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Honestly, none -- it really just came out of our own experience (e.g., I have always been a believer in not paying people differently by geography), and it evol

Honestly, none -- it really just came out of our own experience (e.g., I have always been a believer in not paying people differently by geography), and it evolved exactly the way I described in the blog entry. And indeed, we had no intention of writing about this at all, but when asking for how we could improve our hiring process, one of the consistent pieces of feedback was that we didn't specify the pay -- and that we were unclear about our policies with respect to remote work. This was kind of a "well, should we tell 'em?" moment inside of Oxide -- and there was a broadly shared belief within the company that this was something we needed to be talking about. And here we are! ;)

908B64B197 6y ago
You made Oxide a first choice company on every engineer's list, worldwide, by adopting that policy. Post Covid is going to be a huge gold rush for remote talent, as some big players start playing games with CoL and lose some of their core contributors over it.
- bcantrill 6y ago
  I certainly agree with you! My reason for not adopting geo-based pay actually dates back to the beginning of my career: one of the senior engineers I worked with in Menlo Park needed to move from California back to Massachusetts to save his marriage. Our employer applied a geography multiplier to pay; as per company policy, when he moved, his salary was adjusted based on the new geography -- which meant his pay was docked by 5%. Of course, he was doing the exact same work -- and it very much felt to him that the company had simply taken advantage of an already difficult personal situation. And indeed, the five percent was not at all meaningful from the company's perspective, and was not even terribly economically meaningful from his perspective -- but it was emotionally gutting. I made a mental note: never, ever do this.

908B64B197 6y ago

You made Oxide a first choice company on every engineer's list, worldwide, by adopting that policy. Post Covid is going to be a huge gold rush for remote talent, as some big players start playing games with CoL and lose some of their core contributors over it.

bcantrill 6y ago
I certainly agree with you! My reason for not adopting geo-based pay actually dates back to the beginning of my career: one of the senior engineers I worked with in Menlo Park needed to move from California back to Massachusetts to save his marriage. Our employer applied a geography multiplier to pay; as per company policy, when he moved, his salary was adjusted based on the new geography -- which meant his pay was docked by 5%. Of course, he was doing the exact same work -- and it very much felt to him that the company had simply taken advantage of an already difficult personal situation. And indeed, the five percent was not at all meaningful from the company's perspective, and was not even terribly economically meaningful from his perspective -- but it was emotionally gutting. I made a mental note: never, ever do this.