Buffer Sees Clear Benefits To Transparent Employee Salary Policy 137
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.
It does not compute. (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I think it is more wishful thinking by the execs: "hey these are our salaries - take it our leave it." Of course the execs negotiate their compensation yearly.
FTA: "For Gascoigne and Buffer COO Leo Widrich, transparency's benefits are clear
From their transparent financials [inc.com]: "Buffer's revenue currently exceeds the company's costs,".
Yeah, to me it isn't altogether clear that the benefits are there. Especially since, from the link above, " Her advice: Buffer should convert more nonpaying users to paid plans, and increase the costs of those plans by a few dollars per month. "The valuation for this kind of company is driven so much by subscriptions--recurring reven
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
In short, open salaries actually encourage salary negotiations.
The only "day job" I've ever had was at a place with open salaries (public university). It made annual negotiations *easy*. I mean, wonderfully easy.
"Let's see - so-and-so is incompetent and he makes $x. I helped so-and-so about 10 times last year with questions, he's also incompetent, and he makes 2 times my salary. I don't care how long he's been here - he's asking a 22 year old new hire for help - I produce more work than him."
My boss complained when I quit 4 years later that in the 4 years I was the
Re: It does not compute. (Score:2)
You helping somebody does not make you more competent than the person you help - it just proves that he can get the infromation he needs. Get off your high horse.
Re: (Score:2)
You helping somebody does not make you more competent than the person you help - it just proves that he can get the infromation he needs. Get off your high horse.
In general, I agree with you. In these cases, though, no, they were simply incompetent. That's why they worked at the university frankly - they could do little actual work and still get an annual raise and be pushed around from job to job where they supposedly learned something new and then applied it. It's kind of difficult to understand this if you worked in industry, as people like this would simply be fired if they worked at any typical company. It's so difficult to actually fire someone at the unive
Re: (Score:2)
The only "day job" I've ever had was at a place with open salaries (public university). It made annual negotiations *easy*. I mean, wonderfully easy.
I've found that public universities (and other govt enterprises) you negotiate "promotions" not "salaries". Where many private companies have a few job-positions with a spectrum of salaries, government enterprises tend to have a plethora of job-positions with open/fixed salaries and you negotiate your step or your job-level instead of your salary. At the end of the day, it seems to me a 6 or a 1/2 dozen...
Maybe it's different in your university, but in my experience, in the government sector, nobody really broadcasted their job-level or step so even though the amount for each job/step was public info, you didn't know the secretary answering the phone was at a manager/supervisor level job with the highest step (because she was there 25 years and her manager kept on making up new job opening to promote her w/o having her change jobs after she reached the highest step for her previous "job"). Of course if the department was small enough and the job descriptions were diverse enough, you could probably narrow it down to one person, but I guess I never saw that...
Truth, but in our case the level was part of the public information, along with salary. I also went up pretty quickly that way, and some of my raises were simply due to being at a higher level.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly, salary transparency has nothing to do with salary negotiation. Knowing everyone's salary doesn't mean you still can't negotiate your salary. In fact, usually after it's all public, people start negotiating.
Sure they encourage negotiations, but they tightly bound the upper range. When faced with the choice of keeping their existing employees happy, and upsetting them by paying the new guy more than them, what will they choose? The result is that industry wages will move to the middle.
If they are an underperforming employee, that should make you happy. If you are a superstar, not so much.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Really? Please tell me how salary "privacy" benefits workers... unless they are incompetent. Is that what you are saying? Protect the privacy of the incompetent?
Re:Off topic (Score:4, Funny)
But why is the title bar to this story red?
That happens automatically when a ship decloaks.
Re: (Score:2)
That happens automatically when a ship decloaks.
Is that a Romulan or Klingon cloaking device?
Re: (Score:2)
First one, then the other.
Re: (Score:2)
That happens automatically when a ship decloaks.
Is that a Romulan or Klingon cloaking device?
"Captain, there's a Bird of Prey, declucking!"
From beginner to master: +30% (Score:3)
Something tells me I'd either be very happy with my starting salary, or very unhappy with my "master" salary...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Happiness Hero" sounds like a specifically focused morale officer to me. And I'd absolutely want to work for a company that takes good employee morale seriously enough to hire someone(s) whose whole job is to maintain it.
Re: (Score:1)
If you are a beginner in that field and being paid 1/10 the beginner salary they offer in the same place then quit. You are getting the shaft no matter what business you work for.
If you don't work in that field then your comment is baseless. Different professions get paid different amounts.
Re: (Score:2)
Something tells me I'd either be very happy with my starting salary, or very unhappy with my "master" salary...
But with the hipster street cred of being a "Happiness Hero", why would you ever care about your salary?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Something tells me I'd either be very happy with my starting salary, or very unhappy with my "master" salary...
Indeed. For entry level, the salary levels look fantastic. But then there is little increase. So as time goes by, their most productive employees will leave and go to where they are paid what they are worth. If salary transparency was a panacea, then the government, where salary levels are public, would be the most efficient organization.
Re: (Score:1)
This is assuming that the out of the gate "master" salary is the same as the salary cap for that position.
Re:From beginner to master: +30% (Score:4, Informative)
Only if you don't read the article. (Yes I know this is slashdot, but still).
Hint: There is an aditional 5% increase each year you have been there.
Re: (Score:3)
Doesn't matter. A master at his/her craft is worth far far more than 1.3x that of a beginner.
Re: (Score:2)
Certainly -worth- yes, but never have I worked for companies where employees of equal status make N-times the salary of another. Its basically a tax on the worthy to support those that are less capable.
Ultimately, there's essentially no company that can just continually hire genius people and pay them their amazing value vs. the less capable competing job seekers. If those less capable job seekers seek N dollars and that's what you pay more gifted employees, you either raise your wages across the board (not
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
> Hint: There is an aditional 5% increase each year you have been there.
So they adjust for inflation. Which everybody should be doing. Still isn't a raise.
Re: (Score:2)
Assuming the cap is the same as the starting salary, it's still only a problem if they have need of high-end developers. If they can instead do well with relatively low-end skillsets (such that "master" is simply the highest skillset they need, and is being paid what they're worth), then this could be an excellent policy to acquire and retain their desired workforce.
And nobody is claiming transparency is a magic bullet that will solve all your problems, only that it's a potentially valuable tool. As for
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
For SF... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
No negotiation on salary basically means they are bottom feeders.
They are looking for average at best, seat warmers at worst.
Re: (Score:2)
Not necessarily. Salary negotiation goes with trying to offer a low bid, if the person accepts it then they got one for cheap.
The if the employee who may be a good fit, gets the low bid, may just decline the job, where they may be willing to go higher.
Re:For SF... (Score:5, Interesting)
No negotiation on salary basically means they are bottom feeders.
Did you look at their salary levels? In the SF area, they are offering $122k to entry level programmers. That is not "bottom feeding". It is ridiculously high. My company (San Jose) offers fresh "BS in CS" grads between $80-100k, and we have no problem getting people from SJSU or even Berkeley. Their problem is on the high end. As that employee goes from beginner to intermediate to advanced, their salary only goes up by $20k. That is a pittance. In the SF Bay Area, there is no way you are going to hang on to good experienced people for $145k.
Re: (Score:1)
My logic is that as they are a small company, they are not hiring entry level programmers as they don't have the in-house resource to train and mentor them effectively. So what you are seeing is a mid-range, senior, architect type range. The developer 'buckets' have no concept of senior specialisations and cross-team architectural skills, and thus they are not offering enough, IMO. It's also seems to be self-selected...
A slight win of the gimmick currently is that people may be aware of them and they can av
Re: (Score:2)
401K matching and equity is what I'd call long term, 5% cost of living adjustment every year is huge, even in the relatively short term. I mean if you are looking for a job and not planning to keep it for a year or more then you're really looking for contract or consulting work.
Re: (Score:2)
Entry level programmers are paid 80k? Holy crap. So this employee is really costing the company 160k because there's going to be a number of resources pulled away from their main project to help them. How the hell do they stay competitive?
Re: (Score:2)
Entry level programmers are paid 80k?
San Jose has the highest cost of living in the nation (higher than Manhattan). A 1500 sq ft home a quarter mile from Gangland USA goes for $750k before it's bid up by people offering cash + $50k over asking.
Re: (Score:3)
The ones offering $122k to entry-level programmers are probably in SF. That extra $20k either covers the cost of driving your car for an hour and a half from someplace with only moderately insane housing prices or covers the difference in the cost of a
Re: (Score:2)
They should just go grab resources from WiPro or any of the other H1-B farms out there.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It really depends on how their entry rate compares to the rest of the market. If the base salary is in the upper range of what a starting developer can expect t
Re: (Score:1)
Funny you should mention that. See, from what I've seen, most techies in the Bay area are underpaid.
Families need $200,000 to live comfortably in S.F. [sfchronicle.com].
When I see averages of $135K for developers, I just think a lot of techies don't have a clue. And it explains why the companies out there prefer 20 somethings: they're too stupid to know better.
Sure you can live out there cheaper - if you want to rent a basement room in some old lady's house or commute an hour or so one way.
I'd love to move back home (Berk
Re: (Score:2)
Families need $200,000 to live comfortably in S.F. [sfchronicle.com].
Simple solution: Live in Oakland, and take BART to work.
Another solution: If you make $100k, live with a partner that also makes $100k.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Paywalled article. Given that I can't read the article, I can only assume it is based on lots of incorrect assumptions.
An average two-bedroom apartment in SF costs ~$4,000/mo., or $48k/year. Food for a family of four costs under $1,000 per month, so we're up to $60k. Renter's insurance will cost you half a grand, and car insurance will probably add another grand for two cars. If you use public transit frequently instead of driving, that will probably balance out. Either way, you're in the ballpark of
Re: (Score:2)
I included taxes in that estimate already... and child care, though perhaps not quite enough for young children.
Re: (Score:2)
And for Paris it is way too low, intermediate for $80k wtf? an apartment there is also at least $2000/month, it means 50% of your net salary.
Re: (Score:2)
https://newyork.craigslist.org... [craigslist.org]
Certainly expensive, but with > 2500 listings under 2000 from a back-of-napkin search, I think you exaggerate a little.
Plus 2000/mo is 12 * 2000 == $24,000 or 1/5 your gross income. That's actually quite reasonable if that's the number being quoted considering the tertiary benefits of living in a large lively international city.
If you want to make more money and save it, there are countless cities where you can make more proportional (and probably real) dollars in less 'h
Years? (Score:2)
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.
Negotiation (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
We would all be happy with this decision.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
What would you do without my keen insight into topical issues? You would be left with StartsWithaBang spam and people who post about HOST files.
I'll settle for the Internet that existed when we created it and it was just for military and research universities.
Ah for the days before USE*NET spam ...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, realizing you made a mistake is something 95% of the internet population wouldn't notice, care, or apologize for. You're ok in my book! Now if we could somehow ban people who use apostrophes to make things plural...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It certainly never hurts going into a salary negotiation having clear knowledge of what the employer is willing to pay. It's less about earning what is important to you and more about simply knowing that you aren't going to try and overvalue yourself in a salary negotiation or your employer is undervaluing you.
Of course, if all you care about is money, and you don't care what people think of you or even necessarily what you think of yourself, then hey.... I suppose your system will work fine.
Re: (Score:2)
Buffer Sees Clear Benefits To Transparent Employee (Score:3)
Buffer Sees Clear Benefits To Transparent Employee Salary Policy
We now have intelligent buffers handling HR stuff? Cool.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
An oddly restricted salary range (Score:1)
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... [buffer.com]
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
price/wage fixing (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Basically, yes. It takes power out of the hands of employees by allowing employers to dictate salaries in an environment which appears more fair.
Negotiations are complex. One tool in negotiation is a standard of fairness.
I argue for the elimination of minimum wage when implementing a Citizen's Dividend for several reasons. On one hand, the Dividend accomplishes an establishment of a minimum standard of living: you don't need a minimum wage. Some of the secondary economic effects lower the cost of g
Re: (Score:1)
Very well said. One thing that set of alarm bells in my head was when people were talking about a $15/hr minimum wage. Now that's a reality in some places. We also see the phenomenon of farmers paying migrants (the Mexican kind, not the Muslim kind) under the table because those jobs aren't even worth $8/hr.
Minimum wage is a band aid measure, a rather crude one at that, to create a society where everybody is doing $something 39.5 hours per week (now 29.5, thanks Obama) and everybody who can get a job doi
Re: (Score:2)
Minimum wage is a band aid measure, a rather crude one at that, to create a society where everybody is doing $something 39.5 hours per week
Minimum wage and public aid were a great system for the 1900s. I don't call out minimum wage and public aid as bad because they're outdated; I call them out as bad because we have new factors. The new factor approaching us looks a lot like the Industrial Revolution, and I know how to navigate that safely. I also know my solutions would have been inappropriate until very recently [wordpress.com].
As we know, unions never work in the real world.
Trade unions were an excellent device in a world where labor laws were weak and the economy was too volatile and too poor to
Re: (Score:1)
Fuck your tl;dr. GP was hardly long enough. All of bluefoxlucid's arguments hold water. I was merely trying to be diplomatic with my post, but s/he blew me out of the water and rightly so.
Re: (Score:2)
NeXT (Score:2)
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/... [wikipedia.org]
Big deal (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I worked for a company that... (Score:3)
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.
Why hire in San Francisco? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Can they get equivalent people as easily elsewhere? I don't know the answer to that in this case, but I've been a hiring manager for engineering over the years both in the Bay Area and other areas and the quantity of high quality applicants was, overall, significantly higher in the Bay Area than any other area I was in.
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone else has spent time & money drawing talent out to SF. It's the highest concentration of skilled developers you're going to find anywhere. You can't just ignore that huge talent pool.
Hm, (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
People that have dependents are also apparently more valuable to the company. I never understood that. All my coworkers with spouses and kids get a bump (in terms of insurance premiums paid for and in some cases family leave, but I don't get any "equivalent value" by not having those things. I know people will point out that they don't really "get extra" because their wives shop, husbands buy toys, kids are expensive, etc, but as an employee working for my company how does that make them worth more?
Re: (Score:2)
check your salary (not really but hey) (Score:2)
too bad all of their positions has stupid non market names so correlating salary among the industry norms is near impossible.
Diversity Guardian? (Score:2)
Notice the stock package isn't listed (Score:2)
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.
bad for worker rights (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)