14 ms·

Oxide pays all employees $191,227 (Bay Area startup)

93 points by lsj0627 4y ago

acqbu 4y ago
They have 23 employees so that's roughly $8300 each? Not bad by North Korean standards!
- InCityDreams 4y ago
  "Not bad by North Korean standards!" That's $691.66 pcm - what standards are you using as a reference to the 'not bad' NK ones?
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
How many "non-privileged" companies (tech or not) can't charge the margins tech can (due to whatever market they're in/competition/"that's just the way it is"/customer's wouldn't pay those prices) which enables them to do stuff like this?
- panick21_ 4y ago
  First of all, tech isn't always high margin. Second, there are many types of companies that 'could' do this. And even if you are not a 'privileged' company (whatever that is) you can do the same scheme with lower salary.
  - MuffinFlavored 4y ago
    > Second, there are many types of companies that 'could' do this. What's the lowest margin a company could most likely have to be able to pay all of it's employees $200k/yr?
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      As I pointed out, the point is not the exact number. And margin is just one of many factors that sets the avg salary. Margin also depends on what the avg salary is. Some companies have low margin because they have to pay so much salary. And of course Oxide is making no profit at all, so their margin is nothing.
btheshoe 4y ago
Very interesting approach to gaining a comparative advantage in the labor market: pay everyone less.
- gerad 4y ago
  Oxide is able to do this because they are founded by folks who have (well-deservedly) an incredible brand and following. For example, I've had a few interactions with Bryan Cantrill over the years, and he's come off as super smart, down to earth, empathetic and fun. It's a good combination. They're a cool tech company doing cool tech stuff, so folks want to work there and are willing to make salary tradeoffs to make it happen.
- nix23 4y ago
  Having fun and making a cool product is more worth then more money and having to optimize a shitty ad-algo...for example at meta/google.
- rubiquity 4y ago
  Pay has never been an accurate reflection of skill and skill has never been an accurate reflection of what a person can bring to a company. Big Tech thought they could use a combination of paying more and a stringent interviewing process to get the best talent. It turns out in the era of gamified interviewing (LeetCode and friends) that they were wrong and now are laying off tens of thousands of people. Having done over a hundred interviews at one of those big tech companies I was shocked by the people we were hiring and how much we were paying them towards the end of my time there. Interviewing is a game of generalizations without any one-size-fits-all solutions. If you're a startup doing something ambitious, such as a from the ground up hyperscaler rack and software system, you want to attract extremely experienced and qualified people. Experienced and qualified people with a track record are likely on decent enough financial footing that they can get by on a salary with potential for future upside and an interesting problem to solve and mission. Also later in your career you can't put a dollar amount on looking around at your co-workers and being thankful for working with high caliber people.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
johnea 4y ago
There are currently no open positions, subscribe to our careers feed to get updated when we add more positions Well, they WOULD pay $190K...
- panick21_ 4y ago
  This is a 2 year old post ...
slap_shot 4y ago
> the three of us live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Steve and I each have three kids; we knew that the dollar figure that would allow us to live without financial distress – which we put at $175,000 a year Putting aside the fact that is terrible way to determine the rate of pay for anyone, let alone every single person in a company - how on earth did they come up with such a lower number for such a high cost of living area?
- jchonphoenix 4y ago
  I'm curious how they make this work in sf unless they own a home or bought a long while back.
  - jppope 4y ago
    they're all industry vets... its not a "college dropouts in an apartment" startup.
  - reducesuffering 4y ago
    You can rent many middle class homes (4b/2b 1.7k sqft) within a 30 min. commute of their office for $3.5k - $4.5k a month. That salary after tax is $10.5k per month. That's without a partner/spouse working.
  - ramesh31 4y ago
    >I'm curious how they make this work in sf unless they own a home or bought a long while back. Comment shows how warped our expectations really are. It's still a 90th percentile household income in the SFBA: https://www.vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/income https://www.vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/income
  - seattle_spring 4y ago
    It’s so, so fascinating how distorted some folks’ views on money are on HN. There’s also a guy who pops in threads like this and insists that $250k in the Bay Area is “basically poverty.” It only becomes difficult to live on if you insist on private schooling, full-time daycare, BMW-level cars with private parking, etc.
erik_landerholm 4y ago
These are the worst kind of articles. This is self promotion of a dumb idea.
- buffington 4y ago
  Could you explain why it's a dumb idea?
alexpetralia 4y ago
This feels like a job posting for lemons. Edit: This was a reference to Akerlof's "A Market for Lemons"!
- cvhashim04 4y ago
  I’m a lemon. They’ve got me interested now.
xvector 4y ago
It's not much, and I'd wager they're restricting their talent pool mostly to people that are making less than that. A senior engineer can easily make almost triple that today. But I can admire their reasoning (empathy, equality) and the fact that they are sticking by a principle. If I had "f you" money I might simply join just cause what they're doing is so damn cool.
- smallerfish 4y ago
  > A senior engineer can easily make almost triple that today. Salary? Easily? Where? I've been browsing a lot of staff and principal jobs on LinkedIn recently. Some Crypto firms are around $300k, and I've seen one or two Fintech with specialized knowledge at $400k, but by far the majority are in the $200k region.
  - r3trohack3r 4y ago
    Netflix was paying Senior Engineers in Edge and Platform Engineering organizations ballpark between $300k and $500k from the last datapoint I have.
    - newaccount2023 4y ago
      when? with thousands of good devs on the market, they no longer have any obligation to fork over the megabucks to get resumes in the door price: its where supply and demand meet demand isn't that high supply is high and getting higher at some point the CFO is going to ask why salaries are $X when people will clearly accept less
  - Dr_Birdbrain 4y ago
    Well a lot of the compensation is not cash, but bonuses and stock grants. I know, stock isn’t cash and is subject to risk, but it’s a lot more than 190k even after you factor in the risk.
  - eganist 4y ago
    Can't share datapoints from where I work, but competitive datapoints I've gotten vary from 300k total comp to 800k total comp for senior, staff, principal engineers as well as managers in SF, LA, and DC (though DC is on the lower end). To your point, salaries tend to swing between 150 and 350, but the rest is made up with bonuses and especially stock comp. Netflix recently advertised an eng mgr role for appsec with a published TC ceiling of 900k, for instance. They even wrote that into the linkedin JD. That said, the higher you go on TC, the higher the risk that the company doesn't have much of a social contract with its staff and may in fact have a deleterious relationship with society at large - e.g Meta. Not always true, but generally yes. levels.fyi is pretty comprehensive.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
> Some will say that we should be paying people differently based on different geographical locations. I know there are thoughtful people who pay folks differently based on their zip code, but (respectfully), we disagree with this approach. Companies spin this by explaining they are merely paying people based on their cost of living, but this is absurd: do we increase someone’s salary when their spouse loses their job or when their kid goes to college? Do we slash it when they inherit money from their deceased parent or move in with someone? The answer to all of these is no, of course not: we pay people based on their work, not their costs. The truth is that companies pay people less in other geographies for a simple reason: because they can. We at Oxide just don’t agree with this; we pay people the same regardless of where they pick up their mail. That was an interesting take on geographic pay differences.
- alfalfasprout 4y ago
  Airbnb does this too. Frankly, it makes more sense. And yes, of course it encourages folks to leave ultra HCOL areas. That's a good thing.
newaccount2023 4y ago
if they relocated to a perfectly nice place to live with lower COL (and probably better schools, housing and infra), then $192k would be just dandy, even rich
eyelidlessness 4y ago
> The truth is that companies pay people less in other geographies for a simple reason: because they can. We at Oxide just don’t agree with this; we pay people the same regardless of where they pick up their mail. So, look. I completely agree with this, and it’s an admirable ideal. If I were in a position to make this kind of decision, I’d make the same decision or one that looks a lot like it. But if you’re anticipating counter-arguments, this glosses over a pretty important one. Regardless of geography, higher income brackets tend to have outsized influence on prices across all income brackets in that region. The more it deviates from the median, the more it distorts local pricing. All of this “rising tide” might eventually “lift boats”, but it depends where all that new capital is flowing and even in the best cases it doesn’t keep up with price inflation. For a small company, that impact is pretty minimal and the rest of the admirable aspects of this surely outweigh it. And surely that falls into their “doesn’t scale” bucket, but deferring this analysis is different when the scale is external. I’m not sure how best to mitigate that or whether mitigations are currently appropriate for Oxide. I have some vague ideas, but I’m not in any position to do anything other than comment. But I do think this impact should be part of the discussion, because the discussion is already poised for public impact.
- mstipetic 4y ago
  I’m trying to understand - what’s your point here?
  - kamranjon 4y ago
    I'm not sure I totally understand what they are trying to say, but it sounds like - if you pay people more money in areas where they don't usually get more money - it is bad for those places? The more interesting part of the quote from the article for me was this: "Companies spin this by explaining they are merely paying people based on their cost of living, but this is absurd: do we increase someone’s salary when their spouse loses their job or when their kid goes to college? Do we slash it when they inherit money from their deceased parent or move in with someone? The answer to all of these is no, of course not: we pay people based on their work, not their costs."
  - 4y ago
mroche 4y ago
I only spent 6 months in the Bay Area in 2019 for an internship, so I don't have a strong understanding of the cost of living other than "it's expensive". For a family of 5 (two adults, three kids) what do folks perceive to be the minimum base annual salary (with no other compensation) to support such an environment in the Bay Area comfortably and without, as put by the author, financial distress?
- e1g 4y ago
  I'm in that situation in NYC, which is roughly comparable. The author quotes ~$190k I'd peg it at ~$250k, but both are in the ballpark. Health insurance is another ~$35-40k on top.
- refurb 4y ago
  My perspective is the COL difference is mostly housing. There are other things that are more expensive than MCOL cities like gas, utilities, childcare, but it's pretty much housing that makes up most of the higher costs. And housing costs are quite different between the peninsula south of SF and the East Bay, so it's not easy to answer your question. But if the expectation is that a family of 5 owns a home and the 3 kids are in public school, I'd say a household income (base salary) of $200-$250k is where you get into the "I can afford the basics and still save for retirement" starts.
  - Firmwarrior 4y ago
    That fits my experience. If your W-2 income is 200k+ you should be able to afford everything including a place to live (old beaten-down shithole house in a bad neighborhood with a long commute, or old beaten-down tiny shithole condo close to work) Of course, it's easy to look at that and say "Oh, I'm coming out way ahead by making 150k in $NormalCity instead", but realistically _everything_ after that base 200k is going straight into liquid net worth. So if you're choosing between 400k in Mountain View and 300k in $NormalCity it's an interesting decision, but 400k in Mountain View means you're going to retire way earlier than you would with 200k in $NormalCity
    - 4y ago
ivraatiems 4y ago
I appreciate the transparency about pay - that's something we need more of - but the underlying idea is... strangely anti-capitalist for what's supposed to be a startup. This seems more like the viewpoint of a co-op or non-profit than a for-profit startup. Or at least it did, until I found this buried in paragraphs and paragraphs of text: > As for how equity is determined, it really deserves its own in-depth treatment, but in short, equity compensates for risk – and in a startup, risk reduces over time: the first employee takes much more risk than the hundredth. So they're still stratifying employees, but by equity, not cash comp. Likewise, they're still hiding information about the thing that is most likely to benefit the founders of the company more than its employees. If Oxide sells to $bigco for $1 billion, employees 1-5 might get $100 million each, and employee 100 might get less than that yearly "sustainable for everyone" salary. How equitable and fair will that (for some positions, relatively low) cash compensation seem then? I get the idea: Do the traditional startup thing, but instead of competing on cash, just make it clear everyone will make a living wage and should be in it for the equity. But if you do that and then aren't being transparent about what the equity is, you're not really being particularly transparent at all. You're just making a big splash. All the other stuff about values, etc., is bullshit. The point of a startup is to get rich.
cat_plus_plus 4y ago
"Everyone paid same as CEO" seems great as a morale boost at a startup of 23 employees. Even if it's not a lot, startups are often not flush with extra cash and equity is the main incentive to join one rather than a tech giant. I like the mature "this may not scale and it doesn't have to for now" admission.
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  If everyone was paid the same as the CEO, at many startups everyone would quit.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Fair, but perhaps they’d also work as hard as the CEO if they were paid the same and had equal preferred founder shares instead of common shares. Also, when was the last time you heard of employees with equity getting a secondary to take money off the table vs founders getting to do so? It’s not the disparity per se (because at some point, there is a demarc between the population willing to sleep on the floor and eat ramen for org success vs those not and a corresponding comp delta), but the disconnect between the disparity and the output expectations. Edit: I’m aware of the VC backed share structure. My thesis is if you want more ownership in your dream from your employees, give them more equitable ownership in the enterprise.
    - yieldcrv 4y ago
      Many times the founders don't have preferred shares and just common as well VCs many times being the only winners or only ones to get any money back
    - wskinner 4y ago
      At VC-funded tech companies, founders typically have common stock just like employees.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    Has this ever happened in real life?
paxys 4y ago
I assume they are all giving every employee the same % of equity as the founders? No? The article very conveniently skips that whole discussion.
- epolanski 4y ago
  The article didn't skip it, you did.
- wmf 4y ago
  Somewhere they said that founders and earlier employees definitely get more equity.
- mmcclure 4y ago
  > Some will say that we should be talking about equity, not cash compensation. While it’s true that startup equity is important, it’s also true that startup equity doesn’t pay the orthodontist’s bill or get the basement repainted. We believe that every employee should have equity to give them a stake in the company’s future (and that an outsized return for investors should also be an outsized return for employees), but we also believe that the presence of equity can’t be used as an excuse for unsustainably low cash compensation. As for how equity is determined, it really deserves its own in-depth treatment, but in short, equity compensates for risk – and in a startup, risk reduces over time: the first employee takes much more risk than the hundredth. There's an entire bullet point dedicated to it. They even used the same words you used, so searching the page should have gotten you to this section. If you don't agree with the specifics of their argument here, then that would be an interesting addition to the conversation.
  - paxys 4y ago
    > As for how equity is determined, it really deserves its own in-depth treatment AKA skipping the discussion
    - mmcclure 4y ago
      Not in the way you're accusing them of. > I assume they are all giving every employee the same % of equity as the founders? No? And then in this latest comment, you're again clipping off the part that pretty succinctly addresses your original question. > ...but in short, equity compensates for risk – and in a startup, risk reduces over time: the first employee takes much more risk than the hundredth So, connecting this back to your original question, no, they explicitly answer that by saying they do not give every employee the same percentage of equity as the founders or earlier employees.
stuaxo 4y ago
Wow, this must go a long way to feeling like the management give a shit and to make people feel valued.
abathur 4y ago
Probably projecting, but I imagine this is being posted in light of this thread under a comment by Bryan from the other day under an SVB post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35128789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35128789
- lsj0627 4y ago
  I was actually completely unaware of Oxide's or Bryan's existence until yesterday - I had no clue they were both known on here, let alone so popular! I'm just an HN user who was browsing jobs, found this one that listed the exact salary (with this link to their philosophy) - I had never seen this approach before and wanted to hear what HN felt about it.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    Interestingly Steve Jobs Next did it for a while. You might enjoy their podcast on Next: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H9XQBdLB0Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H9XQBdLB0Y
nebula8804 4y ago
Looking at the careers page once again it seems like I am behind the curve. They are probably hoovering up the best engineers Google laid off: people who rode the ZIRP wave and are probably already wealthy as heck and are now jumping onto the next big thing that normie techies will latch onto after it too becomes cliche. It seem like reading HN is only if you want to know what has happened not what is currently happening or going to happen. Where do you go to find out those things?
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Oxide has been on HN since very early on and they have been very public for 3 years now. The literally started the company doing a podcast. The opposite of hard to find. https://oxide.computer/podcasts/on-the-metal/teaser https://oxide.computer/podcasts/on-the-metal/teaser 4 Nov 2019
RobotToaster 4y ago
I'm guessing they don't have offices that require employees like cleaners, or those are conveniently contracted out so don't technically factor into this?
- seattle_spring 4y ago
  For any startup I’ve worked for, cleaning is provided by the building. So yeah, I’m sure they’re contractors. It’d be silly to have someone as a full time FTE just to clean up after ~20 employees. In fact, the company in OP looks to be mostly remote.
- _-david-_ 4y ago
  They somewhat address that point by just saying they will figure it out later. >Some will say that this narrows the kind of roles that we can hire for. In particular, different roles can have very different comp models (sales often has a significant commission component in exchange for a lower base, for example). There is truth to this too – but for the moment we’re going to put this in the "but-this-can’t-scale" bucket.
firstlink 4y ago
> Oxide not only offers the best healthcare plans we could find, but we also pay 100% of monthly premiums – a significant benefit for those with dependents. I confess I read TFA just to see when the other shoe would drop, and there it is: compensation varies depending on number of dependents. Yes it's hidden from the paycheck but insurance premiums are absolutely part of compensation. Yet the author openly praises this discriminatory compensation decision.
- chernevik 4y ago
  Pretty small shoe.
  - seattle_spring 4y ago
    Some people unfortunately are career victims, looking at every possible corner of a situation for which to be offended.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- BobbyJo 4y ago
  I mean, this is about the employees feeling equal. That's the purpose. Would they feel more equal or less equal if the guy with 2 kids and a stay at home wife got a smaller paycheck than the 25 y/o with no dependents? Seems like you'd be giving up perceived equal (the whole purpose) just to be technically equal.
- tempestn 4y ago
  I can't tell if this is satire. Are you suggesting that they should pay higher salaries to single people because they likely won't use the healthcare plan as much? Should younger and healthier people also be paid more?
  - jedberg 4y ago
    > Are you suggesting that they should pay higher salaries to single people because they likely won't use the healthcare plan as much Netflix does. Or at least did. They set aside money for insurance, and paid out whatever you didn't use as cash. People with spouses could just opt for the cash.
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epolanski 4y ago
I'm baffled at the comments here. I think all do nothing but confirm the very first sentence: "Compensation: the word alone is enough to trigger a fight-or-flight reaction in many". There's literally nothing you can say about it without floods of negativity.
- bcantrill 4y ago
  I am SO baffled. First, this post is two years old -- and has been discussed on HN several times[0][1], but the tenor of the comments here now is just so... vitriolic. I would like to do a blog post on an update on this (the dollar figure is now $191K as the blog post indicates, but the number of employees is now 60) and in particular reflect on some of its many surprising ramifications (all positive), but honestly some of the unhinged comments here have me questioning the judgement of that. Am I the only one seeing a changing tenor here at HN? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26348836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26348836 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26683510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26683510
  - jedberg 4y ago
    I think it's a result of the industry being on a downswing, and a lot of unemployed engineers, who have recently seen rank and file getting laid off while execs get bonuses. People are very bitter about comp right now, so it's spilling over into this discussion.
    - bcantrill 4y ago
      But you would think that such folks would see the value in the model? I mean, I get that trust is at a very low point but wouldn't folks see the value in a model that focuses on (among other things) fostering mutual trust? There is clearly a lot of anger out there, and I don't know if that's part of a broader trend or not.
      - jedberg 4y ago
        I think people are just going straight for "what's the catch", "how does this create greater benefits for the founders?". I even replied to someone who said "I was waiting for the other shoe to drop" and the complained about the 100% insurance coverage being unfair. People are super bitter at execs right now, and the vitriol here is not justified. FWIW I really like it, although I would love to know more about how equity is determined.
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seniortaco 4y ago
Salary is not the same as compensation. If we look at Amazon, they do something very similar as they have a salary cap which most employees hit at L6. They can then say 'Even the CEO hits this same salary cap' when in reality the former CEO was the wealthiest person in the world. Oxide is clever in being provocative here but this is part of a totally normal compensation model.
- newaccount2023 4y ago
  pretty obvious...Oxide can't offer scheduled RSUs...
  - SkyPuncher 4y ago
    I'm probably being to "but technically..." Oxide can offer RSU. It just wouldn't make financial sense for anyone to take those.
elromulous 4y ago
Is this being a little disingenuous? Obviously the CEO is going to get more equity than other folks, regardless of when they joined. And we all know equity is the real difference maker in compensation in SV / faang / etc. Feels a little publicity stunty / PR-ish. -elromulous the curmudgeon
- tomandrews88 4y ago
  Exactly. If the CEO was serious he’d give everyone the same equity. Otherwise it’s just virtue signaling marketing. Too easy.
tomandrews88 4y ago
I’m basically reading this as “If you’re exceptionally good at what you do, don’t work here”
- bcantrill 4y ago
  I should let this comment go answered, but I simply can't: this team is packed with folks who are exceptionally good at what they do -- it's an extraordinarily inspiring team to be a part of.
  - tomandrews88 4y ago
    Then they’re voluntarily limiting their income to be at a company they like. Nothing wrong with that.
legohead 4y ago
I'd love to switch from programming to janitor if I could keep my salary.
jedberg 4y ago
Overall I really like this -- I think it makes a ton of sense for a startup, where the expectation is that most of the hires will contribute equally. You might end up having senior people self select out for the "low" comp, but others won't care because they believe the equity will make up the difference. But I take issue with this part: > As for how equity is determined, it really deserves its own in-depth treatment, but in short, equity compensates for risk – and in a startup, risk reduces over time: the first employee takes much more risk than the hundredth. I don't think it's correct. Someone who joins with 25 years of experience is taking a lot more risk than someone who joins with 5 years of experience. The first person is most likely on their last job or close to it -- they don't have a lot of runway left to "take another chance". The person early in their career will have many chances to take new risks. OP didn't get into it, but I hope they consider that when the look at the equity part of compensation.
neilv 4y ago
I like this idea. If I'm in another early startup where everyone has to be really good, I might propose it. We'd need to keep having attractive enough work and environment, and promising enough equity lottery ticket, that others can't just hire away our people by paying 2x to 5x more TC.
slyall 4y ago
It's a little weird because while $191k is a lot of money to most people (it is twice what I make) but it isn't a lot of money in the Bay Area, especially for an experienced tech person. More importantly Oxide is only (AFAIK) employing senior people who could make more at another company. They don't have Junior programmers or Helpdesk people on $191k. It seems to very much be instead of a startup paying "minimum/ramen wage" plus options etc they are paying "middle class bay area wage" + options.
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dang 4y ago
"Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
- xref 4y ago
  I notice the editorialized headline still stands as of now, when usually it is reverted to the actual article title. Is there a reason this case?
  - dang 4y ago
    We edit the title if the thread is salvageable, but in this case the comments were so skewed by the editorialized title that I just buried the thread. Titles are by far the biggest influence on discussion so this rule is pretty important. There are borderline cases, but I don't think this was one.
    - bcantrill 4y ago
      That's a really interesting observation. I was trying to figure out when the tenor of the comments was so hot (especially relative to the two previous times this piece has been discussed on HN), and it didn't occur to me the title may very well have played a role -- but on reading the comments here (and especially, the fixation on the number), that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for burying the thread; there was more heat than light on this one for sure!
      - dang 4y ago
        > especially, the fixation on the number Oh yes! - that's a whole other level to this. pg figured that out 15+ years ago*: If the title contains a gratuitous number or number + adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Excessive specificity has almost a hypnotic effect on the mind, and group effects compound that. * not quite - looks like some time between March 2009 (https://web.archive.org/web/20090324091356/http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090324091356/http://ycombinato... - no number rule) and July 2009 (https://web.archive.org/web/20090712034454/http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090712034454/http://ycombinato... - number rule). Someone should make an Internet Archive binary search service...
darthrupert 4y ago
That's the kind of pay that would make people very rich in some parts of the globe, and upper-middle class in many parts of Europe. Admirable of them that they want to create new rich people in poor places. I wonder how the workers whose relative pay is much lower think about this.

93 points by lsj0627 4y ago

acqbu 4y ago

They have 23 employees so that's roughly $8300 each? Not bad by North Korean standards!

InCityDreams 4y ago
"Not bad by North Korean standards!" That's $691.66 pcm - what standards are you using as a reference to the 'not bad' NK ones?

MuffinFlavored 4y ago

How many "non-privileged" companies (tech or not) can't charge the margins tech can (due to whatever market they're in/competition/"that's just the way it is"/customer's wouldn't pay those prices) which enables them to do stuff like this?

panick21_ 4y ago
First of all, tech isn't always high margin. Second, there are many types of companies that 'could' do this. And even if you are not a 'privileged' company (whatever that is) you can do the same scheme with lower salary.
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago
  > Second, there are many types of companies that 'could' do this. What's the lowest margin a company could most likely have to be able to pay all of it's employees $200k/yr?
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    As I pointed out, the point is not the exact number. And margin is just one of many factors that sets the avg salary. Margin also depends on what the avg salary is. Some companies have low margin because they have to pay so much salary. And of course Oxide is making no profit at all, so their margin is nothing.

btheshoe 4y ago

Very interesting approach to gaining a comparative advantage in the labor market: pay everyone less.

gerad 4y ago
Oxide is able to do this because they are founded by folks who have (well-deservedly) an incredible brand and following. For example, I've had a few interactions with Bryan Cantrill over the years, and he's come off as super smart, down to earth, empathetic and fun. It's a good combination. They're a cool tech company doing cool tech stuff, so folks want to work there and are willing to make salary tradeoffs to make it happen.
nix23 4y ago
Having fun and making a cool product is more worth then more money and having to optimize a shitty ad-algo...for example at meta/google.
rubiquity 4y ago
Pay has never been an accurate reflection of skill and skill has never been an accurate reflection of what a person can bring to a company. Big Tech thought they could use a combination of paying more and a stringent interviewing process to get the best talent. It turns out in the era of gamified interviewing (LeetCode and friends) that they were wrong and now are laying off tens of thousands of people. Having done over a hundred interviews at one of those big tech companies I was shocked by the people we were hiring and how much we were paying them towards the end of my time there. Interviewing is a game of generalizations without any one-size-fits-all solutions. If you're a startup doing something ambitious, such as a from the ground up hyperscaler rack and software system, you want to attract extremely experienced and qualified people. Experienced and qualified people with a track record are likely on decent enough financial footing that they can get by on a salary with potential for future upside and an interesting problem to solve and mission. Also later in your career you can't put a dollar amount on looking around at your co-workers and being thankful for working with high caliber people.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago

johnea 4y ago

There are currently no open positions, subscribe to our careers feed to get updated when we add more positions Well, they WOULD pay $190K...

panick21_ 4y ago
This is a 2 year old post ...

slap_shot 4y ago

> the three of us live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Steve and I each have three kids; we knew that the dollar figure that would allow us to live without financial distress – which we put at $175,000 a year Putting aside the fact that is terrible way to determine the rate of pay for anyone, let alone every single person in a company - how on earth did they come up with such a lower number for such a high cost of living area?

jchonphoenix 4y ago
I'm curious how they make this work in sf unless they own a home or bought a long while back.
- jppope 4y ago
  they're all industry vets... its not a "college dropouts in an apartment" startup.
- reducesuffering 4y ago
  You can rent many middle class homes (4b/2b 1.7k sqft) within a 30 min. commute of their office for $3.5k - $4.5k a month. That salary after tax is $10.5k per month. That's without a partner/spouse working.
- ramesh31 4y ago
  >I'm curious how they make this work in sf unless they own a home or bought a long while back. Comment shows how warped our expectations really are. It's still a 90th percentile household income in the SFBA: https://www.vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/income https://www.vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/income
- seattle_spring 4y ago
  It’s so, so fascinating how distorted some folks’ views on money are on HN. There’s also a guy who pops in threads like this and insists that $250k in the Bay Area is “basically poverty.” It only becomes difficult to live on if you insist on private schooling, full-time daycare, BMW-level cars with private parking, etc.

erik_landerholm 4y ago

These are the worst kind of articles. This is self promotion of a dumb idea.

buffington 4y ago
Could you explain why it's a dumb idea?

alexpetralia 4y ago

This feels like a job posting for lemons. Edit: This was a reference to Akerlof's "A Market for Lemons"!

cvhashim04 4y ago
I’m a lemon. They’ve got me interested now.

xvector 4y ago

It's not much, and I'd wager they're restricting their talent pool mostly to people that are making less than that. A senior engineer can easily make almost triple that today. But I can admire their reasoning (empathy, equality) and the fact that they are sticking by a principle. If I had "f you" money I might simply join just cause what they're doing is so damn cool.

smallerfish 4y ago
> A senior engineer can easily make almost triple that today. Salary? Easily? Where? I've been browsing a lot of staff and principal jobs on LinkedIn recently. Some Crypto firms are around $300k, and I've seen one or two Fintech with specialized knowledge at $400k, but by far the majority are in the $200k region.
- r3trohack3r 4y ago
  Netflix was paying Senior Engineers in Edge and Platform Engineering organizations ballpark between $300k and $500k from the last datapoint I have.
  - newaccount2023 4y ago
    when? with thousands of good devs on the market, they no longer have any obligation to fork over the megabucks to get resumes in the door price: its where supply and demand meet demand isn't that high supply is high and getting higher at some point the CFO is going to ask why salaries are $X when people will clearly accept less
- Dr_Birdbrain 4y ago
  Well a lot of the compensation is not cash, but bonuses and stock grants. I know, stock isn’t cash and is subject to risk, but it’s a lot more than 190k even after you factor in the risk.
- eganist 4y ago
  Can't share datapoints from where I work, but competitive datapoints I've gotten vary from 300k total comp to 800k total comp for senior, staff, principal engineers as well as managers in SF, LA, and DC (though DC is on the lower end). To your point, salaries tend to swing between 150 and 350, but the rest is made up with bonuses and especially stock comp. Netflix recently advertised an eng mgr role for appsec with a published TC ceiling of 900k, for instance. They even wrote that into the linkedin JD. That said, the higher you go on TC, the higher the risk that the company doesn't have much of a social contract with its staff and may in fact have a deleterious relationship with society at large - e.g Meta. Not always true, but generally yes. levels.fyi is pretty comprehensive.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

> Some will say that we should be paying people differently based on different geographical locations. I know there are thoughtful people who pay folks differently based on their zip code, but (respectfully), we disagree with this approach. Companies spin this by explaining they are merely paying people based on their cost of living, but this is absurd: do we increase someone’s salary when their spouse loses their job or when their kid goes to college? Do we slash it when they inherit money from their deceased parent or move in with someone? The answer to all of these is no, of course not: we pay people based on their work, not their costs. The truth is that companies pay people less in other geographies for a simple reason: because they can. We at Oxide just don’t agree with this; we pay people the same regardless of where they pick up their mail. That was an interesting take on geographic pay differences.

alfalfasprout 4y ago
Airbnb does this too. Frankly, it makes more sense. And yes, of course it encourages folks to leave ultra HCOL areas. That's a good thing.

newaccount2023 4y ago

if they relocated to a perfectly nice place to live with lower COL (and probably better schools, housing and infra), then $192k would be just dandy, even rich

eyelidlessness 4y ago

> The truth is that companies pay people less in other geographies for a simple reason: because they can. We at Oxide just don’t agree with this; we pay people the same regardless of where they pick up their mail. So, look. I completely agree with this, and it’s an admirable ideal. If I were in a position to make this kind of decision, I’d make the same decision or one that looks a lot like it. But if you’re anticipating counter-arguments, this glosses over a pretty important one. Regardless of geography, higher income brackets tend to have outsized influence on prices across all income brackets in that region. The more it deviates from the median, the more it distorts local pricing. All of this “rising tide” might eventually “lift boats”, but it depends where all that new capital is flowing and even in the best cases it doesn’t keep up with price inflation. For a small company, that impact is pretty minimal and the rest of the admirable aspects of this surely outweigh it. And surely that falls into their “doesn’t scale” bucket, but deferring this analysis is different when the scale is external. I’m not sure how best to mitigate that or whether mitigations are currently appropriate for Oxide. I have some vague ideas, but I’m not in any position to do anything other than comment. But I do think this impact should be part of the discussion, because the discussion is already poised for public impact.

mstipetic 4y ago
I’m trying to understand - what’s your point here?
- kamranjon 4y ago
  I'm not sure I totally understand what they are trying to say, but it sounds like - if you pay people more money in areas where they don't usually get more money - it is bad for those places? The more interesting part of the quote from the article for me was this: "Companies spin this by explaining they are merely paying people based on their cost of living, but this is absurd: do we increase someone’s salary when their spouse loses their job or when their kid goes to college? Do we slash it when they inherit money from their deceased parent or move in with someone? The answer to all of these is no, of course not: we pay people based on their work, not their costs."
- 4y ago

mroche 4y ago

I only spent 6 months in the Bay Area in 2019 for an internship, so I don't have a strong understanding of the cost of living other than "it's expensive". For a family of 5 (two adults, three kids) what do folks perceive to be the minimum base annual salary (with no other compensation) to support such an environment in the Bay Area comfortably and without, as put by the author, financial distress?

e1g 4y ago
I'm in that situation in NYC, which is roughly comparable. The author quotes ~$190k I'd peg it at ~$250k, but both are in the ballpark. Health insurance is another ~$35-40k on top.
refurb 4y ago
My perspective is the COL difference is mostly housing. There are other things that are more expensive than MCOL cities like gas, utilities, childcare, but it's pretty much housing that makes up most of the higher costs. And housing costs are quite different between the peninsula south of SF and the East Bay, so it's not easy to answer your question. But if the expectation is that a family of 5 owns a home and the 3 kids are in public school, I'd say a household income (base salary) of $200-$250k is where you get into the "I can afford the basics and still save for retirement" starts.
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  That fits my experience. If your W-2 income is 200k+ you should be able to afford everything including a place to live (old beaten-down shithole house in a bad neighborhood with a long commute, or old beaten-down tiny shithole condo close to work) Of course, it's easy to look at that and say "Oh, I'm coming out way ahead by making 150k in $NormalCity instead", but realistically _everything_ after that base 200k is going straight into liquid net worth. So if you're choosing between 400k in Mountain View and 300k in $NormalCity it's an interesting decision, but 400k in Mountain View means you're going to retire way earlier than you would with 200k in $NormalCity
  - 4y ago

ivraatiems 4y ago

I appreciate the transparency about pay - that's something we need more of - but the underlying idea is... strangely anti-capitalist for what's supposed to be a startup. This seems more like the viewpoint of a co-op or non-profit than a for-profit startup. Or at least it did, until I found this buried in paragraphs and paragraphs of text: > As for how equity is determined, it really deserves its own in-depth treatment, but in short, equity compensates for risk – and in a startup, risk reduces over time: the first employee takes much more risk than the hundredth. So they're still stratifying employees, but by equity, not cash comp. Likewise, they're still hiding information about the thing that is most likely to benefit the founders of the company more than its employees. If Oxide sells to $bigco for $1 billion, employees 1-5 might get $100 million each, and employee 100 might get less than that yearly "sustainable for everyone" salary. How equitable and fair will that (for some positions, relatively low) cash compensation seem then? I get the idea: Do the traditional startup thing, but instead of competing on cash, just make it clear everyone will make a living wage and should be in it for the equity. But if you do that and then aren't being transparent about what the equity is, you're not really being particularly transparent at all. You're just making a big splash. All the other stuff about values, etc., is bullshit. The point of a startup is to get rich.

cat_plus_plus 4y ago

"Everyone paid same as CEO" seems great as a morale boost at a startup of 23 employees. Even if it's not a lot, startups are often not flush with extra cash and equity is the main incentive to join one rather than a tech giant. I like the mature "this may not scale and it doesn't have to for now" admission.

AbrahamParangi 4y ago
If everyone was paid the same as the CEO, at many startups everyone would quit.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Fair, but perhaps they’d also work as hard as the CEO if they were paid the same and had equal preferred founder shares instead of common shares. Also, when was the last time you heard of employees with equity getting a secondary to take money off the table vs founders getting to do so? It’s not the disparity per se (because at some point, there is a demarc between the population willing to sleep on the floor and eat ramen for org success vs those not and a corresponding comp delta), but the disconnect between the disparity and the output expectations. Edit: I’m aware of the VC backed share structure. My thesis is if you want more ownership in your dream from your employees, give them more equitable ownership in the enterprise.
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    Many times the founders don't have preferred shares and just common as well VCs many times being the only winners or only ones to get any money back
  - wskinner 4y ago
    At VC-funded tech companies, founders typically have common stock just like employees.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  Has this ever happened in real life?

paxys 4y ago

I assume they are all giving every employee the same % of equity as the founders? No? The article very conveniently skips that whole discussion.

epolanski 4y ago
The article didn't skip it, you did.
wmf 4y ago
Somewhere they said that founders and earlier employees definitely get more equity.
mmcclure 4y ago
> Some will say that we should be talking about equity, not cash compensation. While it’s true that startup equity is important, it’s also true that startup equity doesn’t pay the orthodontist’s bill or get the basement repainted. We believe that every employee should have equity to give them a stake in the company’s future (and that an outsized return for investors should also be an outsized return for employees), but we also believe that the presence of equity can’t be used as an excuse for unsustainably low cash compensation. As for how equity is determined, it really deserves its own in-depth treatment, but in short, equity compensates for risk – and in a startup, risk reduces over time: the first employee takes much more risk than the hundredth. There's an entire bullet point dedicated to it. They even used the same words you used, so searching the page should have gotten you to this section. If you don't agree with the specifics of their argument here, then that would be an interesting addition to the conversation.
- paxys 4y ago
  > As for how equity is determined, it really deserves its own in-depth treatment AKA skipping the discussion
  - mmcclure 4y ago
    Not in the way you're accusing them of. > I assume they are all giving every employee the same % of equity as the founders? No? And then in this latest comment, you're again clipping off the part that pretty succinctly addresses your original question. > ...but in short, equity compensates for risk – and in a startup, risk reduces over time: the first employee takes much more risk than the hundredth So, connecting this back to your original question, no, they explicitly answer that by saying they do not give every employee the same percentage of equity as the founders or earlier employees.

stuaxo 4y ago

Wow, this must go a long way to feeling like the management give a shit and to make people feel valued.

abathur 4y ago

Probably projecting, but I imagine this is being posted in light of this thread under a comment by Bryan from the other day under an SVB post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35128789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35128789

lsj0627 4y ago
I was actually completely unaware of Oxide's or Bryan's existence until yesterday - I had no clue they were both known on here, let alone so popular! I'm just an HN user who was browsing jobs, found this one that listed the exact salary (with this link to their philosophy) - I had never seen this approach before and wanted to hear what HN felt about it.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Interestingly Steve Jobs Next did it for a while. You might enjoy their podcast on Next: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H9XQBdLB0Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H9XQBdLB0Y

nebula8804 4y ago

Looking at the careers page once again it seems like I am behind the curve. They are probably hoovering up the best engineers Google laid off: people who rode the ZIRP wave and are probably already wealthy as heck and are now jumping onto the next big thing that normie techies will latch onto after it too becomes cliche. It seem like reading HN is only if you want to know what has happened not what is currently happening or going to happen. Where do you go to find out those things?

panick21_ 4y ago
Oxide has been on HN since very early on and they have been very public for 3 years now. The literally started the company doing a podcast. The opposite of hard to find. https://oxide.computer/podcasts/on-the-metal/teaser https://oxide.computer/podcasts/on-the-metal/teaser 4 Nov 2019

RobotToaster 4y ago

I'm guessing they don't have offices that require employees like cleaners, or those are conveniently contracted out so don't technically factor into this?

seattle_spring 4y ago
For any startup I’ve worked for, cleaning is provided by the building. So yeah, I’m sure they’re contractors. It’d be silly to have someone as a full time FTE just to clean up after ~20 employees. In fact, the company in OP looks to be mostly remote.
_-david-_ 4y ago
They somewhat address that point by just saying they will figure it out later. >Some will say that this narrows the kind of roles that we can hire for. In particular, different roles can have very different comp models (sales often has a significant commission component in exchange for a lower base, for example). There is truth to this too – but for the moment we’re going to put this in the "but-this-can’t-scale" bucket.

firstlink 4y ago

> Oxide not only offers the best healthcare plans we could find, but we also pay 100% of monthly premiums – a significant benefit for those with dependents. I confess I read TFA just to see when the other shoe would drop, and there it is: compensation varies depending on number of dependents. Yes it's hidden from the paycheck but insurance premiums are absolutely part of compensation. Yet the author openly praises this discriminatory compensation decision.

chernevik 4y ago
Pretty small shoe.
- seattle_spring 4y ago
  Some people unfortunately are career victims, looking at every possible corner of a situation for which to be offended.
deleted 4y ago
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BobbyJo 4y ago
I mean, this is about the employees feeling equal. That's the purpose. Would they feel more equal or less equal if the guy with 2 kids and a stay at home wife got a smaller paycheck than the 25 y/o with no dependents? Seems like you'd be giving up perceived equal (the whole purpose) just to be technically equal.
tempestn 4y ago
I can't tell if this is satire. Are you suggesting that they should pay higher salaries to single people because they likely won't use the healthcare plan as much? Should younger and healthier people also be paid more?
- jedberg 4y ago
  > Are you suggesting that they should pay higher salaries to single people because they likely won't use the healthcare plan as much Netflix does. Or at least did. They set aside money for insurance, and paid out whatever you didn't use as cash. People with spouses could just opt for the cash.

deleted 4y ago

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epolanski 4y ago

I'm baffled at the comments here. I think all do nothing but confirm the very first sentence: "Compensation: the word alone is enough to trigger a fight-or-flight reaction in many". There's literally nothing you can say about it without floods of negativity.

bcantrill 4y ago
I am SO baffled. First, this post is two years old -- and has been discussed on HN several times[0][1], but the tenor of the comments here now is just so... vitriolic. I would like to do a blog post on an update on this (the dollar figure is now $191K as the blog post indicates, but the number of employees is now 60) and in particular reflect on some of its many surprising ramifications (all positive), but honestly some of the unhinged comments here have me questioning the judgement of that. Am I the only one seeing a changing tenor here at HN? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26348836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26348836 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26683510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26683510
- jedberg 4y ago
  I think it's a result of the industry being on a downswing, and a lot of unemployed engineers, who have recently seen rank and file getting laid off while execs get bonuses. People are very bitter about comp right now, so it's spilling over into this discussion.
  - bcantrill 4y ago
    But you would think that such folks would see the value in the model? I mean, I get that trust is at a very low point but wouldn't folks see the value in a model that focuses on (among other things) fostering mutual trust? There is clearly a lot of anger out there, and I don't know if that's part of a broader trend or not.
    - jedberg 4y ago
      I think people are just going straight for "what's the catch", "how does this create greater benefits for the founders?". I even replied to someone who said "I was waiting for the other shoe to drop" and the complained about the 100% insurance coverage being unfair. People are super bitter at execs right now, and the vitriol here is not justified. FWIW I really like it, although I would love to know more about how equity is determined.

deleted 4y ago

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seniortaco 4y ago

Salary is not the same as compensation. If we look at Amazon, they do something very similar as they have a salary cap which most employees hit at L6. They can then say 'Even the CEO hits this same salary cap' when in reality the former CEO was the wealthiest person in the world. Oxide is clever in being provocative here but this is part of a totally normal compensation model.

newaccount2023 4y ago
pretty obvious...Oxide can't offer scheduled RSUs...
- SkyPuncher 4y ago
  I'm probably being to "but technically..." Oxide can offer RSU. It just wouldn't make financial sense for anyone to take those.

elromulous 4y ago

Is this being a little disingenuous? Obviously the CEO is going to get more equity than other folks, regardless of when they joined. And we all know equity is the real difference maker in compensation in SV / faang / etc. Feels a little publicity stunty / PR-ish. -elromulous the curmudgeon

tomandrews88 4y ago
Exactly. If the CEO was serious he’d give everyone the same equity. Otherwise it’s just virtue signaling marketing. Too easy.

tomandrews88 4y ago

I’m basically reading this as “If you’re exceptionally good at what you do, don’t work here”

bcantrill 4y ago
I should let this comment go answered, but I simply can't: this team is packed with folks who are exceptionally good at what they do -- it's an extraordinarily inspiring team to be a part of.
- tomandrews88 4y ago
  Then they’re voluntarily limiting their income to be at a company they like. Nothing wrong with that.

legohead 4y ago

I'd love to switch from programming to janitor if I could keep my salary.

jedberg 4y ago

Overall I really like this -- I think it makes a ton of sense for a startup, where the expectation is that most of the hires will contribute equally. You might end up having senior people self select out for the "low" comp, but others won't care because they believe the equity will make up the difference. But I take issue with this part: > As for how equity is determined, it really deserves its own in-depth treatment, but in short, equity compensates for risk – and in a startup, risk reduces over time: the first employee takes much more risk than the hundredth. I don't think it's correct. Someone who joins with 25 years of experience is taking a lot more risk than someone who joins with 5 years of experience. The first person is most likely on their last job or close to it -- they don't have a lot of runway left to "take another chance". The person early in their career will have many chances to take new risks. OP didn't get into it, but I hope they consider that when the look at the equity part of compensation.

neilv 4y ago

I like this idea. If I'm in another early startup where everyone has to be really good, I might propose it. We'd need to keep having attractive enough work and environment, and promising enough equity lottery ticket, that others can't just hire away our people by paying 2x to 5x more TC.

slyall 4y ago

It's a little weird because while $191k is a lot of money to most people (it is twice what I make) but it isn't a lot of money in the Bay Area, especially for an experienced tech person. More importantly Oxide is only (AFAIK) employing senior people who could make more at another company. They don't have Junior programmers or Helpdesk people on $191k. It seems to very much be instead of a startup paying "minimum/ramen wage" plus options etc they are paying "middle class bay area wage" + options.

deleted 4y ago

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dang 4y ago

"Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

xref 4y ago
I notice the editorialized headline still stands as of now, when usually it is reverted to the actual article title. Is there a reason this case?
- dang 4y ago
  We edit the title if the thread is salvageable, but in this case the comments were so skewed by the editorialized title that I just buried the thread. Titles are by far the biggest influence on discussion so this rule is pretty important. There are borderline cases, but I don't think this was one.
  - bcantrill 4y ago
    That's a really interesting observation. I was trying to figure out when the tenor of the comments was so hot (especially relative to the two previous times this piece has been discussed on HN), and it didn't occur to me the title may very well have played a role -- but on reading the comments here (and especially, the fixation on the number), that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for burying the thread; there was more heat than light on this one for sure!
    - dang 4y ago
      > especially, the fixation on the number Oh yes! - that's a whole other level to this. pg figured that out 15+ years ago*: If the title contains a gratuitous number or number + adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Excessive specificity has almost a hypnotic effect on the mind, and group effects compound that. * not quite - looks like some time between March 2009 (https://web.archive.org/web/20090324091356/http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090324091356/http://ycombinato... - no number rule) and July 2009 (https://web.archive.org/web/20090712034454/http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090712034454/http://ycombinato... - number rule). Someone should make an Internet Archive binary search service...

darthrupert 4y ago

That's the kind of pay that would make people very rich in some parts of the globe, and upper-middle class in many parts of Europe. Admirable of them that they want to create new rich people in poor places. I wonder how the workers whose relative pay is much lower think about this.