4 ms·

Near the bottom of this article is an interesting post mortem of RethinkDB's transparent salary policy. When it was posted years ago [1] folks here took pretty

• coffeemug 14y ago
  Hey, I'm slava @ rethink. If you have questions about how things went, I'm happy to answer.
  • kmt 14y ago
    I take it you mean publicly. Really like to elaborate on this topic. How did things go?
  • temphn 14y ago
    What if you had front loaded the open salary information in the hiring process? Something like, "We have a no-haggle policy on engineering roles. In order to streamline negotiations, please only apply for this job if you are comfortable with X starting salary and Y options. We are very fair and promotions are rapid (see our comp ladders here), but want people to join who share our sense of efficiency." Law firms manage to pull this off with a standard $160k base, and probably something similar works in other spaces?
• rorrr 14y ago
  Looking at their salary model, I think they got it very very wrong: Position | Salary | Stock Options ———————————————+———————————————+———————————————— Intern | 50K - 60K, | prorated N/A Engineer I | 70K - 80K | 0.25% - 0.75% Engineer II | 85K - 100K | 1.0% - 1.5% Engineer III | 105K - 125K | 1.75% - 2.25% Your highest-level engineer makes only twice as much as your intern (stocks are worthless, on average). That makes zero sense to me. True senior level engineers are dozens of times more productive than interns, make infinitely fewer mistakes, and know infinitely more. To max out your engineer salaries at 125K in Mountain View, CA is just crazy. No surprise it didn't work out.
  • jackowayed 14y ago
    I'm not sure it's as insane as you think. First, interns at big-name tech companies are highly overpaid for the work the company gets now; it's seen more as a hiring cost than a salary. The company pays ~$50k (~20k is three month's salary; add in housing stipend, taxes, and overhead) per intern in the hopes that a decent proportion of them will be back. Those that are back are solid engineers that are known quantities; false positives should be much more rare than in your general hiring process because you get to see them work in your company for three months before deciding whether to make a full-time offer. Given how hard and expensive engineer recruiting is, this is an ok deal for a lot of companies. But regardless, comparing to intern salary isn't meaningful because few companies actually believe that they are paying for what the intern will produce in their three months when they pay top dollar for elite interns. Furthermore, while higher salaries are certainly available, those salaries don't seem absurdly low for the stage of company they were (tiny staff, no product released). Most companies at that early of a stage do expect employees to accept a nontrivial cut from their market rate in return for more interesting work, more autonomy, and fairly significant (if high-risk) equity.
    • InAnEmergency 14y ago
      Yep, I was hired by a company where I did an internship and was actually paid slightly less as a full-time employee than as an intern (more benefits, though). As an intern I made $40/hr, hired full-time at $80k/yr.
      • philwelch 14y ago
        Figure 10 days PTO and holidays, 40 $/h * 40 h/wk * 50 wk/yr = 80 K$/yr. You made the same amount. OK, maybe you work more than 40 hours a week, but if you're salaried you don't account for that anyway.
      • rorrr 14y ago
        $40/hr is a pretty ridiculous salary for an intern, good for you, man. Maybe you, personally, were worth that much, but on average, it's at least double of what the companies should be paying to interns. Heck, $15/hr should be fine.
• tehwalrus 14y ago
  "Negotiation doesn't work super well if the other players have complete information about your strategy." Economist's point: perfect markets don't work if anyone has restricted information. Employees can't sell their labour at the market rate if they can't see every other salary in the economy... :)