[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.