14 ms·

Whimsical Guide to Compensation

65 points by AlphaWeaver 6y ago

klyrs 6y ago
Good word, what a title. This is the guide to compensation as practiced by Whimsical, Inc. Not a light-hearted explanation of the hijinks that your employer keeps your wages down with.
- drewzero1 6y ago
  What a disappointment, I was looking forward to a little payday fun!
- neilv 6y ago
  I was fooled, too. But I suppose wordplay misdirection might be whimsical. :)
p1esk 6y ago
So what's the actual number for S1?
- bhaney 6y ago
  They have a job posting for a senior position offering $134,277, so by their chart S1 would be 134277/1.25^4 or $55k
  - efrank02 6y ago
    Oof
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - swader999 6y ago
    Nothing to laugh at.
    - flumpcakes 6y ago
      I agree. US Tech salaries are hugely inflated, the S1 posistion that doesn't even exist (55k) is more than I earn in the UK in a position that supports all of our companies services and I regulary work with senior engineers and tech leads. I know this is ycombinator but I think SV salaries really have gone to people's heads. I've seen discussion on heere where people getting offered $125k straight out of university is considered low pay...
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        UK tech salaries are heavily bimodal I think. I don’t know anything about you or your situation but whenever I see a Brit say that they think 60k or whatever is all that’s available to them I point at job boards like oxfordknight.co.uk to help broaden what they’re seeing as possible.
      - p1esk 6y ago
        SV salaries really have gone to people's heads I make slightly over $200k and I cannot afford to buy an average house ($1.3M) where currently live (Santa Barbara). I've considered moving to San Diego, but the prices are about the same there. So clearly my income is inadequate, and I'm not even talking about Silicon Volley. I don't see why I should be lowering my salary expectations.
        comp_throw7 6y ago
        I think you may be leaving out significant bits of context on your existing financial commitments and/or constraints, which wouldn't apply to most people in your position, if that is true. Take-home pay for a single earner pulling down 200k is ~10.5k/month (let's ignore for the sake of argument any insurance premiums or retirement plan contributions you make - strictly speaking the second are optional and the first aren't likely to swing the numbers that much). A mortgage in today's interest rate environment, after putting down 20% on 1.3m, is maybe a hair over 4.5k/month. Even if you're maxing out your 401k and have remarkably expensive insurance premiums after your employer's contribution, that's still ~4k/month left over. Unless you have an unusually expensive chronic medical condition, that seems like it should be more than enough to get by (considering people do in fact get by on that much pre-tax, not even deducting their own housing expenses). And this is basically the worst-case scenario where you're trying to buy an "average" house as a single person, rather than a condo or even a cheaper house (there are homes listed under 1m in SB). If you're married, your spouse is likely earning an income as well; if they aren't, at least you benefit from a lower tax burden to the tune of ~1100/month, which maybe doesn't quite compensate for their "cost of living" but certainly gets you a fair bit of the way there. And, as always, I forgot to calculate the tax benefits of paying a mortgage, which can be substantial and improve the numbers further.
- madcaptenor 6y ago
  The post doesn't say. However, the one open job listing (https://apply.workable.com/whimsical/j/52B49C61AC/ https://apply.workable.com/whimsical/j/52B49C61AC/) says starting salary = $134,277 for a job described as "Senior Clojure Backend Developer - Remote". Senior = S5, from the post. We can derive from the post that S5 = S1 * 1.25^4. 134277/(1.25)^4 = 54999.8592 (exactly) so I assume S1 = $55,000. It's kind of strange to phrase things in terms of this S1 value when they say nobody makes below S2. I guess the idea is that if they introduce lower levels they didn't want to force themselves into negative numbers. The other baseline number they mention is E3 (the baseline equity) which is approximately equal to S3 = S1 * (1.25)^2 ~ $86k.
  - catblast01 6y ago
    Don’t work in tech for a living anymore so no real horse. But wow. Market entry level pay in Low low COL (like not SV or Boston) 20 years ago when I got a job - about 55k. And this was no Microsoft or Apple. I’m aware FAANG and some unicorn packages are better than ever - but the other “half”, wow wages have really stagnated. Half the blog posts on this of course are intellectualization of why this isn’t sad.
    - flumpcakes 6y ago
      55k for a posistion that doesn't exist. The junior engineer posistion would be ~$86k. That seems extremely high to me. I think you forget how many people live in poverty in the USA. I expect some people who run their own companies aren't even seeing that a year. Tech wages in the US are hugely inflated compared to the rest of the world too.
      - catblast01 6y ago
        > I think you forget how many people live in poverty in the USA. FWIW, I work in public healthcare in Appalachia. In any event, I have no idea what the relevance of this statement is. I made a statement of fact.. market wages for engineer/software types were in the 50s in the low COL areas 20 years ago - this can be verified - if they're not in the high 80s now then real wages have not grown. Honestly, the OP comp might not be too too awful. Of course even then it shows wages haven't really skyrocketed either outside of FAANG. 86k - if that's base? - if that is $55k + "equity" then no - especially, they're not public and an 8 year vesting period! The longer vesting period is especially troublesome when you're not paying amazing wages to begin with - that's just how it is. Also, the problem with the bimodal distribution of wages in the US, if you're in that lower mode, you are kidding yourself if you can really maintain any realistic retention - there are too many opportunities for people to jump ship and it doesn't take much to make it worth their while. Another thing not covered by this post - how is their promotion structure? Sure the pay is transparent - but the vast majority of cases if you want a raise at the employer you're at - the best way to maximize it usually to quit and come back later. Edit: looking at that table in the post and doing the math, looks like ~68k. Where do you get 86k from? > Tech wages in the US are hugely inflated compared to the rest of the world too. Sure, everyone knows this - well inflated not so sure - the market wages are higher. What's your point? Edit: by low COL i mean, like Rust Belt, midwest.. as far removed from the coasts and SV as possible.
chrisseaton 6y ago
> Salaries are 100% based on merit. Everybody doing the same job at the same level is paid the same Paying everyone doing the same job no matter how well they do it seems the opposite of basing pay by merit doesn’t it? I also don’t get how you can not negotiate? Isn’t it a market? If you need to hire someone and you aren’t offering enough to close the deal what do they do? Let their business die on a hill of no negotiation?
- madcaptenor 6y ago
  It seems like they're wrapping up merit into the leveling system.
- msftie 6y ago
  I don’t think no-negotiation is a selling point here for candidates. If anything, it’s a filter. People willing to accept less vs not.
  - antihero 6y ago
    Yeah I've not understood this approach. People who are willing to negotiate should get a higher salary. Preventing negotiation seems like a bandaid approach to equality that should be fixed by teaching female candidates (or other candidates who are less likely to negotiate) to negotiate and feel confident in their worth much earlier in their careers and education. Preventing negotiation seems like it gives less freedom to the candidate.
    - lghh 6y ago
      It's not that women candidates (or anyone) are necessarily less adept at negotiations, it's that those that they are negotiating with could potentially be less apt to pay more to that specific person due to their identification or any other reason. This gets rid of that bias.
    - BeetleB 6y ago
      > People who are willing to negotiate should get a higher salary. Most people's take is that people who perform better should get a higher salary. While negotiation helps prevent you from being underpaid, it very often[1] is the reason people who perform poorer are getting a higher salary. [1] As in, every single place I've worked.
powerapple 6y ago
Love your product, thank you! Whimsical team!
chetatkinsdiet 6y ago
I'm a manager of people and compensation is one of my levers (not my only) for both rewarding high quality work and retention. While on the surface role-oriented firm salaries seem like a noble idea, it results in a mess. I have a bunch of people who work for me who aren't ready for a title oriented promotion, and may not even be ready to level up, but are doing exemplary work within their band- why shouldn't I be allowed to financially reward them for their work?
- n42 6y ago
  what’s wrong with bonuses in this case? % based salary increases purely on performance compound out of control if you’re not careful, and lead to widely disparate pay. I’d prefer clearly defined salary banding and bonus structure, personally.
- danielvinson 6y ago
  Doing “exemplary work within their band” but not ready for promotion or level up seems to describe somebody exactly meeting expectations at their level, so the compensation for the current level should be perfect.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Sure, if you have 1,000,000 different bands - that is far more bands than people. Otherwise you have someone who isn't good enough for the next band, but better than anyone else in the current band.
    - n42 6y ago
      “better than anyone else” is not really how I think you should approach leveling, personally.
  - the_gipsy 6y ago
    If a lower performing peer is getting the same compensation, then it is far from perfect.
  - 6y ago
haskellandchill 6y ago
I lived off $10 an hour for a few months and no longer care about compensation. It's great. Previously I was chasing over 200k+ type roles I hated. Now, like I said I don't care and am just grateful to be employed with compensation above survival.
- todd3834 6y ago
  While this works great for certain individuals who don't live in expensive parts of the world… $10 an hour with a family is going to be a tough time for many of the more expensive states. Of course nothing prevents one from moving but not everyone is willing to do that. $10 per hour averages out to a little over $20k per year. If you aren't full time you probably aren't getting a lot of other benefits as well that will come out of pocket. Would be pretty tempting to work for 1 year at $200k and live off your savings for 10 years. If you even did a very modest investment it probably would stretch far further than 10 years. Not trying to suggest you change anything if you are happy but your comment made me want to do a little math to compare scenarios and I figured others might find it interesting as well.
  - haskellandchill 6y ago
    Oh I mean I'm not at $10 anymore, that was as a line cook. I'm back as a software engineer and most roles pay over $100k. I moved to a low cost of living area and am single with no prospects for family (not by choice).
    - FalconSensei 6y ago
      > Now, like I said I don't care and am just grateful to be employed with compensation above survival. > I'm back as a software engineer and most roles pay over $100k I would say thinking of 100k as 'above survival' is kind of cheating. Technically it is, but... makes it easy to say you don't care about money when you alone already make more than most families
      - haskellandchill 6y ago
archildress 6y ago
I admire this programatic approach to setting salary and the idealism of it, but the first time your competitor goes to poach your very best engineer and you won't bend due to it, I tend to see companies rethink it.
vbtemp 6y ago
I've gone back and forth on this so much. At the end of the day, any top-down rule-based system is going to have the same problem. I've been at companies that have extremely strict, transparent rules for salaries with the explicit goal to reduce ambiguity and eliminate bias. To its credit, it was extremely transparent and impossible to game. The result? people with the same duties got paid VASTLY different salaries. I'd imagine the result here is that people with vastly different competencies and activities get paid the same (although, I'd imagine it takes the negotiation aspect of that away). At the end of the day, I believe, we should just not interfere with the market - let market participants bargain and negotiate with each other until agreement is reached. On a side note, has anyone ever had a job that fits into a job description? All of my jobs where the description might be as simple as "Software Engineer", whether at startups, govt affiliated research centers, or basic mid-size companies have been so idiosyncratic and varied. I guess this is a long way of saying that even if two people have the same job title, they might be doing vastly different work, and far outside the bound of the specific JD.
dbrueck 6y ago
Compensation is a hard problem, but this scheme doesn't seem to address one of the key reasons it's hard: you can have two people who, on paper, have the "same" duties and do the "same" work, and yet their output and net contributions are wildly different. I hope it works well for them, but partitioning employees N discrete and fixed slots guarantees that at any given moment, some people will still be paid too little and some will still be paid too much for the work they are doing, relative to their co-workers.
- p1esk 6y ago
  When the contributions are "wildly" different you either promote one or fire the other.
methodin 6y ago
Let's applaud any company that tries different compensation methods as the more varying methods there are the more likely it is for a candidate to find the place that fits best for them. There is no blanket "best compensation method" - the best is variety.
stakkur 6y ago
Salaries are 100% based on merit. Everybody doing the same job at the same level is paid the same If salaries are based on merit, and employees periodically get differing raises (I assume 'merit' will not remain identical across all employees), then before long everybody doing the same job at the same level will not be 'paid the same'.
- flumpcakes 6y ago
  I think the page makes clear that everyone at the same level gets paid the same - even across different teams (UX and Design and Engineering get paid the same at the same level). The S1 band gets re-calculated every year based on industry average (top 10% apparently) and then all higher paid levels will go up by the +25% modifier. I'm not sure how that leaves room for "periodically get differeing raises" ?
  - stakkur 6y ago
    I'm not sure how that leaves room for "periodically get differeing raises" ? If salaries are '100% based on merit', then salaries will eventually differ because merit differs. Unless there's some alternate definition of '100%' I'm unfamiliar with.
cs-szazz 6y ago
Are there other companies where a CX Specialist makes the same as an engineer? Usually I see Engineering offset from CX, so an entry level CX employee might come in at Level 1, while an engineer might come in at Level 3. I don't think I've ever seen an Engineer and CX Specialist have the same corporate level, but perhaps that's just the companies I've worked at?
conroy 6y ago
In my experience, such a rigid compensation system will fail to scale as a company grows. However, every company should do the first item: > Full transparency. All salaries, equity, companies financials and so on are visible to everybody in the company. It’s the only way to ensure that a company’s stated values are accurate.
ditonal 6y ago
A lot of this "pay everyone the same, be transparent" sounds pro-employee but in practice its exactly the opposite. These companies that tend to write these blog posts on their fair and equitable compensation strategies always pay worse, usually significantly so, then market. It's easy to say "we pay everyone the same, we don't make geo-market adjustments", until you find out that the Bay Area company that reduces pay for remote team members actually pays that remote employee more than these companies that pay everyone the same. Spotify is a good example. Let's Whimsical post their compensation numbers and see how it compares to averages on levels.fyi . Guessing it's much lower. And they can talk about other things like WLB, that's fine, there's more to a job than. money. But it's annoying that companies feel the need to write blog posts about their forward-looking compensation strategies that at the end of the day is bluster that amounts to "we don't pay very well." Levels and Blind are what added transparency to tech compensation - not self-congratulating startup CEO blog posts.
stormcode 6y ago
I love the idealism here. I am very much in favor of transparency in wages and in setting a salary and saying this is where you start. It reminds me of that car company where the price was the price and you didn't have to negotiate. Saturn, I think? I, like others who have posted, am unclear on how this is a merit based system. If everyone started at the same place and then you allowed for merit based increases to salary, I think this system would function better in the long run-- though it would definitely have introduced bias. It sounds like a 'we sink or swim together' company. That can be a good thing. It can also be a bad thing. Like a codependent relationship. You end up working like crazy while someone else rests, knowing there is no additional compensation at the end of the rainbow-- unless you are promoted.
lastofthemojito 6y ago
Seems like they've invented a simplified version of the federal government's general schedule (and without restrictions based on degrees/years of experience). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Schedule_(US_civil_service_pay_scale) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Schedule_(US_civil_ser... https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-systems/general-schedule/ https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-syst... I know plenty of individuals who have looked into government careers only to laugh at the offer they end up receiving though, and the inflexibility of the "no-negotiation" process. At least Whimsical would have the negotiation ability to bump someone up a level if necessary.
Decker87 6y ago
"For example, a senior customer experience specialist will make the same as senior software engineer." Whoa. I don't understand how that's economically feasible unless their "senior CX" role is insanely high value.
hyperjeff 6y ago
“4 weeks of paid parental leave” — I’d change this to 4 weeks of paid caregiving.

65 points by AlphaWeaver 6y ago

Good word, what a title. This is the guide to compensation as practiced by Whimsical, Inc. Not a light-hearted explanation of the hijinks that your employer keeps your wages down with.

drewzero1 6y ago
What a disappointment, I was looking forward to a little payday fun!
neilv 6y ago
I was fooled, too. But I suppose wordplay misdirection might be whimsical. :)

p1esk 6y ago

So what's the actual number for S1?

bhaney 6y ago
They have a job posting for a senior position offering $134,277, so by their chart S1 would be 134277/1.25^4 or $55k
- efrank02 6y ago
  Oof
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- swader999 6y ago
  Nothing to laugh at.
  - flumpcakes 6y ago
    I agree. US Tech salaries are hugely inflated, the S1 posistion that doesn't even exist (55k) is more than I earn in the UK in a position that supports all of our companies services and I regulary work with senior engineers and tech leads. I know this is ycombinator but I think SV salaries really have gone to people's heads. I've seen discussion on heere where people getting offered $125k straight out of university is considered low pay...
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      UK tech salaries are heavily bimodal I think. I don’t know anything about you or your situation but whenever I see a Brit say that they think 60k or whatever is all that’s available to them I point at job boards like oxfordknight.co.uk to help broaden what they’re seeing as possible.
    - p1esk 6y ago
      SV salaries really have gone to people's heads I make slightly over $200k and I cannot afford to buy an average house ($1.3M) where currently live (Santa Barbara). I've considered moving to San Diego, but the prices are about the same there. So clearly my income is inadequate, and I'm not even talking about Silicon Volley. I don't see why I should be lowering my salary expectations.
      - comp_throw7 6y ago
        I think you may be leaving out significant bits of context on your existing financial commitments and/or constraints, which wouldn't apply to most people in your position, if that is true. Take-home pay for a single earner pulling down 200k is ~10.5k/month (let's ignore for the sake of argument any insurance premiums or retirement plan contributions you make - strictly speaking the second are optional and the first aren't likely to swing the numbers that much). A mortgage in today's interest rate environment, after putting down 20% on 1.3m, is maybe a hair over 4.5k/month. Even if you're maxing out your 401k and have remarkably expensive insurance premiums after your employer's contribution, that's still ~4k/month left over. Unless you have an unusually expensive chronic medical condition, that seems like it should be more than enough to get by (considering people do in fact get by on that much pre-tax, not even deducting their own housing expenses). And this is basically the worst-case scenario where you're trying to buy an "average" house as a single person, rather than a condo or even a cheaper house (there are homes listed under 1m in SB). If you're married, your spouse is likely earning an income as well; if they aren't, at least you benefit from a lower tax burden to the tune of ~1100/month, which maybe doesn't quite compensate for their "cost of living" but certainly gets you a fair bit of the way there. And, as always, I forgot to calculate the tax benefits of paying a mortgage, which can be substantial and improve the numbers further.
madcaptenor 6y ago
The post doesn't say. However, the one open job listing (https://apply.workable.com/whimsical/j/52B49C61AC/ https://apply.workable.com/whimsical/j/52B49C61AC/) says starting salary = $134,277 for a job described as "Senior Clojure Backend Developer - Remote". Senior = S5, from the post. We can derive from the post that S5 = S1 * 1.25^4. 134277/(1.25)^4 = 54999.8592 (exactly) so I assume S1 = $55,000. It's kind of strange to phrase things in terms of this S1 value when they say nobody makes below S2. I guess the idea is that if they introduce lower levels they didn't want to force themselves into negative numbers. The other baseline number they mention is E3 (the baseline equity) which is approximately equal to S3 = S1 * (1.25)^2 ~ $86k.
- catblast01 6y ago
  Don’t work in tech for a living anymore so no real horse. But wow. Market entry level pay in Low low COL (like not SV or Boston) 20 years ago when I got a job - about 55k. And this was no Microsoft or Apple. I’m aware FAANG and some unicorn packages are better than ever - but the other “half”, wow wages have really stagnated. Half the blog posts on this of course are intellectualization of why this isn’t sad.
  - flumpcakes 6y ago
    55k for a posistion that doesn't exist. The junior engineer posistion would be ~$86k. That seems extremely high to me. I think you forget how many people live in poverty in the USA. I expect some people who run their own companies aren't even seeing that a year. Tech wages in the US are hugely inflated compared to the rest of the world too.
    - catblast01 6y ago
      > I think you forget how many people live in poverty in the USA. FWIW, I work in public healthcare in Appalachia. In any event, I have no idea what the relevance of this statement is. I made a statement of fact.. market wages for engineer/software types were in the 50s in the low COL areas 20 years ago - this can be verified - if they're not in the high 80s now then real wages have not grown. Honestly, the OP comp might not be too too awful. Of course even then it shows wages haven't really skyrocketed either outside of FAANG. 86k - if that's base? - if that is $55k + "equity" then no - especially, they're not public and an 8 year vesting period! The longer vesting period is especially troublesome when you're not paying amazing wages to begin with - that's just how it is. Also, the problem with the bimodal distribution of wages in the US, if you're in that lower mode, you are kidding yourself if you can really maintain any realistic retention - there are too many opportunities for people to jump ship and it doesn't take much to make it worth their while. Another thing not covered by this post - how is their promotion structure? Sure the pay is transparent - but the vast majority of cases if you want a raise at the employer you're at - the best way to maximize it usually to quit and come back later. Edit: looking at that table in the post and doing the math, looks like ~68k. Where do you get 86k from? > Tech wages in the US are hugely inflated compared to the rest of the world too. Sure, everyone knows this - well inflated not so sure - the market wages are higher. What's your point? Edit: by low COL i mean, like Rust Belt, midwest.. as far removed from the coasts and SV as possible.

chrisseaton 6y ago

> Salaries are 100% based on merit. Everybody doing the same job at the same level is paid the same Paying everyone doing the same job no matter how well they do it seems the opposite of basing pay by merit doesn’t it? I also don’t get how you can not negotiate? Isn’t it a market? If you need to hire someone and you aren’t offering enough to close the deal what do they do? Let their business die on a hill of no negotiation?

madcaptenor 6y ago
It seems like they're wrapping up merit into the leveling system.
msftie 6y ago
I don’t think no-negotiation is a selling point here for candidates. If anything, it’s a filter. People willing to accept less vs not.
- antihero 6y ago
  Yeah I've not understood this approach. People who are willing to negotiate should get a higher salary. Preventing negotiation seems like a bandaid approach to equality that should be fixed by teaching female candidates (or other candidates who are less likely to negotiate) to negotiate and feel confident in their worth much earlier in their careers and education. Preventing negotiation seems like it gives less freedom to the candidate.
  - lghh 6y ago
    It's not that women candidates (or anyone) are necessarily less adept at negotiations, it's that those that they are negotiating with could potentially be less apt to pay more to that specific person due to their identification or any other reason. This gets rid of that bias.
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    > People who are willing to negotiate should get a higher salary. Most people's take is that people who perform better should get a higher salary. While negotiation helps prevent you from being underpaid, it very often[1] is the reason people who perform poorer are getting a higher salary. [1] As in, every single place I've worked.

powerapple 6y ago

Love your product, thank you! Whimsical team!

chetatkinsdiet 6y ago

I'm a manager of people and compensation is one of my levers (not my only) for both rewarding high quality work and retention. While on the surface role-oriented firm salaries seem like a noble idea, it results in a mess. I have a bunch of people who work for me who aren't ready for a title oriented promotion, and may not even be ready to level up, but are doing exemplary work within their band- why shouldn't I be allowed to financially reward them for their work?

n42 6y ago
what’s wrong with bonuses in this case? % based salary increases purely on performance compound out of control if you’re not careful, and lead to widely disparate pay. I’d prefer clearly defined salary banding and bonus structure, personally.
danielvinson 6y ago
Doing “exemplary work within their band” but not ready for promotion or level up seems to describe somebody exactly meeting expectations at their level, so the compensation for the current level should be perfect.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Sure, if you have 1,000,000 different bands - that is far more bands than people. Otherwise you have someone who isn't good enough for the next band, but better than anyone else in the current band.
  - n42 6y ago
    “better than anyone else” is not really how I think you should approach leveling, personally.
- the_gipsy 6y ago
  If a lower performing peer is getting the same compensation, then it is far from perfect.
- 6y ago

haskellandchill 6y ago

I lived off $10 an hour for a few months and no longer care about compensation. It's great. Previously I was chasing over 200k+ type roles I hated. Now, like I said I don't care and am just grateful to be employed with compensation above survival.

todd3834 6y ago
While this works great for certain individuals who don't live in expensive parts of the world… $10 an hour with a family is going to be a tough time for many of the more expensive states. Of course nothing prevents one from moving but not everyone is willing to do that. $10 per hour averages out to a little over $20k per year. If you aren't full time you probably aren't getting a lot of other benefits as well that will come out of pocket. Would be pretty tempting to work for 1 year at $200k and live off your savings for 10 years. If you even did a very modest investment it probably would stretch far further than 10 years. Not trying to suggest you change anything if you are happy but your comment made me want to do a little math to compare scenarios and I figured others might find it interesting as well.
- haskellandchill 6y ago
  Oh I mean I'm not at $10 anymore, that was as a line cook. I'm back as a software engineer and most roles pay over $100k. I moved to a low cost of living area and am single with no prospects for family (not by choice).
  - FalconSensei 6y ago
    > Now, like I said I don't care and am just grateful to be employed with compensation above survival. > I'm back as a software engineer and most roles pay over $100k I would say thinking of 100k as 'above survival' is kind of cheating. Technically it is, but... makes it easy to say you don't care about money when you alone already make more than most families
    - haskellandchill 6y ago

archildress 6y ago

I admire this programatic approach to setting salary and the idealism of it, but the first time your competitor goes to poach your very best engineer and you won't bend due to it, I tend to see companies rethink it.

vbtemp 6y ago

I've gone back and forth on this so much. At the end of the day, any top-down rule-based system is going to have the same problem. I've been at companies that have extremely strict, transparent rules for salaries with the explicit goal to reduce ambiguity and eliminate bias. To its credit, it was extremely transparent and impossible to game. The result? people with the same duties got paid VASTLY different salaries. I'd imagine the result here is that people with vastly different competencies and activities get paid the same (although, I'd imagine it takes the negotiation aspect of that away). At the end of the day, I believe, we should just not interfere with the market - let market participants bargain and negotiate with each other until agreement is reached. On a side note, has anyone ever had a job that fits into a job description? All of my jobs where the description might be as simple as "Software Engineer", whether at startups, govt affiliated research centers, or basic mid-size companies have been so idiosyncratic and varied. I guess this is a long way of saying that even if two people have the same job title, they might be doing vastly different work, and far outside the bound of the specific JD.

dbrueck 6y ago

Compensation is a hard problem, but this scheme doesn't seem to address one of the key reasons it's hard: you can have two people who, on paper, have the "same" duties and do the "same" work, and yet their output and net contributions are wildly different. I hope it works well for them, but partitioning employees N discrete and fixed slots guarantees that at any given moment, some people will still be paid too little and some will still be paid too much for the work they are doing, relative to their co-workers.

p1esk 6y ago
When the contributions are "wildly" different you either promote one or fire the other.

methodin 6y ago

Let's applaud any company that tries different compensation methods as the more varying methods there are the more likely it is for a candidate to find the place that fits best for them. There is no blanket "best compensation method" - the best is variety.

stakkur 6y ago

Salaries are 100% based on merit. Everybody doing the same job at the same level is paid the same If salaries are based on merit, and employees periodically get differing raises (I assume 'merit' will not remain identical across all employees), then before long everybody doing the same job at the same level will not be 'paid the same'.

flumpcakes 6y ago
I think the page makes clear that everyone at the same level gets paid the same - even across different teams (UX and Design and Engineering get paid the same at the same level). The S1 band gets re-calculated every year based on industry average (top 10% apparently) and then all higher paid levels will go up by the +25% modifier. I'm not sure how that leaves room for "periodically get differeing raises" ?
- stakkur 6y ago
  I'm not sure how that leaves room for "periodically get differeing raises" ? If salaries are '100% based on merit', then salaries will eventually differ because merit differs. Unless there's some alternate definition of '100%' I'm unfamiliar with.

cs-szazz 6y ago

Are there other companies where a CX Specialist makes the same as an engineer? Usually I see Engineering offset from CX, so an entry level CX employee might come in at Level 1, while an engineer might come in at Level 3. I don't think I've ever seen an Engineer and CX Specialist have the same corporate level, but perhaps that's just the companies I've worked at?

conroy 6y ago

In my experience, such a rigid compensation system will fail to scale as a company grows. However, every company should do the first item: > Full transparency. All salaries, equity, companies financials and so on are visible to everybody in the company. It’s the only way to ensure that a company’s stated values are accurate.

ditonal 6y ago

A lot of this "pay everyone the same, be transparent" sounds pro-employee but in practice its exactly the opposite. These companies that tend to write these blog posts on their fair and equitable compensation strategies always pay worse, usually significantly so, then market. It's easy to say "we pay everyone the same, we don't make geo-market adjustments", until you find out that the Bay Area company that reduces pay for remote team members actually pays that remote employee more than these companies that pay everyone the same. Spotify is a good example. Let's Whimsical post their compensation numbers and see how it compares to averages on levels.fyi . Guessing it's much lower. And they can talk about other things like WLB, that's fine, there's more to a job than. money. But it's annoying that companies feel the need to write blog posts about their forward-looking compensation strategies that at the end of the day is bluster that amounts to "we don't pay very well." Levels and Blind are what added transparency to tech compensation - not self-congratulating startup CEO blog posts.

stormcode 6y ago

I love the idealism here. I am very much in favor of transparency in wages and in setting a salary and saying this is where you start. It reminds me of that car company where the price was the price and you didn't have to negotiate. Saturn, I think? I, like others who have posted, am unclear on how this is a merit based system. If everyone started at the same place and then you allowed for merit based increases to salary, I think this system would function better in the long run-- though it would definitely have introduced bias. It sounds like a 'we sink or swim together' company. That can be a good thing. It can also be a bad thing. Like a codependent relationship. You end up working like crazy while someone else rests, knowing there is no additional compensation at the end of the rainbow-- unless you are promoted.

lastofthemojito 6y ago

Seems like they've invented a simplified version of the federal government's general schedule (and without restrictions based on degrees/years of experience). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Schedule_(US_civil_service_pay_scale) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Schedule_(US_civil_ser... https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-systems/general-schedule/ https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-syst... I know plenty of individuals who have looked into government careers only to laugh at the offer they end up receiving though, and the inflexibility of the "no-negotiation" process. At least Whimsical would have the negotiation ability to bump someone up a level if necessary.

Decker87 6y ago

"For example, a senior customer experience specialist will make the same as senior software engineer." Whoa. I don't understand how that's economically feasible unless their "senior CX" role is insanely high value.

hyperjeff 6y ago

“4 weeks of paid parental leave” — I’d change this to 4 weeks of paid caregiving.