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Buffer Sees Clear Benefits To Transparent Employee Salary Policy
An anonymous reader writes: At social media startup Buffer, a single leadership decision eliminated salary negotiation for new employees, preempted gender-based salary discrimination, and prompted a flood of job applications. The decision? Make all employee salaries transparent. "We set down transparency as a core value for the company," CEO Joel Gascoigne said in 2014. "And then, once we'd done that, we went through everything. And salaries was one of those key things that we found that [made us] question ourselves: 'Why are we not transparent about this?'" Years later, the policy is still in place (go ahead and calculate your salary as a would-be Buffer employee) — and it presents a fascinating case study for anyone interested in the ways open organizations approach a rather prickly subject: transparency.
But why is the title bar to this story red?
Something tells me I'd either be very happy with my starting salary, or very unhappy with my "master" salary...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I really like the idea. The San Fran salaries for CS are maybe 15-20% low, though.
The article says "Years later" but from looking at the site, most of the employees have been there less than a year and not many have been there for more than two. I suppose describing the elapsed time as years is strictly accurate but it's a bit misleading.
Salary is usually private info because of politics. Friends of the boss get paid more to do less and it would seriously piss off the people who cover their share of the work to have solid proof of it.
I imagine it would still happen under this system but just end up being extra-salary pay like in the form of bonuses, etc.
Why would transparency effect salary negotiation? What you are paying others makes no difference to me. I am negotiating MY position, not someone elses. No executive doesn't negotiate their salary, why would you? Stupid.
By this time next year, this company even exist.
From the article; "a single leadership decision eliminated salary negotiation for new employees"
Salary transparency is a good idea and it can make gender or racial discrimination more difficult. But what does that have to do with eliminating salary negotiation? Employees (new or old) could still negotiate based on their worth to the company. And transparency would mean that everyone would know what their salary was. So everyone could judge whether the employee was worth what they were being paid. It would be possible for each worker to determine if they were being short-changed because a less talented or less hard-working employee was being paid more. That is exactly the information that is necessary to engage in principled and informed negotiations. And preventing that knowledge is exactly what companies like to do to prevent informed negotiations.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Buffer Sees Clear Benefits To Transparent Employee Salary Policy
We now have intelligent buffers handling HR stuff? Cool.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I think it is a good idea in principle. You should be able to see what you will earn as you progress in your career development. https://open.buffer.com/transp...
However ... the base salary is very high, and the 'master' salary is only 30% higher. That's not a very inspiring career progression!
So either they don't hire graduates and juniors, or this is the company to get into if you are one of these!
In my experience, 'master' developers develop code that is far better (through experience) than a graduate or junior would, in terms of clarity and maintainability. They also can pick the best technology for a task very quickly via accumulated knowledge. OTOH grunt work should be rewarded, and there needs to be a baseline set for the cost of living in a certain location.
The 5% per year loyalty bonus on salary is a nice idea, that will retain employees far more than the master multiplier. Indeed that might explain a lot about the mechanism - it's a first year salary guide.
Wtf is a Happiness Hero?
By having publicly documented wages, employers at the low-mid tier can now set your wages by mutual agreement. You cannot go find a better job (salary wise), unless you can get a line on one of the upper tier companies who will definitely keep their salaries secret. Similarly getting employees from one of those upper tier companies might be nearly impossible, since you can't offer him anything competitive.
I think this hurts everyone to the pyyhric benefit of women and minorities.
Will they still exist a year from now?
Steve Jobs' tried this when he founded NeXT computer. Employees had full access to the payrolls. There were also only two starting salaries; $75,000 if you started before 1986, and $50,000 if you started afterwards. I'm not sure how this worked out for them considering the flux of that company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Does the calculator also take into account living expenses and commute times? That is a part of the total compensation picture as much as the salary.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I used to work for a company that made bonuses general knowledge within a department. They held a staff meeting and merit bonuses were given and the reasons why were discussed. They also maintained a department ranking and that was posted as well. It didn't really bother me, but I was almost always in the top 3 amongst 25 to 30 sys admins. What wasn't broadcast were the perks and $$$ given by the end-user groups we supported, and again I supported stock traders and private banking groups who had cash to throw about, so I am convinced I was getting significantly more than almost all of my colleagues. I miss the money these days but not the stress and corporate B$, not to mention having time off. 24 hour on-call gets old pretty fast.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Since they can get equivalent people in much cheaper locations and pay them less?
unlike the "Free PDF" yearbook from opensource.org
Well, at least now know it's fortunate that I never had any interest in Android or iOS development. $155K for a Master Android and $157K for a Master iOS developer in San Francisco (and trading equity for salary)???? Yikes - that's barely a living wage in San Francisco.
Are they underpaying because they are a startup or does it just suck to be a iOS or Android developer? I've worked for various startups over the last 30 years and found that the ones I was at were paying base salaries equal or better to the equivalent positions in established public companies (although, usually, at the established companies I was in a 20% bonus plan and the startups had no such concept as options were your "bonus" plan).
makes anything above 150K.
That's below market average for some senior tech folks, especially with higher risk options.
And transparency feels good now, but when the company is losing money (likely), I'm sure transparency will bite them in the end. UNLESS they are expecting a mass exodus (which some companies expect if their exit strategy is to sell out on IP).
Buffer Sees Clear Benefits To Transparent Employee Salary Policy
We now have intelligent buffers handling HR stuff? Cool.
The summary doesn't make it very clear, but they're talking about Emacs buffers, using hr-mode 6.2.9 (though XEmacs users are stuck on 5.9.x, because 6.0 introduced a reliance on an obscure new feature of Tramp which doesn't work on XEmacs yet). Supposedly 6.3 will bring integration with org-mode and ceo-mode, allowing essentially all business operations to be automated. That's been promised for years now, though, so I'm not holding my breath.
So people who live in more expensive places are somehow more valuable to the company? That's interesting.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
One of the jobs is Diversity Guardian...pays $124k in SF, but WTF job is that?
How stable is a company when the CEO's experience locked at beginner and risk permanently set to high?
too bad all of their positions has stupid non market names so correlating salary among the industry norms is near impossible.
"At social media startup Buffer..."
OK, I've heard enough already.
Diversity Guardian is the kind of hire you make when you're spending other people's money and of course being a start-up that's precisely what they're doing. Wankers.
Any recruiter in the Bay Area will tell you the compensation is based on two areas: the base and the equity package. They have low-risk/high-risk in this calculator, but they say nothing about how much equity goes with the higher. My bet is that the rock stars get a lot more stock than the average joes.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
A young company with no history/baggage? Lots of options, no problems. You can buck trends, adopt slogans like "don't be evil", be as mouldbreaking as you like. It's keeping it up that's the challenge.
If they can keep this up for five years, I'll be impressed. Until then, it's just another startup experiment. Nothing to see here.
This is pretty interesting, and I find it very cool.
But where is Equity? Bonuses?
This makes all the difference. CEO is getting tons of stock. Master better be getting a lot more stock than beginner (and certainly are) given the salary differences.
When I worked for a tech company with, my salary was only about 70% of my totally compensation.
The problem with having all salaries transparent, is that it takes away the negotiating ability of workers. Workers now won't be able to negotiate their salaries as it's all transparent and will pretty much be the same as everyone in their department. If you look at countries like Denmark (where salaries and tax returns are all public), this is exactly what has happened: This will probably save the company millions in the long-run.