[oxidethrowaway]

Oxide’s work is always interesting and basically a perfect confluence of all of my combined hardware and software experience to date.

However, I can’t quite get over their policy of paying everyone the same salary of $175,000. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26348836 ) I’d love to apply and work on these things, but I wouldn’t love the idea of sacrificing $xxx,000 per year for the privilege of building someone else’s startup.

Does anyone know if they have some variability in equity compensation at least? I’m no stranger to taking significant compensation in startup equity, but it would have to be significant enough to make up for the significant comp reduction relative to just about every other employer in these domains.

[voltagex_]

Do you know how much money $175kUSD is to a lot of people?

[oxidethrowaway]

Yes! Of course it is, but employment is a market like anything else.

The difference between $175K and market rate compensation (which may be significantly higher right now, considering the job market and the skills they’re asking for) is captured entirely by the founders and investors. We shouldn’t be shaming people for expecting a higher portion of the value they create in a competitive market like this.

But the fixed salary method creates a lot of secondary problems for a company: It can become a revolving door as people join for quick experience and resume-building, but then leave as soon as they can get a higher paying job somewhere else.

[nextaccountic]

> The difference between $175K and market rate compensation (which may be significantly higher right now, considering the job market and the skills they’re asking for) is captured entirely by the founders and investors

Why wouldn't some % of this be captured by your teammates?

[oxidethrowaway]

That’s why I asked about equity. If they’re giving significant equity then I have no problems with the $175K compensation limit.

One of my favorite employers right out of college did almost exactly this same thing: Everyone gets paid the same (although they had a couple tiers) and a lot of talk about how we’re all equal.

I believed it, until the acquisition event and I realized that the founders and early team members literally had 100-1000X or more as much equity than I did. All of the talk about paying everyone the same suddenly seemed like a cruel joke.

[hinkley]

Also it looks like they did a 3% inflation bump in the last month, as it now says $180,250 on their careers page.

Another 10% salary makes a much bigger difference when your finances are out of control. Once you are living below your means it moves your retirement date around. It's not enough to move your Fuck You, I'm Moving to Tuscany date by an appreciable amount.

[steveklabnik]

(The bump was done nine months ago, it even talks about it in the linked post itself.)

[hinkley]

Did that make it onto the careers page at the same time?

[steveklabnik]

I don't remember to be honest. I would hope so!

[hinkley]

I feel like I looked a month ago and it was still a round number. Happy to be wrong though.

[4ad]

It's a startup, you shouldn't compare it with FAANG, but to other startups, in which case I think it's competitive, is it not?

[oxidethrowaway]

In my first-hand experience interviewing at other startups (Q3 and Q4 2021) it’s definitely not competitive. Startups are unbelievably well-funded right now and capital is cheap and easy to come by. Even small startups don’t hesitate to compensate their employees well because they know it’s their only shot at attractive the type of talent that gets them to exit.

Basically, it doesn’t make sense for a startup to be frugal with compensation right now.

Unless you interpret it as their way of hiring only promising junior candidates or remote workers from locations where $175K is a lot of money?

Regardless, it’s weird to pay everyone the same amount of money because you’re basically pretending experience doesn’t matter. This leads to more experienced people leaving for other companies where they can (easily) get paid more while the less experienced people won’t leave because it’s a boost over what they’d get at other places.

I’ve worked at places with HR-mandated salary caps before. The best people always leave because there’s no hope of moving up and there’s no real incentive to work any harder than anyone else earning the same amount (as long as you avoid getting fired).

[bcantrill]

All of this is more or less answered in the blog entry from nine months ago.[0] We haven't really done a follow-up, but since that blog entry, we attracted a new wave of absolutely outstanding folks. I don't think that I'm speaking out of turn to say that this is the best team that any of us have ever worked on -- and to the contrary, experience matters a great deal, as the team is exclusively experienced. I would acknowledge that we are a different kind of company, and one that attracts a different kind of technologist. (And frankly, given the issue that you take with our compensation, you would likely take issue with many other aspects of our hiring process as well -- and that's okay! Not every company needs to be a fit for every person.)

[0] https://oxide.computer/blog/compensation-as-a-reflection-of-...

[4ad]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I certainly would like to see more companies with a similar level of transparency, and which do a similar equal-pay compensation scheme, and which exclusively attract experienced engineers. I have long decided even before your blog post that this is exactly how I am going to run my company.

[pjmlp]

> Startups are unbelievably well-funded right now and capital is cheap and easy to come by.

Maybe on US, over here certainly not.

[hinkley]

I have some friends I'd be visiting in Cupertino if they had offered that much about 3 years ago, but they didn't. The real money was going to be based off of grants and getting a promotion back to their current level, and that was all too abstract for moving to the Valley, so they passed.

Worked out as their boss quit in the interim and now they're the boss.