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Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

• jaboutboul 13y ago
  Not the smartest thing in the world to do, publish people's salaries and twitter accounts, especially in this day and age where privacy is virtually non-existent. I hope everyone agreed to publicly disclose the salary information.
• iampims 13y ago
  It’s one thing to have a transparent salary policy, it’s a whole another world to publicly blog about people’s salary with a link to their Twitter account. I hope all employees agreed to have their salary published on the buffer blog. Kudos to them for trying something different.
  • mberning 13y ago
    Yeah, I think it would have been more than enough to simply explain the formula and provide some anonymized examples. On another note, I am quite surprised at how underpaid some of their positions seem. Senior iOS engineer barely cracking 100k in a very expensive market...
    • wmeredith 13y ago
      Yeah, that's pretty ballsy. Seems like they're exposing themselves to unnecessary poaching risk. And what do they do in that situation? What if someone has a competing offer and they want to keep them around? Offer a bonus?
      • fleitz 13y ago
        Nope, you talk about transparency, fairness, etc. If you're sticking to that salary structure you're not going to win on price in this market. Warm fuzzies are important to a lot of people, look at how non-profits retain people. Also, there are a lot of people who don't know how to negotiate that would probably benefit from something like this. I know a few devs who stick around at places because they like the people, etc, despite having had multiple offers for more money. Not my style, but it takes all sorts.
        • 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
          > I know a lot of devs who stick around at places because they like the people, etc, despite having had multiple offers for more money. Sure, but that's not the only consideration here. Employees don't always have the option of sticking around at a company. Not all startups make it, and people are terminated or laid off from jobs they love all the time. If and when the time comes to find another job, a public record of your previous salary may not benefit you in your negotiations with prospective employers.
          • fleitz 13y ago
            If you're not employed you have a very poor BATNA.
      • jonlucc 13y ago
        It seems like they're ok with the poaching risk. I would assume most of their employees are happy enough, or they'd leave. I'm not sure having the salary posted is a big change from that perspective.
        • kansface 13y ago
          People don't work that way. There is quite a bit of discontent or discomfort people will put up with until they are sufficiently motivated to take action. The number of people who are underpaid by 30% and unwilling to look for another job is far greater than the number who would accept that offer once its in front of them.
      • pekk 13y ago
        If they are paying well then they are actually discouraging poaching
        • smm2000 13y ago
          The thing is that Buffer does not pay well... I will say that they pay on the lower side of acceptable.
    • TheCoelacanth 13y ago
      It seems like the bonuses for Senior and Lead are too small. The highest paid engineer is only making 20k more than the lowest paid, and 16k of that difference is because of location.
  • Raphmedia 13y ago
    I never understood the hypocrisy about hiding your salary.
    • collyw 13y ago
      Seems to be more of an American thing than a European thing. Not everyone will hide their salary here. Some will some won't.
      • ckarmann 13y ago
        I never saw someone disclose his/her salary in France. There seems to be an expectation that doing so would produce jealousy and bitterness. So it's not only an American thing.
    • delluminatus 13y ago
      In general, it's seen as bragging if your salary is high, and mortifying if your salary is low, so it's usually just better to keep your mouth shut about it. I've told a number of people my salary and regretted it every time. They seem to take a vicarious pleasure in telling other people how much money I make. "Oh, you should listen to delluminatus, he makes $xx thousand a year." Ugh.
    • quinnchr 13y ago
      If discussing salary in the workplace weren't taboo there'd be people unionizing left and right.
    • walshemj 13y ago
      Companies (especially large ones) don't like it as it limits their negotiation position it can also disclose indirect discrimination e.g. "oops all the females seem to be under paid by 10/20%" which can get expensive. And it also limits employees when they want to move as the new employer knows how much they make now.
      • Raphmedia 13y ago
        Yes, I understand why companies do it. They don't want people to know when they are under/overpaid. What I don't understand is why people don't talk about it. If you tell and you learn you are overpaid then you feel good. If you learn you are underpaid, well, time to go negotiate/look elsewhere. Do people think they ARE their salary? It's simply money that some people arbitrary decided to pay you...
• almosnow 13y ago
  What are 'happines hero'es ?
  • adambard 13y ago
    Presumably some combination of sales and support.
• carsongross 13y ago
  I like this idea, but with a few modifications: * Names should be anonymous. Everyone knows where they are within the group and can determine if its fair without knowing exactly who makes what. * It should include options and bonuses. In some companies non-salary compensation dwarfs salaries, and it's dishonest to point to a CEO salary and say "Look, he only makes 1.something X what regular people do." * Keep it internal to the company. No point in giving the competition an exact target or requiring whole company buy in before you do it. * Allow people to redact their own information, but display it as having been redacted. If enough people do that, or just management does it, everyone will sense that things are unfair.
  • 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
    > The vast majority of compensation in software companies is tied up in options... That's absolutely not true. Most companies never have a liquidity event, a significant number of stock options never vest (employees leaving before they're fully vested is very, very common at startups) and even when a company delivers an exit, the vast majority of employees with equity will, at best, walk away with what amounts to a modest "bonus." Facebook and Twitter-like outcomes in which hundreds of rank-and-file employees become millionaires are the exception, not the rule.
    • carsongross 13y ago
      You are correct, I was being SV-centric. Edited.
      • 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
        Even in Silicon Valley, the "vast majority of compensation" is not tied up in options because again, statistically, most employees will never realize significant gains from their options. Take a senior engineer at a startup with a $125,000/year salary. He has options that are fully vested after four years. Let's say his options represent a .5% equity interest in the startup after dilution and there are no liquidity preferences to deal with (a highly unlikely scenario). His company would need to have a $100 million exit for him to walk away with a pre-tax amount equivalent to his gross salary over those four years ($500,000). In 2012, according to CB Insights, over half of startup exits were less than $50 million, and more than 80% were less than $200 million.
• rikacomet 13y ago
  when I clicked on "try buffer" it takes me to the url: bufferapp.com, kaspersky blocked it saying "phishing URL". You might wanna talk with Kaspersky?
• ra3 13y ago
  Can't say a lot of good things about a company that pays a "Chief Happiness Officer" more than most of its engineers. I know plenty of startups that seem to be doing alright in the customer service department without an overpaid exec heading it. Does she really contribute more to the bottom line than any of the other 4 underpaid engineers?
  • untog 13y ago
    A Chief Anything Officer should probably be paid more than engineers, or they shouldn't have the words Chief and Officer in their title. And that seems like a very developer-centric viewpoint. Yes, good customer service can add a lot to a company's bottom line. Some companies have huge engineering issues and need engineers to solve them. Some companies have huge sales issues and need sales people to solve them. Some companies have huge customer service issues and need customer service agents to solve them.
    • digz 13y ago
      Disagree. The founders of my company (including me) are paid less than almost everyone else that works with us. I know few rigorous investors that would stand to pay their CEO/founders more than ~80k a year, at least until it's clear the company is maturing. Also, as a founder with significant equity, I'd much rather put as much of my salary that I can spare (My wife and I need to eat, pay rent, etc.) to go towards bringing in (and keeping) top sales or technical talent. If you believe in my company, the math works out very well. I also do the occasional angel investment, and frankly, I'd be pissed to see a business I invested in run like this. Two annual international offsite trips? What?! You're building an app to schedule tweets. This is not rocket science. Get to work!
      • jmduke 13y ago
        Buffer is posting $2M annual revenue this year, if I recall correctly. Their paychecks aren't being signed by investors -- they're being signed by customers.
• bliti 13y ago
  1. Does the buffer team work remotely? 2. What's your backend written in?
• danso 13y ago
  Wow...the engineering salaries are significantly lower than I would've expected for a well known startup in the Bay Area...at least compared to the perceived range for such things. Note: a less cynical take is this: GodDAMN buffer employees must be happy working there if they tolerated transparency to this level...which, really, is the best win-win for all kinds of transparency scenarios.
  • ricardobeat 13y ago
    They have engineers in the UK, Taiwan, Ireland and Colorado. If they all lived in SF the salaries would be above $100k.
    • tootie 13y ago
      I'm one of maybe 10-12 architects at some stupid company and I make more than everyone at Buffer including the CEO.
      • dinkumthinkum 13y ago
        I know, this seems like an anti-recruiting blog post. Working at Buffer not only means you have to be a part of a hippy groupthink ideology that you have to share your salaries with the whole world (this is not a government institution) and it will be posted on a popular website in your field, you will also earn much less than expected.
  • ra3 13y ago
    > the engineering salaries are significantly lower than I would've expected for a well known startup in the Bay Area. While some of them do work overseas, Buffer employees should note they're drastically underpaid for Silicon Valley, NYC, or even LA salaries. If they didn't know this before, they should now. Any mid-level dev with decent skills would start around 110-120k before benefits in a highly competitive job market. I know because I hire and offer these salaries right now. Anyone heading customer service would be in a tier within the rest of customer service, capped at around 90k. This is especially true for a small startup where their duties aren't managing a huge customer service team but rather playing the role of basically another customer service rep.
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• benaston 13y ago
  When the market shifts, or for tactical reasons you have to pay more to recruit someone, you instantly have a problem.
• dsugarman 13y ago
  I have a feeling you will regret this soon. There are certain benefits in having a firm salary structure sponsored by a transparent system, but the loss of flexibility will hurt in ways you haven't experienced. Also, letting everyone know what their peers make can cause disgruntled employees.
  • thatthatis 13y ago
    I've worked under open salary formulas and closed salary formulas. I'd rather work under an open salary formula any day.
    • wahnfrieden 13y ago
      Why
      • thatthatis 13y ago
        1) No stress from "am I getting paid more/less than my co-workers" 2) No stress from "how much will I make in 5 years if I stay here" On net, it let me focus more on doing my job well and less on politics.
  • pekk 13y ago
    You mean it can cause employees asking for comparable pay
  • swombat 13y ago
    My company, GrantTree, is also run with open salaries (internally, though I posted the salary scale in an HN comment before). There was some disgruntlement when everyone was underpaid, but there's been remarkably little disgruntlement from individuals asking for more money for just themselves. This had been so for over a year now, so not conclusive, but starting to accumulate some data.
    • xentronium 13y ago
      So, for example, in case of competitor offering your valuable worker +10-15% to their salary, will you have any means to match that offer?
• mrkmcknz 13y ago
  Very humbling that no one at Buffer would call themselves a "Master", indeed many would probably but Joel at that level but he sits there on a 1.2x multiplier. I once had a conversation with an old hat who said "If you call yourself a python master you better be fucking Guido."
  • humanrebar 13y ago
    Hmmm... that's an unfortunately worded quote.
  • thesausageking 13y ago
    The truly great programmers are not going to work for Buffer. Their product has no hard technical challenges and they're paying very low salaries.
• OhHeyItsE 13y ago
  Interesting in many ways. In particular, only the executives make what would be considered a competitive senior engineer/architect salary in NYC or SF. Perhaps they 'compensate' with equity?
• iblaine 13y ago
  If I were in HR then I would be reaching out to any employee that I see is under paid. Likewise I would not reach out to any employee that I think is over paid. Perhaps consider keeping this data internal.
• JonFish85 13y ago
  Let's say I'm a competitor, and I find that Niel (randomly picked) is someone I want to hire. All else being equal, I offer him $100k (website says he's making $88k). He comes to his boss to say "I like it here, can you match it?" What does his boss do? Especially, if he's valuable to the company... What if I have a very specialized skill that doesn't fit nicely into your matrix? Let's say market pay for my skill is $200k. Do you create a new category for me? Do I get dirty looks from all of my co-workers because I have a valuable skillset that most people don't? I'd hate it, as an employee, as a boss or as an investor. But that could just be me.
  • ricardobeat 13y ago
    "All else being equal" is a huge assumption. Will your company offer the same environment, flexibility, openness, remote work? You should first assume that Buffer keeps their employees very happy to be able to openly publish their salaries.
    • JonFish85 13y ago
      That's great, but what if Niel has a kid? Suddenly priorities are shuffled in a big way. Maybe he needs a 5% raise to afford <whatever it is that the kid needs>? Is it worth it to the company to lose the employee over 5% of salary?
      • jasonwocky 13y ago
        I think the point of the transparency is that they'd discuss a situation like this as a company.
  • kapilkale 13y ago
    Equity is still off the table.
    • btbuildem 13y ago
      Yes because that works out profitably for more than 0.001% of participants.
• zmitri 13y ago
  I have a question: Why would the founders take such high salaries? Seems to go against everything I would think was important for a company that is venture-backed.
  • sgk284 13y ago
    Their salaries are actually still fairly low. An engineer in SF can easily make more than $150k base per year. Venture backed companies should pay their employees well though. If you're worried about food / shelter or constantly wondering if a shift in jobs would give you a disproportionate gain in quality of life then you're not focused on the startup. The biggest advantage of raising a lot of money is so that you can pay a lot of money and not have your team worrying about "I'd have loved to do that trip to Paris, but can't afford it. If I quit for Google, then I'd be good to go. That said, I'm a believer that founders shouldn't be the highest paid employees.
  • BadassFractal 13y ago
    Frequently, and I'm not saying it's Buffer's case, it's to offset the fact that founders have gone, possibly heavily, into debt over years of not paying themselves a salary.
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  • ronaldx 13y ago
    Why wouldn't founders take such salaries, which are not outrageous? Saying that founders shouldn't take a fair salary - comparable to what they might get elsewhere - puts them in a untenably risky position that would limit the pool of founders to the independently wealthy and the foolish. That limitation would not be to the benefit of the backers.
  • dinkumthinkum 13y ago
    Compare what $158K is in terms of adjustment in other cities. It is not very much money for a skilled worker.
  • thesausageking 13y ago
• benihana 13y ago
  This sounds like absolute hell >Every internal email sent between any 2 people on the team has a certain list cc’ed that is accessible for everyone: For example if 2 engineers email with each other, they cc the engineers list, if it’s people on our customer support team they have a support email list cc’ed. Stripe was a great inspiration for this. (More about this) Openness and transparency and honesty are great. But this seems like it's removing privacy, which sounds very tiring.
  • danso 13y ago
    At one level, you are right...anyone with experience in covering gov't knows that employees have long since stopped using their official email for dicey business, e.g. Sarah Palin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_email_hack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_email_hack But an effect of this "you're being watched" is that you will modify your behavior to at least meet the spirit of the law, and this modificAtion can be I itself beneficial. Trivial example: I used to cuss a LOT...but volunteering in family friendly jobs forced me to not do that, or at least start using "gosh" and "shucks". I found out (as Orwell might attest to) that my mood overall improved without reverting to the negativity so reflexively. In the case of Buffer...OK, some kinds of very important communication may be stifled. But a whole lot of non productive behavior (idle chatting via email) may be stifled. And then there are benefits of transparency, in which everyone realizes they have to start out in a consensus building mood. And for the cases where you need to take someone to the woodshed, so to speak? Do it in person. That alone mitigates some problems that come from misinterpretation through the written word
  • ryanSrich 13y ago
    And that's completely ignoring the shitstorm of emails one would recieve on any given day. Email is a drain on productivity and this seems like it would make it even more so. Having access to conversations between parties is nice but please don't send me meaningless emails all day long.
    • wmeredith 13y ago
      A list everyone had access to was CC'd. I don't think everyone in the company is CC'd on every email.
• kapilkale 13y ago
  Seems unwise to have a CEO co-founder be the highest salaried employee at a startup. That person's equity position is probably at least an order of magnitude higher than the other employees. As an investor or employee, I'd find this alarming. http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/08/peter-thiel-best-predictor-of-startup-success-is-low-ceo-pay/ http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/08/peter-thiel-best-predictor-... Call me old fashioned, but I think co-founders should be paid living expenses + 25%, even in a series-A funded startup.
  • beachstartup 13y ago
    $100-150k for chief officers at a startup is a completely reasonable salary. similar salaries at established, larger companies run into the 250-500k range.
  • runako 13y ago
    >> co-founders should be paid living expenses + 25%, even in a series-A funded startup It's risky to comment without knowing the specifics of Joel's situation. But it seems that his $158k salary isn't outside those bounds if he lives in e.g. San Francisco or NYC. Hard to know someone's living expenses without drilling way into their personal financials, and again this is not unreasonably high. Thiel, from the link you posted: >> What’s the average salary for CEOs from funded startups? Thiel was hesitant to answer, but eventually said “$100-125k.” That was in 2008. Adjust for rent inflation, and that should square the numbers for you.
    • kapilkale 13y ago
      Sure, that's a generalization. There are tons of exceptions where my generalization doesn't apply. But that isn't the core of my argument- its a postscript. The math the company has laid out says that CEOs should be paid more than any employee in a company, even if they are founders and have a controlling equity stake. I'm simply saying that if I were an investor or employee, I would find that concerning.
    • zmitri 13y ago
      I worked in finance and made less than that in salary. It's enough for a luxurious existence in NYC provided you don't have children. I'm not sure whether or not they have children, but that's a lot.
• rmason 13y ago
  I wonder in five years looking back whether Buffer getting hacked or their 'transparency' will have hurt them more. I am betting the latter. Do they really think they can ban private emails between engineers? it would have been much easier to simply load eavesdropping software on their computer if management doesn't trust them. I really like Buffer but I'm a little worried about them.
• jcampbell1 13y ago
  Also introducing open revenues and semi open profits. Implied Revenue: $2.0M [1] Total Salary: $1.7M [1] ((158.8 - 22)/1.2 - 75×1.2)/12
  • fantastical 13y ago
    Close: http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-november-update-2347000-run-rate-1189000-users/ http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-november-update-2347000-run...
• Euro_IT_drone 13y ago
  Just trying to compare here with my European salary.. How much of this do you get to take home, ie. what part of it can you spend on food, clothing, housing etc. after takes? What about health insurance, is it provided for?
  • svachalek 13y ago
    Social security tax is 7.5%, with an annual cap of $113k (taxed) Medicare tax is 2.9%. Federal tax is very complicated but probably in the range of 20-25% for most people. State taxes vary by state. In California it can end up being a third of your federal tax. You really need to save about 10% for retirement. Health insurance may or may not cost you money. Typically it will cost at least a few $thousand/year. Having talked to a few Europeans about it, my impression is that both the raw salary and the % you keep are quite a bit better in the US, for professional workers, and that most goods cost less. But you are expected to work more hours with less time off and if you get sick or hurt or something really bad happens to your company/town/industry, good luck to you. There are "safety nets" for most of these things but they have a lot of holes in them.
  • TheCoelacanth 13y ago
    It depends on a lot of factors, but most people making that level will probably pay a total of about 30-40% in taxes. Health insurance will almost always be provided at this type of job.
  • mikegreen 13y ago
    Roughly - Expect someone making $100k in the SFO area (high state and taxes compared to many parts of the country) to pay about 20-25% in a few federal taxes, and 8-10% in state taxes. So the take home pay would be around $65k-$72k, before any retirement contributions etc. In the US, healthcare is provided in a professional/fulltime position like these (maybe not the bootcampers). Figure $150-300 a month for healthcare if contractor or not-provided.
    • Euro_IT_drone 13y ago
      Okay, thanks for the info. I have health insurance (great nationwide social security, and additional health coverage for me and my partner provided by my employer), a company car (audi a6) with fuel card and make about the same as the CEO, but pay close to 50% in taxes. Still, not that bad at all apparently... (Even though it's hard to compare. Cost of living, vacation days, all make a difference.)
• suprgeek 13y ago
  Excellent concept - but one major Caveat. Why in the world would you publish it for all the world to see? Keep it internal to the company - you have an expectation of privacy from your employer and this post just ruined it completely. I hope they got written signed releases from every one of those folks whose private info they broadcast to the world.
  • bjpless 13y ago
    Seconded. Hard to imagine all employees signing off on this release for the sake of a HN article. But I hope that they did. I would be very upset if my salary were published unbeknownst to me.
    • swombat 13y ago
      You would only be upset because you currently work in a company with a culture that doesn't value transparency as a core value. If you worked in a company like Buffer or GrantTree, you'd be wondering why others are so secretive about their salaries, and find yourself more and more disliking the idea of working for a company which is not transparent. Habit is a powerful thing. Change your surroundings and you'll change your habits.
      • qq66 13y ago
        "Why don't you borrow money for a car from Cousin Ricky? I read online that he has a fancy job in San Francisco paying him $98,433, he can't say no." "Why don't we break into this guy's apartment? I read online that he makes $98,433 and he should have some expensive stuff in there." "Hello Sir, sorry to call at dinnertime but I'd like to offer you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy the timeshare of your dreams. You should be able to easily afford it on your $98,433 salary."
        • umsm 13y ago
          Why would you use salary to determine if someone is a big spender or not? Look at their car / home and see if it's worth the risk.
• dangero 13y ago
  Wow, an Android engineer making less than 100K that's crazy to me, but I'm not that familiar with UK salaries I guess.
  • agilebyte 13y ago
    London is special, from http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/ http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/: 45k for Android UK average 55k for Android London average 10k GBP is 16k USD
    • benaston 13y ago
      Suspect the weak mean salaries in London are due to the fact that many (most?) senior developers move out of the permanent jobs market into consulting/contracting (which, I hear is not par for the course in other nations).
• esja 13y ago
  As they grow they will need to hire more people. I wonder whether this policy will prevent some otherwise excellent hires from joining them.
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• zhuzhuor 13y ago
  I found one thing interesting is that only 4 out of 17 people choose equity over $10k salary. Even CTO chooses salary. I am curious if this is common in startup companies, since I have never worked in startups.
  • jacobquick 13y ago
    Paying those salaries in San Francisco, there better be a giant pile of equity either way.
• tootie 13y ago
  I used to work in government (US municipality) and every single employee's salary (10s of thousands of people) was public record.
  • caseydurfee 13y ago
    Likewise. For example, salaries for all City of Seattle employees are here: http://lbloom.net/xsea11.html http://lbloom.net/xsea11.html
• icambron 13y ago
  I actually love the radical transparency here, even after reading all the warnings in the HN comments. What I like less is the salary formula. What's going to happen is that all of the negotiation is going to get packed into the experience and seniority multipliers. It creates the illusion of rigor and possibly does more harm than good.
  • joelgascoigne 13y ago
    This is a really great point. We don't see as much negotiation as might be expected, however what you say is definitely true to an extent. How do you think we could improve that aspect?
    • icambron 13y ago
      I'd just drop the formula altogether, I think. If at the end of the day, the numbers are just worked out so that you and the employee agrees the salary is about right ("I want $x, so I guess I'd better get a 1.3x experience multiplier"), then just make "work out the salary such that you and the employee agree it's about right" the policy. The transparency keeps these negotiations simple and fair; for example, pushier people won't get more raises than their shyer colleagues because everyone will notice and act accordingly (including you, who will find it easier not to give pushy people those raises when they're posted on the company website).
• freyr 13y ago
  Many people here are picking on the senior developers salaries, hovering right around $100K. Maybe this isn't a particularly competitive startup salary, but note that salaries are tied to revenue. If the company's revenue grows significantly, their salaries could become much more attractive. If, for example, revenues grow from $2M revenue to $20M revenue, senior developers would see their salaries increase by $54k or ~50% over this time. It could be argued that 10X growth or an $18M increase in revenue is unrealistic for a tweet scheduler, but that's for the employees to determine.
• vladgur 13y ago
  Wow, these salaries seem to be pretty low. I mean a senior IOS engineer making $107K in SF? Id expect them to easily increase their salary by 30% by jumping ship.
  • riffraff 13y ago
    I was thinking that they seem disproportionately high for some of the other locations (45k$/year in hanoi is a _lot_ of money)
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• fideloper 13y ago
  I'm really happy to see companies offer equity vs higher salary. As someone is almost 30 (read: less willing to take the chance that equity will result in future money), I feel that's a great choice to offer employees.
• overpaidprobly 13y ago
  Does anyone have an opinion on how these numbers square with market rates? I make $113k/year as a juniorish engineer at a VC backed startup in SV. Am I hilariously overcompensated?
  • rpedela 13y ago
    $113k/year for a junior engineer is definitely overcompensated even for SV. Congrats. :) software engineer 1: http://www1.salary.com/CA/San-Francisco/Software-Engineer-I-salary.html http://www1.salary.com/CA/San-Francisco/Software-Engineer-I-... software engineer 2: http://www1.salary.com/CA/San-Francisco/Software-Engineer-II-Salary.html http://www1.salary.com/CA/San-Francisco/Software-Engineer-II...
  • simoncion 13y ago
    It seems that market rate for a junior (0->2 years experience) web developer is ~$110k + benefits. You are not hilariously overcompensated. Ignore the various salary estimate sites. There's no way that they have an accurate view of the world.
    • krisgee 13y ago
      Are you serious? I'd feel like a fucking idiot walking out of university with a brand new degree and demanding 100k off the bat. I guess the market is different outside SV though right?
      • minimaxir 13y ago
        For fresh 2013 Carnegie Mellon CS graduates, mean salary was $94k, median was $100k. http://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-destinations/2013-survey/pdfs-one-pagers/SCS%20Post%20Grad%20Handout%202013.pdf http://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-destinations/2013-sur...
      • philwelch 13y ago
        In Seattle, you can get similar money and rent is cheaper.
• rpedela 13y ago
  What is a happiness hero?
• tikhonj 13y ago
  I've always felt the culture of hiding salaries was doing a significant disservice to employees. It creates a significant and largely artificial information disparity, giving a major market advantage to the employer. In turn, this makes the entire labor market less efficient for the employee. This also makes the employer less accountable to the employees. The employer can easily pay somebody significantly more or less than they contribute, and the rest of the team cannot really say anything about this. Now, there are some cultural reasons to do this--preventing jealousy, hiding inequality. But it really feels like a social band-aid, a temporary solution hiding the symptoms but not the underlying problem. Besides, everyone ends up having a reasonable guess as to who makes more and who makes less anyhow! The same dynamics develop, just with more uncertainty. On the other hand, making salaries public takes these problems head-on. Inequality isn't bad in and of itself; some is basically necessary. But hiding that fact doesn't really help anyone. Instead, forcing people to see it head-on, deal with it and talk about it is probably a better solution. I really applaud Buffer and the general movement towards transparency. I think it's a very healthy cultural progression and hope it catches on more widely, so that people stop having knee-jerk reactions to salary information. EDIT: As an interesting additional note, all salaries (beyond a token minimum) at Berkeley (and the whole UC system) are publicly available at http://ucpay.globl.org/ http://ucpay.globl.org/. I've looked up various professors at the ParLab (where I did some undergraduate research). The fact that their salaries range from ~120k to ~350k did not change my perspective of anyone and did not seem to affect the lab's culture at all. Essentially, I'd be perfectly happy to see this outside of public universities.
  • mrjatx 13y ago
    I disagree completely. You should, as the potential employee, be well aware of the market pay and what you are willing to be paid to perform the job that you're applying for. Not to mention their job postings actually list a salary window ($88-110k for Backend/Frontend). What the person sitting next to you is paid should bear absolutely no impact on your life or your work ethic. If you're happy to make $88k and the guy doing the same job next to you is making $110k, I don't see any problem. Maybe he has a few more years of experience than you, maybe he's a better negotiator, maybe his suit looked nicer. The point is that you accepted it and were willing to take that salary for that position. I can't fathom what being aware of your coworkers salaries could possibly do for positive team building. Somebody is going to be upset, egos will be triggered. Yes, in day to day business we're typically aware of the fact that an engineer or programmer makes more than a customer support or cashier. But here it's thrown in the employees face. "John sits next to me, he takes 3 hour lunches and he's paid $110k! I can't believe it. Screw John!" Show up to work in a new Porsche sometime and while some people will think it's the coolest thing ever and give you a pat on the back, jealously may rear its ugly head with others. I just don't see how this is a positive thing in the least.
• codingdave 13y ago
  This is only halfway to true transparency. And also halfway to the bureaucracy of most large companies. The other half to get to full transparency is having clear, measurable definitions of experience, and clear milestones of how to advance in seniority. And that relates to how this starts to resemble corporate salary structures -- the key difference being that these guys have a defined number instead of a "salary grade". but the idea of plugging positions and experience levels and seniority into a salary structure is key to almost every large company. And as a result, most of the corporate angst over salaries starts to boil down to questions like: "Why is he a programmer IV, while she is a programmer III.", "How do I advance from being a Staff Software Engineer to an Advisory Software Engineer?" This structure doesn't necessarily remove questions (and sometimes conflict) over career advancement, it just moves the discussion away from money, and towards labels and definitions. And as some comments mentioned, there are cases where you really want to hire someone whose salary requirements do not match your structure. You may get into sticky situations like having a great coder, but you would have to make him a Lead, or a VP to actually make him fit your structure. And maybe you don't want them to have that level of leadership, because that is not their skill set. So you end up having to decide -- Is this salary structure more important than making those hires, or are you willing to let potentially great hires get away because this structure is more important to the company than those people? That decision is not one that I will second-guess - I would think that these types of issues and scenarios, as well as other issues raised in the comments, have probably already been debated internally before this decision was reached. But that would be an interesting follow-up post -- to hear about what discussions and debates went on before making this decision, what the expected impacts will be, why decisions were made, and what levels of growth are expected to invoke changes in this structure.
• kisstheblade 13y ago
  Yeah well where I live (Finland) your income (and taxes) are public information. Eg. all persons in a city earning over 150k or some such are published in several tabloid newspapers. You know so that you can rat on your neighbors if they seem to live beyond their means or something... They could be tax evaders, gasp! You can very easily obtain this information about your coworkers if you are interested.
• yeukhon 13y ago
  This doesn't scale well when your company grows to hundreds of employees or even thousands.
  • redguava 13y ago
    Setting up a pay scheme now to handle thousands of employees would be very premature optimization.
    • yeukhon 13y ago
      But how do you deal with the newcomers? As you grow you keep getting more and more and that system they have will be harder to implement and eventually may end up just like other companies. It isn't something they shouldn't be thinking right now. It does make the current employee happy, but will this work when 10 more people are joining, 20, 30?
      • lem72 13y ago
        They can adjust when it doesn't make sense for the company. Those unhappy with the changes can choose to stay or leave.
        • yeukhon 13y ago
          > Those unhappy with the changes can choose to stay or leave. That's harsh. I am arguing that fantasying the success of this payscale doesn't mean the company is not responsible for the welfare of the employees as the company scales and grows.
• symfrog 13y ago
  This post reminds me of Miley Cyrus at the MTV VMA earlier in the year. Pop singers are incentivized to be the first to break cultural norms for no practical reason in order to ride the wave of subsequent teen followers. In the same way, posts like these are created to be the first to break a specific norm (i.e. do not post employee salaries publicly) in order to ride the wave of traffic (and hopefully a few additional users).
• ereckers 13y ago
  As long as they never have enterprise sales people I thin everything will be A OK.
• YZF 13y ago
  One result from behavioral economics is that people care more about their relative standing to others than the absolute value of the salary. This is why transparency can be a double edged sword. If I think I deserve to be paid more than Joe, as long as I don't actually know how much he's paid I can believe that I'm being paid more. However, once you have transparency and I can see Joe is getting paid more than myself this will probably have a negative impact on my morale and performance. One example I've heard discussed (I think by Dan Arieli) is how transparency in CEO pay has failed to bring CEO salaries down. One problem is now CEOs can see what other CEOs are getting paid and naturally every CEO will want to be paid higher than his peers. I used to think open salaries would be a good thing but lately I'm not so sure. You definitely want to tread very carefully there as there are many implications and unexpected consequences.
  • andyidsinga 13y ago
    i was thinking the same thing - i read about that in Dan Arieli's book Predictably Irrational. I suspect open salaries probably increases them on average.
• kreek 13y ago
  How long until the Buffer employees form a union? :)
• Kiro 13y ago
  The support staff makes twice as much as me and I'm an engineer. Are those normal salary levels?
• dj-wonk 13y ago
  I've read dozens of the comments on this page so far. The thing that jumps out to me is the interplay between these factors: (1) internal transparency (2) external transparency (3) internal privacy (4) external privacy (5) human motivation and (6) company culture. There are many combinations here, and I can't help but think Buffer didn't do an effective "search" across the possible "parameter space", even according to their own goals and interests. For example, Buffer could have easily added a policy saying that each employee's compensation may be adjusted by, say, +/- 20% based on individual factors. That would give some uncertainty, and thus a bit of individual privacy. Peers would still have some confidence that they were, more or less, in a similar range as others with their public performance characteristics. Let's put ideology aside (i.e. do we want this to work, according to our theories of human nature) and focus on the actual effects. How do you know if you've succeeded? How do you measure this? How do you design the experiment? Call me skeptical, but I can't help but think that Buffer is doing this, largely, to say "look at us!" and "this makes an interesting blog post!".
• newobj 13y ago
  Well, Sunil and Colin, seeing that you are criminally underpaid, are you interested in opportunities elsewhere? I will figuratively eat my underwear if you don't come to regret this strategy (public, non-anonymous open vs. internally open) at some point.
• mathattack 13y ago
  I'm very much on the fence with this. If you follow a simple formula, it can work. If you need to use judgment (how to pay a superstar?) then it becomes very tricky. My general observation is that any time two people compare salaries, one is disappointed. And here you shared your salaries with the whole world. Bravo for doing this, and engaging the discussion.
• Diamons 13y ago
  It's honestly stuff like this that makes me feel like the only sane person around. Why would you do this? If the CEO is pushing for it, the employees will all smile and nod and go along with the crowd, but all this does is breed resentment. The idea of open salaries sounds good on paper, but it's simply idealistic. You can sing the happiness song and do all the lets-be-friends dances but at the end of the day we're people competing for resources. This will have lasting effects to all current employees for sure.
  • jasonwocky 13y ago
    > It's honestly stuff like this that makes me feel like the only sane person around. You're not. > If the CEO is pushing for it, the employees will all smile and nod and go along with the crowd, I don't know what to say. There are more kinds of working relationships than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Not everybody lives in fear of their CEO. > You can sing the happiness song and do all the lets-be-friends dances but at the end of the day we're people competing for resources Sure, but some of us cooperate with others in order to compete with everyone else, and that's good enough.
• jballanc 13y ago
  Imagine if you went to the store to buy bread, but you didn't know how much all the other people in line were paying for their bread. When you get to the counter, the baker charges you some arbitrary amount. Today you have enough money to buy bread, but the baker warns you that he may charge more tomorrow. Since you don't know what anyone else is paying for their bread, you can't have any idea if what the baker charged you is fair or not. All you know is that you need to work as hard as you can so that you can be sure you will be able to afford tomorrow's bread. Of course, this doesn't work. Nobody is preventing you from asking your neighbors what they paid for their bread. Once you know what a "fair" price for bread is, then you know exactly how hard you need to work to afford bread, and you have little incentive to work any harder than that. If you own a company, ideally you don't want your employees competing with each other. You want each of them to compete with themselves, pushing their abilities, growing, learning, improving. You don't want them to know exactly how much they need to do to earn that next promotion, because then they will have little motivation to do more than the bare minimum. If you own a company, unlike the baker, you can have some amount of control over the flow of information. This control allows you to manipulate your employees motivations. Like any amount of control over anything, this control can be abused...but in capable hands it can also be wielded to great effect. An open salary policy gives away that control entirely...
• programminggeek 13y ago
  One area where open salaries are not such a big deal - education. Many teachers are paid on an open scale of years of service X education level. It does create a culture of possibly too much higher education beyond what is useful or necessary for certain levels of teaching. That also creates teachers who don't want to switch jobs because they'll lose the years of experience pay. Lesson - all people game the system for their own benefit.
• sytelus 13y ago
  Things I learned today: * Buffer is not somebody's weekend project * It needs 16 (yes, SIXTEEN) people to run that thing * They actually have revenue. In millions. $2.3 Millions! * Their company values are based on How to win friends and influence people. Aside from that, open salaries are pretty naive idea, if not completely dumb and dangerous. The lives you live everyday is in effect a game (as in "game theory" game). When you are talking to person, selling goods or buying one you are in the game. Like in any game, information is your advantage and your opponents weakness. This is exactly why privacy matters. If insurance company knows you eat too much pizza, they would want to get a higher premium from you. Similarly if a car dealer can look you up and figure out your salary, he can adjust his negotiation tactics. A plumber making half the money you do would want to charge you more than others. And so on. When all these people would look for their next jobs, their next employer would know how much salary to offer them.
  • scotty79 13y ago
    > Aside from that, open salaries are pretty naive idea, if not completely dumb and dangerous. In Sweden all salaries are public, look how awful they are doing.
    • DominikR 13y ago
      In Norway too!
    • gaadd33 13y ago
      How does that work if you are a consultant for example? Or, not sure how common they are in Sweden, a salesperson paid only on commission? I guess I'm curious how it deals with extremely variable salaries or is it just last year's that's public?
      • scotty79 13y ago
        They just make your income tax form public.
• nsxwolf 13y ago
  Seeing these pathetic salaries (and in the Bay Area!), I don't feel so bad about my boring enterprise development position at no-name established corporation anymore.
• dmourati 13y ago
  Wow, those salaries are low. If I was making that much and someone posted my salary to the internet, I would immediately quit.
  • dmourati 13y ago
    (job type + location + 10k) X seniority X experience x 1.5
• dxbydt 13y ago
  Back when I was a really dumb undergrad, I did some work for a company & they asked me where to mail the cheque. I gave them the University address. So I was chatting with my professor & we walk by the mailboxes, and by pure reflex, I reach out into my mailbox & grab my mail & he does the same & we say our goodbyes & go home. Now, I open the mail at home & am staring at my professor's salary! You see, the secretary had switched our mails by mistake because our last names began with the same letter. I was quite stunned by the number - it was a measly sum, and I did the math & worked out that the Professor's salary was about 60K. Now, I knew my Professor was an important CS scholar & had tons of papers to his name, but that low number irked me. After the PhD and all these papers, just 60K...why..? At the same time, my Professor had also gone home & opened his mail & was staring at my salary! So much money for some dumb undergrad who was basically an average student & had no major publications or research! He was quite bothered. The next day, we had a very awkward exchange of mails. But from then on, the student-teacher dynamic completely changed. I suddenly began getting B's instead of C's & even occasional A-. He probably felt, hey if this guy can get so much money in the market, he probably knows his shit. otoh, I began to respect him & the CS program less & less. So I still have to spend 3 more years & take 45 more credits & do the qualifiers to get the PhD & then write all these papers & for what..60K ? That was my attitude at the time. Needless to say, I dropped out of the PhD pgm with a Masters & went to work full-time. That was the stupidest thing I ever did, but I just didn't know it then. Now, I look back & think...hey if I hadn't known about his salary, I'd have slogged it through & actually gotten my PhD instead of half-assing it out here :(
  • nilved 13y ago
    Yeah, that's a pretty shameful and classist thing you did. Glad you seem to have learnt your lesson.
  • SrslyJosh 13y ago
    Props for admitting your mistake. Our reaction to academic salaries should really be the opposite. It's sad that we undervalue education so much in the US.
• corry 13y ago
  Serious question: Why aren't equity positions posted too? To me, that's part of the trade-off that the startup founder / leaderships takes (for good or ill), and seeing salary in the absence of actual equity positions is only half the picture. Hopefully they all know each other's equity positions internally and just chose not to share publicly... otherwise it would seem like a betrayal of the open culture if the actual ownership structure of the company wasn't openly known and discussed.
• dinkumthinkum 13y ago
  I don't mean anything but these salaries are pretty weak. Honestly, they are sort of really weak for this kind of company it seems to me. Hardly gives the impression of high paid software developers, particularly in the Bay Area, wow. I dunno.
• juliebug 13y ago
  As someone who uses Buffer (free version) on a regular basis, I have to say that I'm fairly amused that it appears as though none of the commenters here have actually read much, if anything, about Buffer. They have quite a lot of information about corporate culture that would have answered some of the questions and concerns posted here. Further, they're a distributed workforce (which I don't think anyone picked up on -- this explains emails vs. face to face conversations). Some extra reading for you folks: http://bufferapp.com/about/#our-philosophy http://bufferapp.com/about/#our-philosophy (scroll down to the 9 Buffer Values) http://www.slideshare.net/joelg2/buffer-culture-01-16707113 http://www.slideshare.net/joelg2/buffer-culture-01-16707113
• thesausageking 13y ago
  I'm really surprised the founders are the best paid people on the team. $158k is a big salary for a founder/CEO of a company at that stage.
• treitnauer 13y ago
  It's great to see other companies experimenting with openness in salaries. We've taken a different approach and pay all employees (including founders) the same salary which increases as the company grows. Our team is now 8-people strong and it's working great so far. As long as you contribute to the bottom line everyone's salary goes up automatically. It's totally transparent, no negotiations required, reviews, etc.
• icedchai 13y ago
  It's interesting the number of employees that chose the "+$10K more salary instead of more options" option. What does this tell you?
• tomasien 13y ago
  There are a lot of people bringing up edge cases and contingencies on this thread. The success of Buffer's culture is what happens when you stop being afraid of the edge cases and start deciding what kind of people you want to be. People will follow you if you stay true to that, as corny as that sounds.
• overgard 13y ago
  What the hell is a happiness hero? It sounds like some sort of horrible orwellian euphemism.
• n1ghtmare_ 13y ago
  "Happiness hero"! I can't think of anything more cheesy. Seriously.
• joshuaellinger 13y ago
  I always thought the best system would be to tell people what their boss makes, including options and other non-salary compensation. This eliminates the problem of people comparing themselves to their nominal peers on incomplete information. It really tells you everything you need to know about compensation. But the most valuable part of the buffer system is the formula. You have a framework for calculating what is fair. One of the dangers at small busy startups with well-intentioned leaders is that you basically forget to give people raises and your employees don't get you to correct it until they are pissed enough to quit. That's part of why I left my original company and it cost me a good employee recently.
• sifarat 13y ago
  I am the CEO, and my salary is lesser than all the key staff in my company. Reason, self-funded. And everyone in the office knows it. I am just astonished how a CEO of company like Buffer, can afford such an expensive package for himself. Are you making enough or just billing it to your investors?
• Uchikoma 13y ago
  As a "boss" I'd love this. The only downside I see is that some people will be disappointed because the salary reflects their skills and the value the company puts in them. For some this is hard to take if they are in the bottom 20% of people in their peer group. Said that, it's probably a good idea to start with this compared to introducing this later.
• snambi 13y ago
  Fantastic
• asgard1024 13y ago
  I think if you don't like the idea of closed salary (I don't), you should just go ahead and publish yours publicly (on FB or something), if you have the guts to do it and face potential conflict with your employer (I don't have the guts, I wish I had). Because, quite frankly, it's your money. No one should tell you what to do with it, much less to count these, publicly. And if, as the result of this, you get smaller salary, it will be there for the others in the company to see. How motivational. I think even with this unilateral action, you will get most of the benefits - good people around you are likely to respond back and tell you if you're underpaid or overpaid.
• the_watcher 13y ago
  The CEO of Buffer was asked by someone if he worried about this making it easier for his employees to be poached. His response: "if they do, they would be saving me time. Good to speed up that process. I don’t believe salary is the reason people would leave."[1] [1] https://twitter.com/joelgascoigne/status/413713018455740416 https://twitter.com/joelgascoigne/status/413713018455740416
• bdg 13y ago
  I'm still baffled by salaries. In Toronto and surrounding areas (cost of living is not as high as San Francisco) I'm a programmer for web apps (php, js, and a bit of this-and-that). I see sallary ranges all over the map. Some make 40k, I've seen a 55k who wanted 60k, I've an 80k, and a few 90-120k. One job I asked for 2x what I made at my old job. I'm convinced you're paid what you ask for, so long as you can get shit done.