Hacker News Reader

Comment by nilkn | Hacker News Reader

The $155k salary might be due to the transparency, but could it also be due to a simple inability to pay developers $300k+? That's well over double the CEO's salary. I think it's clear they simply don't have the revenue and cash reserves to pay developers that kind of money. I suspect you'll find this to be true at a lot of smaller startups that rely on actually making money instead of fundraising.

View on HN

Also, Buffer is entirely remote. I bet many people are willing to take a big pay cut if they don't have to commute to an office building every day (and of course, other people like office life -- but remote positions are rare, so it's normal that they're more "expensive" for employees who really want them).

Also, if you're working remotely from a more affordable location you may not need as much salary in order to live a very comfortable life.

I think our expectations are skewed by the crippling cost of living in SF, New York, London, etc.

Buffer actually adjusts the salary based on location, so this is (at least partially) taken into account.

The salary is peanuts compared to what that CEO gets compensated.

The latest model I have seen showed founders making about one-third of top-level employees.

In take-home income right? They still have sizeable ownership of the company and vesting.

Yes, they are willing to forego significant salary because they will control most of the profits.

Profits? You must be joking.

They recently took around $3m off the table if I recall correctly.

It was $2m in 2014

You mean "hypothetical profits". There's a distinct possibility of there being no profits at all.

High risk, high reward.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com