
Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer - jliechti1
http://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffer-including-our-transparent-formula-and-all-individual-salaries
======
tikhonj
I've always felt the culture of hiding salaries was doing a significant
disservice to employees. It creates a significant and largely artificial
information disparity, giving a major market advantage to the employer. In
turn, this makes the entire labor market less efficient for the employee.

This also makes the employer less accountable to the employees. The employer
can easily pay somebody significantly more or less than they contribute, and
the rest of the team cannot really say anything about this.

Now, there are some cultural reasons to do this--preventing jealousy, hiding
inequality. But it really feels like a social band-aid, a temporary solution
hiding the symptoms but not the underlying problem. Besides, everyone ends up
having a reasonable guess as to who makes more and who makes less anyhow! The
same dynamics develop, just with more uncertainty.

On the other hand, making salaries public takes these problems head-on.
Inequality isn't bad in and of itself; some is basically necessary. But hiding
that fact doesn't really help anyone. Instead, forcing people to see it head-
on, deal with it and talk about it is probably a better solution.

I really applaud Buffer and the general movement towards transparency. I think
it's a very healthy cultural progression and hope it catches on more widely,
so that people stop having knee-jerk reactions to salary information.

EDIT: As an interesting additional note, all salaries (beyond a token minimum)
at Berkeley (and the whole UC system) are publicly available at
[http://ucpay.globl.org/](http://ucpay.globl.org/).

I've looked up various professors at the ParLab (where I did some
undergraduate research). The fact that their salaries range from ~120k to
~350k did not change my perspective of anyone and did not seem to affect the
lab's culture at all.

Essentially, I'd be perfectly happy to see this outside of public
universities.

~~~
mrjatx
I disagree completely. You should, as the potential employee, be well aware of
the market pay and what you are willing to be paid to perform the job that
you're applying for. Not to mention their job postings actually list a salary
window ($88-110k for Backend/Frontend). What the person sitting next to you is
paid should bear absolutely no impact on your life or your work ethic. If
you're happy to make $88k and the guy doing the same job next to you is making
$110k, I don't see any problem. Maybe he has a few more years of experience
than you, maybe he's a better negotiator, maybe his suit looked nicer. The
point is that you accepted it and were willing to take that salary for that
position.

I can't fathom what being aware of your coworkers salaries could possibly do
for positive team building. Somebody is going to be upset, egos will be
triggered. Yes, in day to day business we're typically aware of the fact that
an engineer or programmer makes more than a customer support or cashier. But
here it's thrown in the employees face. "John sits next to me, he takes 3 hour
lunches and he's paid $110k! I can't believe it. Screw John!"

Show up to work in a new Porsche sometime and while some people will think
it's the coolest thing ever and give you a pat on the back, jealously may rear
its ugly head with others.

I just don't see how this is a positive thing in the least.

~~~
lancewiggs
>If you're happy to make $88k and the guy doing the same job next to you is
making $110k, I don't see any problem

One problem is that the first person is often female, not white or foreign.

Another is the demotivational effect when the first person eventually does
find out they are underpaid versus colleagues or the market - and they
generally do. And then they will leave.

It gets worse when the lower paid person is clearly outperforming the higher
paid person, or where the higher paid person is clearly under performing.

And finally it's just not the right thing to treat people unfairly versus
their peers. If the lower paid person is being underpaid then quietly fix the
issue.

~~~
wpietri
100% agreed.

I absolutely hate salary systems that give an advantage to people who are
pushy, jerky, entitled, or privileged. Some of the best developers I know are
pleasant, friendly, modest, don't like confrontation, and pay more attention
to the work and the team than how much they're pocketing. Those people
shouldn't be paid less.

~~~
nsxwolf
Is asking for what you want pushy? I'm not sure we want to be praising people
for being good little doormats.

Learn to defend your work and ask for what you deserve.

~~~
loomio
There is so, so much more to this story that I don't even know where to begin.
People "asking for what they want" takes on completely different contexts
depending on their situation, background, gender. The system you are
advocating will always pay more to the privileged, encourage a competitive,
low-trust culture, and disadvantage many skilled people for reasons out of
their control. Ultimately, it's the company that will miss out on the best
talent.

~~~
wpietri
Yes, exactly.

------
JonFish85
Let's say I'm a competitor, and I find that Niel (randomly picked) is someone
I want to hire. All else being equal, I offer him $100k (website says he's
making $88k). He comes to his boss to say "I like it here, can you match it?"

What does his boss do? Especially, if he's valuable to the company...

What if I have a very specialized skill that doesn't fit nicely into your
matrix? Let's say market pay for my skill is $200k. Do you create a new
category for me? Do I get dirty looks from all of my co-workers because I have
a valuable skillset that most people don't?

I'd hate it, as an employee, as a boss or as an investor. But that could just
be me.

~~~
DominikR
> Let's say I'm a competitor, and I find that Niel (randomly picked) is
> someone I want to hire. All else being equal, I offer him $100k (website
> says he's making $88k). He comes to his boss to say "I like it here, can you
> match it?

This happens all the time anyways, hiding the salary of the employee isn't
going to make any difference in most cases.

And is it so hard to guess what some (say iOS engineer) earns? The salaries
that Buffer pays are in the range of what I expected them to be anyways.

> What if I have a very specialized skill that doesn't fit nicely into your
> matrix? Let's say market pay for my skill is $200k. Do you create a new
> category for me? Do I get dirty looks from all of my co-workers because I
> have a valuable skillset that most people don't?

I'd expect the founder of the company should be able to justify paying someone
$200k to his employees when he can justify this to himself and his investors.

I mean it's not like anyone will be blown away by the fact that there are
people (VPs, managers) that earn 3x to 100x of what they earn themselves.

What is your fear? That the employees will seize the property of the company
and turn it into a communist collective?

~~~
thenmar
I think the fear is that it will create animosity by making the information so
accessible. On some level, the junior-level dev knows he's not making as much
as the guy with the PhD in an esoteric mission critical topic, but he has a
kind of plausible deniability that lets him avoid thinking about it. If
everyone's making 80k and everyone knows that Jane The Expert is making 300k,
there's going to be friction. "Hey Jane, why don't you pay for the dinner."

~~~
sliverstorm
Worked as an intern once, had one of the full-timers complimenting my work and
saying I was just as sharp/skilled as him at the job. I knew he was getting
paid a _lot_ more than me. The multiplier was probably a _whole number_. Yes,
he was on-call and I wasn't. Yes, there are always other good reasons too. But
it still rankled to be doing close to the same work, and paid so much less. As
you say I made sure to stay ignorant of the exact number to help ignore it.

~~~
troupe
I think you are trying to say that he made at least 2x what you were making. I
would be very surprised to find an intern making more than half of what the
person they are interning under makes and normally I'd expect it to be much
less.

Typically you aren't working at an internship because you have a proven track
record of skills in a certain area. That is kind of the point of doing an
internship. And having a proven track record is something employers are
willing to pay a lot more money for.

~~~
sliverstorm
At least 2x, possibly 3x, possibly more.

You don't have to justify it, I understand all the bullet points. I'm just
corroborating the parent's statement that willful ignorance of someone else's
wages can be a useful coping mechanism. Because no matter how many
justifications there are, it still stung.

------
suprgeek
Excellent concept - but one major Caveat. Why in the world would you publish
it for all the world to see?

Keep it internal to the company - you have an expectation of privacy from your
employer and this post just ruined it completely.

I hope they got written signed releases from every one of those folks whose
private info they broadcast to the world.

~~~
bjpless
Seconded. Hard to imagine all employees signing off on this release for the
sake of a HN article. But I hope that they did. I would be very upset if my
salary were published unbeknownst to me.

~~~
swombat
You would only be upset because you currently work in a company with a culture
that doesn't value transparency as a core value.

If you worked in a company like Buffer or GrantTree, you'd be wondering why
others are so secretive about their salaries, and find yourself more and more
disliking the idea of working for a company which is not transparent.

Habit is a powerful thing. Change your surroundings and you'll change your
habits.

~~~
syllogism
If you've never understood the idea of "privilege" before, your attitude of
"oh what, this doesn't work for everyone else? It works for me!" is something
that gets discussed a lot. Some examples of the many, many situations people
can find themselves in where public salary disclosure would be a major
problem:

\- You have family members who have substance abuse issues. It's common for
addicts to steal from family members who they rationalise can afford it.

\- You're in an abusive relationship, and your spouse steals your money.
Hiding part of your salary may help you feel independent enough to get out.

\- Your kids' friends find out how much you earn, and bully them.

\- All the rest of your family are part of a religious organisation that
demands a tithe. You've lost your faith, but it would tear your family apart
to leave.

\- You have family who live in a country with a much, much lower standard of
living. You support them financially, which is known in their community. Now
their neighbours know _just how much_ you're worth, exposing your family to
the possibility of kidnapping or extortion.

\- Your name is Google-unique, and identifies you as part of a group that is
stigmatised on the internet. If your identity leaks into your internet
activities (e.g. via Google's real name policy), another major vector of
harassment is exposed.

Just a couple of things off the top of my head.

~~~
aestra
I understand your concerns, however there are so many people who already have
their salary info public. For example government employees including military.
There is already some idea if you know what someone does. If I work fast food,
everyone knows I am going to earn around minium wage. Most people know a
ballpark figure for most jobs, I have a doctor friend an administrative
assistant friend, nurse friend, police friend, and someone who works in
retail. I know about what they all make income wise and they know about what I
make as well.

~~~
peterbraden
does that make it right?

------
kapilkale
Seems unwise to have a CEO co-founder be the highest salaried employee at a
startup.

That person's equity position is probably at least an order of magnitude
higher than the other employees. As an investor or employee, I'd find this
alarming.

[http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/08/peter-thiel-best-
predictor-...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/08/peter-thiel-best-predictor-of-
startup-success-is-low-ceo-pay/)

Call me old fashioned, but I think co-founders should be paid living expenses
+ 25%, even in a series-A funded startup.

~~~
runako
>> co-founders should be paid living expenses + 25%, even in a series-A funded
startup

It's risky to comment without knowing the specifics of Joel's situation. But
it seems that his $158k salary isn't outside those bounds if he lives in e.g.
San Francisco or NYC. Hard to know someone's living expenses without drilling
way into their personal financials, and again this is not unreasonably high.

Thiel, from the link you posted:

>> What’s the average salary for CEOs from funded startups? Thiel was hesitant
to answer, but eventually said “$100-125k.”

That was in 2008. Adjust for rent inflation, and that should square the
numbers for you.

~~~
zmitri
I worked in finance and made less than that in salary.

It's enough for a luxurious existence in NYC provided you don't have children.
I'm not sure whether or not they have children, but that's a lot.

~~~
humanrebar
$150k is middle class in NYC. If you work in Manhattan, it's a small place
with a short commute or a normal-size place (by national standards) with a
long commute.

If you don't work in Manhattan or can work from home most of the time, you can
have a pretty luxurious lifestyle, yes.

Also, being single with no one to support isn't the average case. I'd argue we
should assume that each working person supports one other person. That lines
up with American demographics much better.

~~~
stephencanon
$150k is only middle class in NYC in the weakest possible sense of the phrase
“middle class”. Even if we restrict to manhattan, $150k puts you in the top
~20% of _household_ income (which often includes two wage-earners). Median
income in Manhattan is right around $70k. I know that nearly everyone in
America (except maybe for Bill Gates) believes that they are middle class, but
at some stage one needs to accept that if you make whole-number multiples
above the median wage, you are at the very least “upper middle class” or “well
off”. To pretend otherwise is frankly a bit insulting to the actual middle
class.

Yes, there are people making vastly more than $150k, but that doesn’t change
the fact that it puts one solidly in the upper quartile.

~~~
zmitri
Yep. For less than that amount I had a floor of a brownstone in Brooklyn,
20-30 minute commute via subway, paid off 10 year student loans in < 1 year,
took my entire family on a vacation, and went out to dinner at a variety of
nice restaurants on a fairly regular interval. I also saved up 30K in liquid
assets (Although that includes some cash from 1-2 years before).

It's that's "only" middle class, the world is in serious trouble.

~~~
humanrebar
Sounds middle class to me. Having a few months expenses in the bank and a 30
minute commute. Checks out modulo crime rate and quality of local public
schools, both of which vary a lot in Brooklyn.

~~~
zmitri
How long have you lived in New York?

------
danso
Wow...the engineering salaries are significantly lower than I would've
expected for a well known startup in the Bay Area...at least compared to the
perceived range for such things.

Note: a less cynical take is this: GodDAMN buffer employees must be happy
working there if they tolerated transparency to this level...which, really, is
the best win-win for all kinds of transparency scenarios.

~~~
ricardobeat
They have engineers in the UK, Taiwan, Ireland and Colorado. If they all lived
in SF the salaries would be above $100k.

~~~
tootie
I'm one of maybe 10-12 architects at some stupid company and I make more than
everyone at Buffer including the CEO.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
I know, this seems like an anti-recruiting blog post. Working at Buffer not
only means you have to be a part of a hippy groupthink ideology that you have
to share your salaries with the whole world (this is not a government
institution) and it will be posted on a popular website in your field, you
will also earn much less than expected.

------
carsongross
I like this idea, but with a few modifications:

* Names should be anonymous. Everyone knows where they are within the group and can determine if its fair without knowing exactly who makes what.

* It should include options and bonuses. In some companies non-salary compensation dwarfs salaries, and it's dishonest to point to a CEO salary and say "Look, he only makes 1.something X what regular people do."

* Keep it internal to the company. No point in giving the competition an exact target or requiring whole company buy in before you do it.

* Allow people to redact their own information, but display it as having been redacted. If enough people do that, or just management does it, everyone will sense that things are unfair.

~~~
7Figures2Commas
> The vast majority of compensation in software companies is tied up in
> options...

That's absolutely not true. Most companies never have a liquidity event, a
significant number of stock options never vest (employees leaving before
they're fully vested is very, very common at startups) and even when a company
delivers an exit, the vast majority of employees with equity will, at best,
walk away with what amounts to a modest "bonus." Facebook and Twitter-like
outcomes in which hundreds of rank-and-file employees become millionaires are
the exception, not the rule.

~~~
carsongross
You are correct, I was being SV-centric. Edited.

~~~
7Figures2Commas
Even in Silicon Valley, the "vast majority of compensation" is not tied up in
options because again, statistically, most employees will never realize
significant gains from their options.

Take a senior engineer at a startup with a $125,000/year salary. He has
options that are fully vested after four years. Let's say his options
represent a .5% equity interest in the startup after dilution and there are no
liquidity preferences to deal with (a highly unlikely scenario). His company
would need to have a $100 million exit for him to walk away with a pre-tax
amount equivalent to his gross salary over those four years ($500,000). In
2012, according to CB Insights, over half of startup exits were less than $50
million, and more than 80% were less than $200 million.

~~~
carsongross
Are you OK with "In some companies"?

And my point isn't about average engineers. My (corrected, I admit I was
overstating things with the original phrasing) point is that, in some
companies, the really huge comp differentials come from non-salary
compensation. So just looking at salaries is not, in those cases, a complete
or honest picture.

~~~
7Figures2Commas
I'm not sure I understand the point you're trying to make.

If you're not a founder or in executive management, there is rarely any value
in looking at equity "compensation" at an early-stage startup. Again, as can
be seen in my example, when you're dealing with sub-1% equity amounts post
dilution and liquidity preferences, as most employees are, the numbers simply
don't work in your favor. To walk away with a meaningful windfall that is
substantially higher than the cash salary earned over your vesting period, you
will need an exit that is statistically very unlikely.

Any employee who expects his or her equity stake to be on par with founders
and executive management is wet behind the ears, and any individual who has
dreams of becoming fabulously wealthy is far more likely to realize those
dreams by starting a company than going to work for one.

------
sytelus
Things I learned today:

* Buffer is not somebody's weekend project

* It needs 16 (yes, SIXTEEN) people to run that thing

* They actually have revenue. In millions. $2.3 Millions!

* Their company values are based on How to win friends and influence people.

Aside from that, open salaries are pretty naive idea, if not completely dumb
and dangerous. The lives you live everyday is in effect a game (as in "game
theory" game). When you are talking to person, selling goods or buying one you
are in the game. Like in any game, information is your advantage and your
opponents weakness. This is exactly why privacy matters. If insurance company
knows you eat too much pizza, they would want to get a higher premium from
you. Similarly if a car dealer can look you up and figure out your salary, he
can adjust his negotiation tactics. A plumber making half the money you do
would want to charge you more than others. And so on. When all these people
would look for their next jobs, their next employer would know how much salary
to offer them.

~~~
scotty79
> Aside from that, open salaries are pretty naive idea, if not completely dumb
> and dangerous.

In Sweden all salaries are public, look how awful they are doing.

~~~
gaadd33
How does that work if you are a consultant for example? Or, not sure how
common they are in Sweden, a salesperson paid only on commission?

I guess I'm curious how it deals with extremely variable salaries or is it
just last year's that's public?

~~~
scotty79
They just make your income tax form public.

------
dsugarman
I have a feeling you will regret this soon. There are certain benefits in
having a firm salary structure sponsored by a transparent system, but the loss
of flexibility will hurt in ways you haven't experienced. Also, letting
everyone know what their peers make can cause disgruntled employees.

~~~
swombat
My company, GrantTree, is also run with open salaries (internally, though I
posted the salary scale in an HN comment before). There was some
disgruntlement when everyone was underpaid, but there's been remarkably little
disgruntlement from individuals asking for more money for just themselves.
This had been so for over a year now, so not conclusive, but starting to
accumulate some data.

~~~
xentronium
So, for example, in case of competitor offering your valuable worker +10-15%
to their salary, will you have any means to match that offer?

~~~
swombat
No, and if all they care about is the salary, they should probably go and take
the larger offer.

~~~
peterbraden
what if the salary is the only differentiator, and you really value them? What
is your recourse to deal with compelling offers? (honest question, not
trolling)

------
iampims
It’s one thing to have a transparent salary policy, it’s a whole another world
to publicly blog about people’s salary with a link to their Twitter account.

I hope all employees agreed to have their salary published on the buffer blog.

Kudos to them for trying something different.

~~~
Raphmedia
I never understood the hypocrisy about hiding your salary.

~~~
walshemj
Companies (especially large ones) don't like it as it limits their negotiation
position it can also disclose indirect discrimination e.g. "oops all the
females seem to be under paid by 10/20%" which can get expensive.

And it also limits employees when they want to move as the new employer knows
how much they make now.

~~~
Raphmedia
Yes, I understand why companies do it. They don't want people to know when
they are under/overpaid.

What I don't understand is why people don't talk about it. If you tell and you
learn you are overpaid then you feel good. If you learn you are underpaid,
well, time to go negotiate/look elsewhere.

Do people think they ARE their salary? It's simply money that some people
arbitrary decided to pay you...

~~~
walshemj
Well employees are funny about money in general any HR professional will tell
you that :-)

Having a potential employer know exactly what you where paid before puts you
at a big disadvantage when it comes to negotiating a new salary /package.

------
dxbydt
Back when I was a really dumb undergrad, I did some work for a company & they
asked me where to mail the cheque. I gave them the University address. So I
was chatting with my professor & we walk by the mailboxes, and by pure reflex,
I reach out into my mailbox & grab my mail & he does the same & we say our
goodbyes & go home.

Now, I open the mail at home & am staring at my professor's salary! You see,
the secretary had switched our mails by mistake because our last names began
with the same letter. I was quite stunned by the number - it was a measly sum,
and I did the math & worked out that the Professor's salary was about 60K.
Now, I knew my Professor was an important CS scholar & had tons of papers to
his name, but that low number irked me. After the PhD and all these papers,
just 60K...why..?

At the same time, my Professor had also gone home & opened his mail & was
staring at my salary! So much money for some dumb undergrad who was basically
an average student & had no major publications or research! He was quite
bothered.

The next day, we had a very awkward exchange of mails. But from then on, the
student-teacher dynamic completely changed. I suddenly began getting B's
instead of C's & even occasional A-. He probably felt, hey if this guy can get
so much money in the market, he probably knows his shit. otoh, I began to
respect him & the CS program less & less. So I still have to spend 3 more
years & take 45 more credits & do the qualifiers to get the PhD & then write
all these papers & for what..60K ? That was my attitude at the time.

Needless to say, I dropped out of the PhD pgm with a Masters & went to work
full-time. That was the stupidest thing I ever did, but I just didn't know it
then. Now, I look back & think...hey if I hadn't known about his salary, I'd
have slogged it through & actually gotten my PhD instead of half-assing it out
here :(

~~~
SrslyJosh
Props for admitting your mistake.

Our reaction to academic salaries should really be the opposite. It's sad that
we undervalue education so much in the US.

------
ra3
Can't say a lot of good things about a company that pays a "Chief Happiness
Officer" more than most of its engineers. I know plenty of startups that seem
to be doing alright in the customer service department without an overpaid
exec heading it.

Does she really contribute more to the bottom line than any of the other 4
underpaid engineers?

~~~
untog
A Chief Anything Officer should probably be paid more than engineers, or they
shouldn't have the words Chief and Officer in their title.

And that seems like a very developer-centric viewpoint. Yes, good customer
service can add a lot to a company's bottom line. Some companies have huge
engineering issues and need engineers to solve them. Some companies have huge
sales issues and need sales people to solve them. Some companies have huge
customer service issues and need customer service agents to solve them.

~~~
digz
Disagree. The founders of my company (including me) are paid less than almost
everyone else that works with us.

I know few rigorous investors that would stand to pay their CEO/founders more
than ~80k a year, at least until it's clear the company is maturing. Also, as
a founder with significant equity, I'd much rather put as much of my salary
that I can spare (My wife and I need to eat, pay rent, etc.) to go towards
bringing in (and keeping) top sales or technical talent. If you believe in my
company, the math works out very well.

I also do the occasional angel investment, and frankly, I'd be pissed to see a
business I invested in run like this. Two annual international offsite trips?
What?! You're building an app to schedule tweets. This is not rocket science.
Get to work!

~~~
jmduke
Buffer is posting $2M annual revenue this year, if I recall correctly. Their
paychecks aren't being signed by investors -- they're being signed by
customers.

~~~
stephencanon
Given that the listed salaries total 1.7M, which ignores payroll taxes and
benefits, and they presumably have at least some expenses beyond payroll, at
least part of their paychecks are likely coming from investment.

~~~
digz
Never mind the two international off-site trips they take everyone on each
year.

Look, not saying they _can 't_ do it.. just saying as an investor, I'd
wouldn't support it. Money is after-all fungible. It doesn't matter if sales
are paying for 100% of the salaries or not... if there's money being left on
the table that can be reinvested into the company by either bringing in
new/better talent or retaining your top talent, I would be angry. The founders
already have high incentive to stay as long as they can satisfy basic needs on
their salary. Employees with little equity do not unless they are paid
competitively.

------
mrkmcknz
Very humbling that no one at Buffer would call themselves a "Master", indeed
many would probably but Joel at that level but he sits there on a 1.2x
multiplier.

I once had a conversation with an old hat who said "If you call yourself a
python master you better be fucking Guido."

~~~
humanrebar
Hmmm... that's an unfortunately worded quote.

------
YZF
One result from behavioral economics is that people care more about their
relative standing to others than the absolute value of the salary. This is why
transparency can be a double edged sword. If I think I deserve to be paid more
than Joe, as long as I don't actually know how much he's paid I can believe
that I'm being paid more. However, once you have transparency and I can see
Joe is getting paid more than myself this will probably have a negative impact
on my morale and performance.

One example I've heard discussed (I think by Dan Arieli) is how transparency
in CEO pay has failed to bring CEO salaries down. One problem is now CEOs can
see what other CEOs are getting paid and naturally every CEO will want to be
paid higher than his peers.

I used to think open salaries would be a good thing but lately I'm not so
sure. You definitely want to tread very carefully there as there are many
implications and unexpected consequences.

~~~
andyidsinga
i was thinking the same thing - i read about that in Dan Arieli's book
Predictably Irrational. I suspect open salaries probably increases them on
average.

------
zhuzhuor
I found one thing interesting is that only 4 out of 17 people choose equity
over $10k salary. Even CTO chooses salary.

I am curious if this is common in startup companies, since I have never worked
in startups.

~~~
jacobquick
Paying those salaries in San Francisco, there better be a giant pile of equity
either way.

------
vladgur
Wow, these salaries seem to be pretty low. I mean a senior IOS engineer making
$107K in SF? Id expect them to easily increase their salary by 30% by jumping
ship.

~~~
riffraff
I was thinking that they seem disproportionately high for some of the other
locations (45k$/year in hanoi is a _lot_ of money)

------
rmason
I wonder in five years looking back whether Buffer getting hacked or their
'transparency' will have hurt them more. I am betting the latter.

Do they really think they can ban private emails between engineers? it would
have been much easier to simply load eavesdropping software on their computer
if management doesn't trust them.

I really like Buffer but I'm a little worried about them.

------
benaston
When the market shifts, or for tactical reasons you have to pay more to
recruit someone, you instantly have a problem.

------
nsxwolf
Seeing these pathetic salaries (and in the Bay Area!), I don't feel so bad
about my boring enterprise development position at no-name established
corporation anymore.

------
freyr
Many people here are picking on the senior developers salaries, hovering right
around $100K. Maybe this isn't a particularly competitive startup salary, but
note that salaries are tied to revenue.

If the company's revenue grows significantly, their salaries could become much
more attractive. If, for example, revenues grow from $2M revenue to $20M
revenue, senior developers would see their salaries increase by $54k or ~50%
over this time.

It could be argued that 10X growth or an $18M increase in revenue is
unrealistic for a tweet scheduler, but that's for the employees to determine.

------
zmitri
I have a question: Why would the founders take such high salaries?

Seems to go against everything I would think was important for a company that
is venture-backed.

~~~
sgk284
Their salaries are actually still fairly low. An engineer in SF can easily
make more than $150k base per year.

Venture backed companies should pay their employees well though. If you're
worried about food / shelter or constantly wondering if a shift in jobs would
give you a disproportionate gain in quality of life then you're not focused on
the startup. The biggest advantage of raising a lot of money is so that you
can pay a lot of money and not have your team worrying about "I'd have loved
to do that trip to Paris, but can't afford it. If I quit for Google, then I'd
be good to go.

That said, I'm a believer that founders shouldn't be the highest paid
employees.

------
corry
Serious question: Why aren't equity positions posted too?

To me, that's part of the trade-off that the startup founder / leaderships
takes (for good or ill), and seeing salary in the absence of actual equity
positions is only half the picture.

Hopefully they all know each other's equity positions internally and just
chose not to share publicly... otherwise it would seem like a betrayal of the
open culture if the _actual ownership structure_ of the company wasn't openly
known and discussed.

------
jballanc
Imagine if you went to the store to buy bread, but you didn't know how much
all the other people in line were paying for their bread. When you get to the
counter, the baker charges you some arbitrary amount. Today you have enough
money to buy bread, but the baker warns you that he may charge more tomorrow.
Since you don't know what anyone else is paying for their bread, you can't
have any idea if what the baker charged you is fair or not. All you know is
that you need to work as hard as you can so that you can be sure you will be
able to afford tomorrow's bread.

Of course, this doesn't work. Nobody is preventing you from asking your
neighbors what they paid for their bread. Once you know what a "fair" price
for bread is, then you know exactly how hard you need to work to afford bread,
and you have little incentive to work any harder than that.

If you own a company, ideally you don't want your employees competing with
each other. You want each of them to compete with themselves, pushing their
abilities, growing, learning, improving. You don't want them to know exactly
how much they need to do to earn that next promotion, because then they will
have little motivation to do more than the bare minimum.

If you own a company, unlike the baker, you can have some amount of control
over the flow of information. This control allows you to manipulate your
employees motivations. Like any amount of control over anything, this control
can be abused...but in capable hands it can also be wielded to great effect.

An open salary policy gives away that control entirely...

------
dj-wonk
I've read dozens of the comments on this page so far. The thing that jumps out
to me is the interplay between these factors: (1) internal transparency (2)
external transparency (3) internal privacy (4) external privacy (5) human
motivation and (6) company culture. There are many combinations here, and I
can't help but think Buffer didn't do an effective "search" across the
possible "parameter space", even according to their own goals and interests.

For example, Buffer could have easily added a policy saying that each
employee's compensation may be adjusted by, say, +/\- 20% based on individual
factors. That would give some uncertainty, and thus a bit of individual
privacy. Peers would still have some confidence that they were, more or less,
in a similar range as others with their public performance characteristics.

Let's put ideology aside (i.e. do we __want __this to work, according to our
theories of human nature) and focus on the actual effects. How do you know if
you 've succeeded? How do you measure this? How do you design the experiment?

Call me skeptical, but I can't help but think that Buffer is doing this,
largely, to say "look at us!" and "this makes an interesting blog post!".

------
newobj
Well, Sunil and Colin, seeing that you are criminally underpaid, are you
interested in opportunities elsewhere?

I will figuratively eat my underwear if you don't come to regret this strategy
(public, non-anonymous open vs. internally open) at some point.

------
symfrog
This post reminds me of Miley Cyrus at the MTV VMA earlier in the year. Pop
singers are incentivized to be the first to break cultural norms for no
practical reason in order to ride the wave of subsequent teen followers.

In the same way, posts like these are created to be the first to break a
specific norm (i.e. do not post employee salaries publicly) in order to ride
the wave of traffic (and hopefully a few additional users).

------
Euro_IT_drone
Just trying to compare here with my European salary.. How much of this do you
get to take home, ie. what part of it can you spend on food, clothing, housing
etc. after takes? What about health insurance, is it provided for?

~~~
mikegreen
Roughly - Expect someone making $100k in the SFO area (high state and taxes
compared to many parts of the country) to pay about 20-25% in a few federal
taxes, and 8-10% in state taxes. So the take home pay would be around
$65k-$72k, before any retirement contributions etc.

In the US, healthcare is provided in a professional/fulltime position like
these (maybe not the bootcampers). Figure $150-300 a month for healthcare if
contractor or not-provided.

~~~
Euro_IT_drone
Okay, thanks for the info. I have health insurance (great nationwide social
security, and additional health coverage for me and my partner provided by my
employer), a company car (audi a6) with fuel card and make about the same as
the CEO, but pay close to 50% in taxes. Still, not that bad at all
apparently... (Even though it's hard to compare. Cost of living, vacation
days, all make a difference.)

------
dmourati
Wow, those salaries are low. If I was making that much and someone posted my
salary to the internet, I would immediately quit.

~~~
dmourati
(job type + location + 10k) X seniority X experience x 1.5

------
icambron
I actually love the radical transparency here, even after reading all the
warnings in the HN comments.

What I like less is the salary formula. What's going to happen is that all of
the negotiation is going to get packed into the experience and seniority
multipliers. It creates the illusion of rigor and possibly does more harm than
good.

~~~
joelgascoigne
This is a really great point. We don't see as much negotiation as might be
expected, however what you say is definitely true to an extent.

How do you think we could improve that aspect?

~~~
icambron
I'd just drop the formula altogether, I think. If at the end of the day, the
numbers are just worked out so that you and the employee agrees the salary is
about right ("I want $x, so I guess I'd better get a 1.3x experience
multiplier"), then just make "work out the salary such that you and the
employee agree it's about right" the policy. The transparency keeps these
negotiations simple and fair; for example, pushier people won't get more
raises than their shyer colleagues because everyone will notice and act
accordingly (including you, who will find it easier not to give pushy people
those raises when they're posted on the company website).

------
overpaidprobly
Does anyone have an opinion on how these numbers square with market rates?

I make $113k/year as a juniorish engineer at a VC backed startup in SV. Am I
hilariously overcompensated?

~~~
simoncion
It seems that market rate for a junior (0->2 years experience) web developer
is ~$110k + benefits. You are _not_ hilariously overcompensated.

Ignore the various salary estimate sites. There's no way that they have an
accurate view of the world.

~~~
krisgee
Are you serious? I'd feel like a fucking idiot walking out of university with
a brand new degree and demanding 100k off the bat. I guess the market is
different outside SV though right?

~~~
minimaxir
For fresh 2013 Carnegie Mellon CS graduates, mean salary was $94k, median was
$100k.

[http://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-
destinations/2013-sur...](http://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-
destinations/2013-survey/pdfs-one-
pagers/SCS%20Post%20Grad%20Handout%202013.pdf)

------
joshuaellinger
I always thought the best system would be to tell people what their boss
makes, including options and other non-salary compensation.

This eliminates the problem of people comparing themselves to their nominal
peers on incomplete information. It really tells you everything you need to
know about compensation.

But the most valuable part of the buffer system is the formula. You have a
framework for calculating what is fair.

One of the dangers at small busy startups with well-intentioned leaders is
that you basically forget to give people raises and your employees don't get
you to correct it until they are pissed enough to quit. That's part of why I
left my original company and it cost me a good employee recently.

------
overgard
What the hell is a happiness hero? It sounds like some sort of horrible
orwellian euphemism.

------
OhHeyItsE
Interesting in many ways. In particular, only the executives make what would
be considered a competitive senior engineer/architect salary in NYC or SF.
Perhaps they 'compensate' with equity?

------
the_watcher
The CEO of Buffer was asked by someone if he worried about this making it
easier for his employees to be poached. His response: "if they do, they would
be saving me time. Good to speed up that process. I don’t believe salary is
the reason people would leave."[1]

[1]
[https://twitter.com/joelgascoigne/status/413713018455740416](https://twitter.com/joelgascoigne/status/413713018455740416)

------
bdg
I'm still baffled by salaries. In Toronto and surrounding areas (cost of
living is not as high as San Francisco) I'm a programmer for web apps (php,
js, and a bit of this-and-that). I see sallary ranges all over the map. Some
make 40k, I've seen a 55k who wanted 60k, I've an 80k, and a few 90-120k.

One job I asked for 2x what I made at my old job.

I'm convinced you're paid what you ask for, so long as you can get shit done.

------
rikacomet
when I clicked on "try buffer" it takes me to the url: bufferapp.com,
kaspersky blocked it saying "phishing URL".

You might wanna talk with Kaspersky?

------
thesausageking
I'm really surprised the founders are the best paid people on the team. $158k
is a big salary for a founder/CEO of a company at that stage.

------
icedchai
It's interesting the number of employees that chose the "+$10K more salary
instead of more options" option. What does this tell you?

------
n1ghtmare_
"Happiness hero"! I can't think of anything more cheesy. Seriously.

------
juliebug
As someone who uses Buffer (free version) on a regular basis, I have to say
that I'm fairly amused that it appears as though none of the commenters here
have actually read much, if anything, about Buffer. They have quite a lot of
information about corporate culture that would have answered some of the
questions and concerns posted here. Further, they're a distributed workforce
(which I don't think anyone picked up on -- this explains emails vs. face to
face conversations).

Some extra reading for you folks:

[http://bufferapp.com/about/#our-philosophy](http://bufferapp.com/about/#our-
philosophy) (scroll down to the 9 Buffer Values)

[http://www.slideshare.net/joelg2/buffer-
culture-01-16707113](http://www.slideshare.net/joelg2/buffer-
culture-01-16707113)

------
sifarat
I am the CEO, and my salary is lesser than all the key staff in my company.
Reason, self-funded. And everyone in the office knows it. I am just astonished
how a CEO of company like Buffer, can afford such an expensive package for
himself. Are you making enough or just billing it to your investors?

------
codingdave
This is only halfway to true transparency. And also halfway to the bureaucracy
of most large companies.

The other half to get to full transparency is having clear, measurable
definitions of experience, and clear milestones of how to advance in
seniority.

And that relates to how this starts to resemble corporate salary structures --
the key difference being that these guys have a defined number instead of a
"salary grade". but the idea of plugging positions and experience levels and
seniority into a salary structure is key to almost every large company. And as
a result, most of the corporate angst over salaries starts to boil down to
questions like: "Why is he a programmer IV, while she is a programmer III.",
"How do I advance from being a Staff Software Engineer to an Advisory Software
Engineer?"

This structure doesn't necessarily remove questions (and sometimes conflict)
over career advancement, it just moves the discussion away from money, and
towards labels and definitions.

And as some comments mentioned, there are cases where you really want to hire
someone whose salary requirements do not match your structure. You may get
into sticky situations like having a great coder, but you would have to make
him a Lead, or a VP to actually make him fit your structure. And maybe you
don't want them to have that level of leadership, because that is not their
skill set. So you end up having to decide -- Is this salary structure more
important than making those hires, or are you willing to let potentially great
hires get away because this structure is more important to the company than
those people?

That decision is not one that I will second-guess - I would think that these
types of issues and scenarios, as well as other issues raised in the comments,
have probably already been debated internally before this decision was
reached.

But that would be an interesting follow-up post -- to hear about what
discussions and debates went on before making this decision, what the expected
impacts will be, why decisions were made, and what levels of growth are
expected to invoke changes in this structure.

------
dinkumthinkum
I don't mean anything but these salaries are pretty weak. Honestly, they are
sort of really weak for this kind of company it seems to me. Hardly gives the
impression of high paid software developers, particularly in the Bay Area,
wow. I dunno.

------
asgard1024
I think if you don't like the idea of closed salary (I don't), you should just
go ahead and publish yours publicly (on FB or something), if you have the guts
to do it and face potential conflict with your employer (I don't have the
guts, I wish I had).

Because, quite frankly, it's your money. No one should tell you what to do
with it, much less to count these, publicly. And if, as the result of this,
you get smaller salary, it will be there for the others in the company to see.
How motivational.

I think even with this unilateral action, you will get most of the benefits -
good people around you are likely to respond back and tell you if you're
underpaid or overpaid.

------
jcampbell1
Also introducing open revenues and semi open profits.

Implied Revenue: $2.0M [1]

Total Salary: $1.7M

[1] ((158.8 - 22)/1.2 - 75×1.2)/12

~~~
fantastical
Close: [http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-november-
update-2347000-run...](http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-november-
update-2347000-run-rate-1189000-users/)

------
jaboutboul
Not the smartest thing in the world to do, publish people's salaries and
twitter accounts, especially in this day and age where privacy is virtually
non-existent. I hope everyone agreed to publicly disclose the salary
information.

------
iblaine
If I were in HR then I would be reaching out to any employee that I see is
under paid. Likewise I would not reach out to any employee that I think is
over paid. Perhaps consider keeping this data internal.

------
treitnauer
It's great to see other companies experimenting with openness in salaries.
We've taken a different approach and pay all employees (including founders)
the same salary which increases as the company grows. Our team is now 8-people
strong and it's working great so far. As long as you contribute to the bottom
line everyone's salary goes up automatically. It's totally transparent, no
negotiations required, reviews, etc.

------
programminggeek
One area where open salaries are not such a big deal - education. Many
teachers are paid on an open scale of years of service X education level. It
does create a culture of possibly too much higher education beyond what is
useful or necessary for certain levels of teaching. That also creates teachers
who don't want to switch jobs because they'll lose the years of experience
pay.

Lesson - all people game the system for their own benefit.

------
esja
As they grow they will need to hire more people. I wonder whether this policy
will prevent some otherwise excellent hires from joining them.

------
mathattack
I'm very much on the fence with this. If you follow a simple formula, it can
work. If you need to use judgment (how to pay a superstar?) then it becomes
very tricky. My general observation is that any time two people compare
salaries, one is disappointed. And here you shared your salaries with the
whole world. Bravo for doing this, and engaging the discussion.

------
tootie
I used to work in government (US municipality) and every single employee's
salary (10s of thousands of people) was public record.

~~~
caseydurfee
Likewise. For example, salaries for all City of Seattle employees are here:
[http://lbloom.net/xsea11.html](http://lbloom.net/xsea11.html)

------
dangero
Wow, an Android engineer making less than 100K that's crazy to me, but I'm not
that familiar with UK salaries I guess.

~~~
agilebyte
London is _special_ , from
[http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/](http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/):

    
    
      45k for Android UK average
      55k for Android London average
    
      10k GBP is 16k USD

~~~
benaston
Suspect the weak mean salaries in London are due to the fact that many (most?)
senior developers move out of the permanent jobs market into
consulting/contracting (which, I hear is not par for the course in other
nations).

------
Uchikoma
As a "boss" I'd love this.

The only downside I see is that some people will be disappointed because the
salary reflects their skills and the value the company puts in them. For some
this is hard to take if they are in the bottom 20% of people in their peer
group.

Said that, it's probably a good idea to start with this compared to
introducing this later.

------
tomasien
There are a lot of people bringing up edge cases and contingencies on this
thread. The success of Buffer's culture is what happens when you stop being
afraid of the edge cases and start deciding what kind of people you want to
be. People will follow you if you stay true to that, as corny as that sounds.

------
Kiro
The support staff makes twice as much as me and I'm an engineer. Are those
normal salary levels?

------
fideloper
I'm really happy to see companies offer equity vs higher salary. As someone is
almost 30 (read: less willing to take the chance that equity will result in
future money), I feel that's a great choice to offer employees.

------
bliti
1\. Does the buffer team work remotely?

2\. What's your backend written in?

------
yeukhon
This doesn't scale well when your company grows to hundreds of employees or
even thousands.

~~~
redguava
Setting up a pay scheme now to handle thousands of employees would be very
premature optimization.

~~~
yeukhon
But how do you deal with the newcomers? As you grow you keep getting more and
more and that system they have will be harder to implement and eventually may
end up just like other companies. It isn't something they shouldn't be
thinking right now. It does make the current employee happy, but will this
work when 10 more people are joining, 20, 30?

~~~
lem72
They can adjust when it doesn't make sense for the company. Those unhappy with
the changes can choose to stay or leave.

~~~
yeukhon
> Those unhappy with the changes can choose to stay or leave.

That's harsh. I am arguing that fantasying the success of this payscale
doesn't mean the company is not responsible for the welfare of the employees
as the company scales and grows.

------
ereckers
As long as they never have enterprise sales people I thin everything will be A
OK.

------
kreek
How long until the Buffer employees form a union? :)

------
rpedela
What is a happiness hero?

------
snambi
Fantastic

------
benihana
This sounds like absolute hell

> _Every internal email sent between any 2 people on the team has a certain
> list cc’ed that is accessible for everyone: For example if 2 engineers email
> with each other, they cc the engineers list, if it’s people on our customer
> support team they have a support email list cc’ed. Stripe was a great
> inspiration for this. (More about this)_

Openness and transparency and honesty are great. But this seems like it's
removing privacy, which sounds very tiring.

~~~
taybin
Wouldn't this just lead to people emailing less and having private discussions
face to face? We're humans and we have drama and we need to vent from time to
time.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Shhh ... don't bring up the real world on HN. :)

------
Diamons
It's honestly stuff like this that makes me feel like the only sane person
around. Why would you do this? If the CEO is pushing for it, the employees
will all smile and nod and go along with the crowd, but all this does is breed
resentment. The idea of open salaries sounds good on paper, but it's simply
idealistic.

You can sing the happiness song and do all the lets-be-friends dances but at
the end of the day we're people competing for resources. This will have
lasting effects to all current employees for sure.

~~~
jasonwocky
> It's honestly stuff like this that makes me feel like the only sane person
> around.

You're not.

> If the CEO is pushing for it, the employees will all smile and nod and go
> along with the crowd,

I don't know what to say. There are more kinds of working relationships than
are dreamt of in your philosophy. Not everybody lives in fear of their CEO.

> You can sing the happiness song and do all the lets-be-friends dances but at
> the end of the day we're people competing for resources

Sure, but some of us cooperate with others in order to compete with everyone
else, and that's good enough.

------
almosnow
What are 'happines hero'es ?

~~~
adambard
Presumably some combination of sales and support.

