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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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
But why is the title bar to this story red?
That happens automatically when a ship decloaks.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
That happens automatically when a ship decloaks.
Is that a Romulan or Klingon cloaking device?
First one, then the other.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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.
too bad all of their positions has stupid non market names so correlating salary among the industry norms is near impossible.
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.
Precisely. And as an investor I'd be mad as hell they're burning $123,000 a year on a "diversity guardian".
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."
That happens automatically when a ship decloaks.
Is that a Romulan or Klingon cloaking device?
"Captain, there's a Bird of Prey, declucking!"
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
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.