"We decided to do something outlandishly simple: take the salary that Steve, Jess, and I were going to pay ourselves, and pay that to everyone. The three of us live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Steve and I each have three kids; we knew that the dollar figure that would allow us to live without financial distress – which we put at $175,000 a year – would be at least universally adequate for the team we wanted to build. And we mean everyone literally: as of this writing we have 23 employees, and that’s what we all make."
Later update:
"Since originally writing this blog entry in 2021, we have increased our salary a few times, and it now stands at $207,264. We have also added some sales positions that have variable compensation, consisting of a lower base salary and a commission component."
second paragraph
This is also covered in their original blog (linked from this post in the first paragraph).
"As for how equity is determined, it really deserves its own in-depth treatment, but in short, equity compensates for risk – and in a startup, risk reduces over time: the first employee takes much more risk than the hundredth."