what's the moral and emotional situation around hiring going to be like? For example, if hiring for a particular role would elevate dramatically the economic situation of a typical person with that skillset, how do you weigh that motivation to hire as many of those people as you can, against, say, better profitability? For an emotion example related to that, let's say you can only hire one person, but there are multiple awesome candidates. This is not an unusual situation, and one normally feels a bit bad, but how much worse will you feel, if you're turning people down for a dream job that's "well above market" that they won't find anywhere else? (I'm not suggesting one shouldn't become a doctor because they'll feel bad when they can't heal all their patients, but the question seems worth considering. And maybe the question helps to better understand or articulate what it is everyone believes and wants to do, and what the scope it. Is it explicit that we think such-and-such is a good model for humanity, and we've decided can best tackle that within our little microcosm and whatever example (and market pressure) it sets, and so we're scoping it this-and-that?) BTW, I'm not so worried about retaining the senior engineers, when the person with the (in some ways harder, some ways easier) job of custodian makes as much money as them. If the salary is good, and the work is good, I suspect there's plenty of highly-skilled engineers who'd want to work in a cultural environment like that. And who knows what all effects that might have, or what other crazy, appealing ideas might be pursued there.

wwww4alll 6y ago

Compensation is simply what people ask for and accept as fair. Too many developers do not negotiate and simply accept lower compensation. 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.

sokoloff 6y ago
There are companies who will offer you $X - $10K and negotiate up to $X if you fight them for it. There are other companies who will offer you $X + $5K and never negotiate. For multiple reasons, it’s nicer to work at the second, but your algorithm ensures you’ll always choose the first type.

bcantrill 6y ago

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.

__jem 6y ago
For those of us who are only Rust hobbyists and don't have the hardware experience to work at Oxide, are there other companies you know that are pushing similar values? I'd take a major pay cut to have this kind of transparency and focus on culture.
- bcantrill 6y ago
  That's a great question. I hear too often that our values (and, more disturbingly, our principles!) are differentiators -- but they honestly shouldn't be: I would encourage any company (but especially startups) to be very frank about their values. Of course, this requires those values to be a fair representation of the organization (namely, describing values that are actually held, not virtues aspired to), and then further requires ongoing and honest conversations about reflecting those values in daily life -- but these are solvable problems. To answer your question: I don't have a long list, though companies like Stripe certainly come to mind. I'm sure there are others out there. Perhaps others can point to companies that are models in this regard?
petr_tik 6y ago
Unrelated to comp. I have seen several of your talks and I cannot wait to hear you speak at a rust conference of some kind. On that note, how involved will Oxide be in the rust foundation?
- bcantrill 6y ago
  Yes! We love everything that's happening with the Rust Foundation and want to find a way to be involved that's helpful to them -- and in fact you're reminding me that I have an e-mail to follow up on! ;)
6y ago

robocat 6y ago

This is pure capitalism: they believe that the various benefits accruing to the organisation due to the flat compensation outweighs the various costs. 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. 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). Marginal profit 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.

sam_bristow 6y ago

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. https://iwantmyname.com/blog/the-one-salary-experiment-ten-years-in https://iwantmyname.com/blog/the-one-salary-experiment-ten-y... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7713916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7713916

person_of_color 6y ago

Do you support anywhere remote? Can you setup a smart lab for remote systems SWEs?

steveklabnik 6y ago
Our job listings have this in it: > We are very supportive of remote work. About half of our team is outside of the San Francisco Bay Area; our only requirement is working hours with a significant overlap with Pacific Time. I myself am in Austin, Texas.
- person_of_color 6y ago
  I guess Europe is out then.
  - steveklabnik 6y ago
    It is tricky right now, yeah. Not impossible, but not easy.
    - person_of_color 6y ago
      Any other Europeans?

didip 6y ago

This is just an honest feedback from someone who lives in the Bay Area. This will work for literally anyone who doesn’t live in the Bay Area. This might work for Bay Area people who retired early or without a mortgage responsibility. 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.

caslon 6y ago
Oxide is in the Bay Area, and its employees so far seem to be doing fine. That said, it's not like the Bay comes up favorably when compared to...everywhere else in the world; given the choice of hiring in the Bay and...everywhere else, in the entire English-speaking world, I think most sensible people would choose the latter (especially when considering how many of the best and the brightest there are in places like the East Coast and Canada who $175k or $180k would seem fantastic to). I'm sure Oxide won't be hurting for talent, and I'm sure its employees won't be hurting for cash, either. Plus, they are getting equity. Says so right in the blog post.

lupire 6y ago

I tried to read it. The formatting is weird on mobile and it rambled on for a long time with saying anything before my hand got tired. What's the point of the article? Bryan Cantrill is an amazingly accomplished technical person, so I don't understand how he could written this piece.

lupire 6y ago

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.

therockspush 6y ago

I like the idea. 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? What if I want to work a 3 day week?