

Startup Transparency (Founder Salary) - An Interview with Buffer Founder - chrisacky
http://99u.com/articles/15527/the-age-of-salary-transparency

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rdl
Paying founders _more_ than anyone else is a bad choice.

Generally, the best compensated (cash) person should be commissioned sales (if
that exists); otherwise, probably a head of engineering, in the current
market, at least up to a reasonable size (25-50 people). An exception is if
you have to hire a "professional CEO" or something, but that means you've
fucked up somehow too.

I see they say +20k for "non-founder, C-level", but really, it should be more
like founders, $40k in their formula. Then add the multipliers on top of that.

I do like the idea of transparency with salaries in general, but there is the
concept of "don't try to innovate on anything non-critical" in a startup.
OTOH, outside of startups, salaries are fairly well known in many sectors, so
I don't think transparency is without precedent.

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leowidrich
Great point and actually, I totally agree. The funny thing is that founders
aren't the highest paid people at Buffer - and it's actually just like you say
with engineering being on the higher side.

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sthatipamala
At what point did the Buffer founders start taking market rate salaries? I
can't find any news of how much they raised besides their $400K seed round,
but I'm guessing they must have a _lot_ more VC money now.

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joelgascoigne
Great question. We have actually only ever raised the $450k seed. Our revenues
are helping with our ability to grow the team and have salaries where people
can feel that money is not a factor, and we can focus on the great
opportunities we have. For example, our April revenue was $115k and we're
essentially cash-flow positive (we're hiring aggressively and aren't aiming
for profit right now). To answer your initial question, we didn't take any
salary for the first year, then we took $60k for a number of months before
gradually increasing further. We increased to the $118k figure just a few
couple months ago, which was over 2 years after we had started.

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agrona
This reminds me of Fog Creek's compensation transparency.

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html> and
<http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/ladder.html>

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mijustin
This is the most transparent salary calculation I've seen. It would be
interesting to hear from Buffer's employees on how it's affected company
culture.

How comfortable would you be with having your co-workers know your salary?

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addaddadd
Just from reading their formula, I would be uncomfortable knowing (assuming
engineer here) that founders have both a higher salary and orders of magnitude
more equity than me. I thought founders would take less salary in exchange for
significant ownership. Or is that only the cAse in pre-seed/seriesA startups?

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noir_lord
Interesting how differently we view things.

I'd find it irrelevant what the founder was getting paid as long as I was
getting paid the "right amount" for the work I was doing against market rates
and I found it an enjoyable place to work.

The only time I would care about what the founders where paying themselves was
if I was taking a reduced salary for some reason (and to be honest with the
programmer job market the way that it is it would have to be a damn good
reason).

The reality is that if you are paid like an employee that is because you are
an employee and the owners/founders will get paid more or as my grandfather
used to put it "No-one gets rich working for someone else".

I like the idea of a completely transparent company and will be interesting to
watch them grow (hopefully).

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sdoowpilihp
Maybe I am off base, or my calculations are wrong, but 110k (60*1.3+22+10) for
a "Master" level engineer in San Fransisco seems amazingly below market,
especially when a "junior" level engineer is making 92k.

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jtemplin
The embedded SlideShare is well worth reading. Here's a direct link to it:
<http://slidesha.re/15f1GHO>

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mynegation
Hmm, may be I am missing something in the sample calculation. However I put
brackets in 80+22 * 1.2, I do not get 118.

Edit: Oh, I got it (article got it wrong). It should actually be 80*1.2+22 =
118

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noir_lord
Challenge Accepted.

(80 * 1.2) + 22 = 118.

They apply the weighting factor to base salary not extras.

