Buffer's transparency dashboard: Public salaries, equity and more | Hacker News Reader

Buffer's transparency dashboard: Public salaries, equity and more

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148 pointsZeljkoS176 comments

After spending eight years in the military (where everyone's salary is public, even Generals) I was kind of shocked when I got out and everyone was so secretive about how much money they made. When I got my first office job a few friends had to coach me to not talk about salary. To me it seems the only one really benefiting from not talking about money is the company paying you.

Well, there's a couple of reasons for it.

The main reason is that there is this idea of equal pay for equal work which only works if your work is producing widgets per hour. That's fine on a manufacturing line, an hourly job, or a job where the variance in performance of a job isn't measurably valuable to a business.

I've got a lot of experience as a programmer/devops guy, but if somebody hired me to setup Wordpress with a template for them I'm not really adding much more value than anybody else who could do the job. From the business perspective, they just want the site to be setup and look nice.

If a company is looking to hire a developer who can both develop the application, help manage the infrastructure and identify programming decisions that are going to cause a negative impact down the line...I'm going to add a lot more value for that business.

But...if my salary at that business was public and you could clearly see on paper that I made more money that another programmer on the team who really felt like he was contributing just as much it's going to cause resentment. The only way to clear up that resentment is for somebody to sit down with said guy and say, "Look, this guy does X, Y and Z and has experience and a track record of identifying problems and preventing us from making expensive mistakes. His salary is based on the value proposition. You are focussed on an area of programming for the app and you do a great job with it."

There's no way to explain it without causing resentment, having another person constantly having to justify themselves, or backhandedly belittling the contributions of another person.

This is essentially why people don't talk about it. Because nobody thinks their work isn't as valuable or their contributions are as valuable as the most valuable people at the company...and they have no way of understanding that without actually doing those people's jobs.

There's not a PC way to say "there's no such thing as equal work" unless your job is so specific, so thoroughly defined and so repetitive that anybody can be plugged in to perform the tasks...and at that point your job doesn't have much value anyway.

But keeping salaries secret leads to rumour and speculation. How is that better? Especially when you make it so taboo to talk about, it just makes it more exciting. Especially so since you can't hide the externalities.

I'll give you an example. When we learnt a girl from finance owned her own horse, the gossip around the office was not how did she skrimp and save, but what she needed to do to whom to receive such an obviously large salary. I have no doubt she did just save her money well but thanks to keeping everyone's salary secret, we have vicious rumours instead of fact.

If you are really hiring people who honestly believe that everyone apart from them contribute little to the company, then you are hiring incredibly arrogant people. If you are really hiring people who honestly would be surprised that some people earn more than others, then you are hiring incredibly naive people.

fwiw, I earn £27,000 as a C#/Java developer in central London and I know I am extremely poor at salary negotiation so I expect I am grossly underpaid. This causes me resentment. Salary negotiations involve me having to justify myself or backhandedly belittling the contributions of my colleagues. ie. exactly the sorts of problems you believe that keeping salaries secret solves.

There is only one reason for keeping salaries secret, and that is to keep wages down. That benefits employers, and it benefits those who are great at negotiating.

fwiw, I earn £27,000 as a C#/Java developer in central London and I know I am extremely poor at salary negotiation so I expect I am grossly underpaid.

I mean this in a nice way, but what you lack in salary negotiation skills you could make up in tolerating a job hunt and switching. In London, if you're intermediate or better with those skills, you could probably find positions with a 50% higher publicly stated salary?

Not sure about the horse thing though. You can get stabled livery and pay all the various horse related expenses on about £5K a year. My car costs me more.

When we learnt a girl from finance owned her own horse, the gossip around the office was not how did she skrimp and save, but what she needed to do to whom to receive such an obviously large salary. I have no doubt she did just save her money well but thanks to keeping everyone's salary secret, we have vicious rumours instead of fact.

I'm sorry, but that's just plain stupidity. There are many, many reasons how the woman (I assume, not an actual "girl") would have a horse. The combined income of her and her spouse might have allowed it. It might have been a gift from someone.

If your coworkers are using stuff like this as the basis for gossip... you work with some horrible people.

You are right I shouldn't refer to a woman in her early 20's as a girl. Its a habit when I thought "girl" meant, woman younger than me. Sorry.

Horses are expensive to maintain, even if they are gifted to you for free. But people use all sorts of basis for gossip.

Horses also take up a lot of time (or rather if you have one, you will spend a lot of time with it to get the most out of what you are paying for it), which means you aren't spending money on other things.

People often make the mistake of thinking "how can they afford <expensive thing> when I can't (because of all the <expensive things> I have to pay for)" without thinking that maybe the other person has a different lifestyle/priories to them.

This is essentially the problem which you are seeing from a different angle and that's okay.

This example for instance:

"I'll give you an example. When we learnt a girl from finance owned her own horse, the gossip around the office was not how did she skrimp and save, but what she needed to do to whom to receive such an obviously large salary. I have no doubt she did just save her money well but thanks to keeping everyone's salary secret, we have vicious rumours instead of fact."

The reality is...it's really not anybody's business. People are asking for an answer to a question that really isn't their concern. I have a nice house. People who see it assume I make a lot more than I do. Reality is that I got it for about half price in a foreclosure. Can people speculate about how much I make...sure. Is it their business to deserve an answer to how I have what I have...not really. If stating her salary really would end the rumors and she was concerned about that, she could just tell people by choice. Odds are she doesn't care that much.

And then this:

"If you are really hiring people who honestly believe that everyone apart from them contribute little to the company, then you are hiring incredibly arrogant people."

That's not what I said. I said there's a value proposition for certain people that the business feels justifies their compensation. I didn't say that those people thought everybody else contribute little, only that as far as the business is concerned their compensation is justified.

Or this:

"If you are really hiring people who honestly would be surprised that some people earn more than others, then you are hiring incredibly naive people."

Agree but this is what happens. People find out somebody makes more than them, doesn't understand why they make what they make and resents it. Regardless of cause. Sometimes it's justified. Sometimes it's not. Forcing the person who makes more to constantly justify it to everybody doesn't solve the problem of people feeling like they deserve more.

Shoot, when I got out of college I thought I could work my tail off and be a VP in 5 years. Also thought I was worth a lot more than I was when I had very little experience. This happens in MANY people with less experience who don't understand exactly HOW MUCH they don't understand. I was naive then and I know better now.

In London, as far as I know your compensation is about right. I actually worked remote for a London based company for a while for about half what I made in the US. Some of the factors were around health care, exchange rate, state of the company (start up). In the US C# programmers are in EXTREMELY high demand.

Where I live right now, your skill set, without knowing much about your experience would land you a job probably making twice what you make right now.

And I live in one of the poorer areas of the US. Right to work state. Disclosure generally happens from job postings with a salary range based on experience. That's just what supply and demand does. If there's demand for your skill set, recruiters will seek you out, you'll see job postings and salary listing for people with your skills and you'll quickly identify whether you are under compensated for your area.

People get an idea of the range that a position should pay but they don't get to know the private specifics of each person's compensation.

> This is essentially the problem which you are seeing from a different angle and that's okay.

Having thought about this, I think you're right. I can see how keeping salaries secret doesn't cause the issues I suggested it does. Sorry, reading my post now I come across as needlessly combative.

Personally, being transparent about salaries makes me trust the management more. I think more transparency is generally a good thing and I don't think there are any big negatives to keeping salaries secret. But it doesn't cause the issues I suggested it does.

This is completely untrue. People talk about salary in other places of the world very regularly, because it is often public.

People don't talk about salary in the US because companies will fire you for it.

Edit: See kasey_junk's response and my follow-up.

It's illegal to do what you're describing.

"Your right to discuss your salary information with your coworkers is protected by the federal government. The National Labor Relations Act states that employers can't ban the discussion of salary and working conditions among employees."

http://work.chron.com/can-tell-coworkers-salary-7204.html

Edit: Just saw that response and while I agree that you can be fired for any reason...that could be for anything at all. The only reason most companies are going to fire you is if:

a) You aren't doing the job you were hired to do b) You are creating a negative work environment. Actively trying to discuss salaries publicly at the company could definitely do that, depending on the type of and size of the company. Creating resentment definitely can cause problems but it's all situational. The situation that you saw first hand could have been as simple as you describe it or there could have been other contributing factors that you aren't aware of.

Being fired on a hair trigger for something like that seems extremely unlikely. Businesses don't go through the hiring, interview, background check and training only to fire somebody because they went against a rule in the book. Companies hire people for to do jobs because they need them to do that job and they value that performance.

A lot of illegal things happen all the time (wage theft, salary collusion, 1099 exploitation). Worker protections in the US have no teeth.

> A lot of illegal things happen all the time (wage theft, salary collusion, 1099 exploitation). Worker protections in the US have no teeth.

There's probably some lack of teeth issues, but I think the biggest issue is that people are just culturally conditioned not to take advantage of the protections that exist.

Definitely agree. Wanting worker protections is seen as socialist, unionist, and lazy.

Most discussions about salary are federally protected in the US and backed up by court decisions in nearly every state. If you get fired for talking about salary you almost certainly can seek redress from the National Labor Relations Board.

Companies usually wouldn't fire you for talking about salary but they will find another reason to fire you for talking about salary.

I've seen people get fired for being late to a meeting once. The real reason they got fired was something else but on paper and what they told the person was for being late.

You are completely correct, however I have personally seen two employee handbooks that forbid discussing salary and, living in an at-will state, I'm sure if I discussed salary I would be fired for something completely unrelated.

I have as well and have pointed out that it is probably illegal and potentially opens them to civil liability.

I've also seen manager training materials that specifically tell managers not to even hint that salary is a secret topic as the liability involved is problematic.

It is one thing to claim that worker protections don't exist, its another to claim that you refuse to take advantage of them.

It's still true that you have limited practical redress if you're fired (especially in an at-will state).

I've also seen an employee handbook that forbid salary discussions. When I politely pointed out to them (with references) said statement was illegal, the response I got was very cold.

and your last statement is untrue:

http://www.npr.org/2014/04/13/301989789/pay-secrecy-policies...

"Under the National Labor Relations Act, enacted in 1935, private-sector employees have the right to engage in "concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection."

The language is somewhat antiquated, but according to Estlund, "it means that you and your co-workers get to talk together about things that matter to you at work.""

Yeah, but this doesn't prevent a lot of employers from attempting to ban discussion in their employee handbooks. And it's not widely known that such bans are illegal. It's so common it's included in a lot of boilerplate and is de facto accepted as the reality by many (if not most) people.

"I've got a lot of experience as a programmer/devops guy, but if somebody hired me to setup Wordpress with a template for them I'm not really adding much more value than anybody else who could do the job. From the business perspective, they just want the site to be setup and look nice."

Here's the thing you might have experience doing that, I have experience driving revenue and increased sales with websites. I suggest you stop programming, and start driving revenue.

Also, I'm highly skilled at increasing employee productivity through automation performance enhancements, such as reducing build time which saves 15 minutes per programmer per day, over 10 programmers, or 912 person hours per year. I'll collect my cheque for $25K for that thank you very much :)

And if you can put those numbers in front of a business owner, it's going to pretty much justify higher compensation than me.

But should you feel like you have to constantly defend yourself when you know the value you add, the business owner knows the value you add but everybody else looking at the sheet says "He makes HOW much?"

NOTE: I honestly don't know why you're getting voted down. I up voted you fwiw.

I don't know either, c'est la vie. You can't pay rent with upvotes, that's what matters to me.

I honestly don't see any of that as reason other than, "Talking with people is HARD!"

Yep!

Some companies try to prohibit their employees from discussing compensation, precisely because they see the benefit of keeping people in the dark about each others' salaries, benefits, etc.

This practice is actually illegal, but it's also mostly unnecessary, because so many people have internalized the idea that such things are Not To Be Spoken Of anyway.

What about the reverse where I can negotiate an outsized salary to feed my family with so long as our dealings are private.

What about the reverse-reverse, when another engineer, as talented as you, but less charismatic or more ignorant about labor economics unrelated to his day-to-day job, isn't able to?

Is it really the for the best if you and your boss split the money he left on the table?

Better for my children or his?

Why would you only be able to do this if your dealings are private?

Jealousy.

Discussing one's salary seems to be a particularly American taboo. Yet it's curiously dissonant with the overall American enthusiasm for all things money.

I wonder when it started? Somehow I can't imagine 19th century Americans being so secretive about how much they're making.

It probably comes down to pride. Americans are a prideful people, we don't like to admit to being wrong or inferior. If you go around telling all of your coworkers how much you make, chances are good that at least one of them is making quite a bit more for what you see as the same job. Most people would rather not find out that they get inferior pay to their coworkers, even if they could potentially do something about it, because it tells them that the employer sees them as the one worth less (whether justified or not).

It's kind of like how most people aren't going to just ask their spouse if they're cheating, they'll wait until the evidence is clear. Nobody wants to confront the potentially ugly truth.

> Most people would rather not find out that they get inferior pay to their coworkers, even if they could potentially do something about it, because it tells them that the employer sees them as the one worth less (whether justified or not).

I don't think you can actually assert that this is what people actually want on a meaningful psychological level. They're certainly scared away from doing it with unenforceable lines banning it in contracts, TV shows skirting away from mentioning salary figures at all times, etc.

The word taboo is fitting precisely because of this.

I'm not saying that people want to be secretive about their own salary, I'm saying people are afraid to know the salaries of their peers.

To use a childish simile, it's just like how most guys won't actually say how big their dick is, even if they'll talk about the general topic. It's not because it's "taboo", it's because they don't want to find out that their best friend is bigger.

I'd say it is consonant with it. Making salaries public has a strong flattening effect - it makes it much more difficult for people of the same rank to have different pay. Someone else said in Norway all salaries are public, which fits the Scandinavian idea that one person shouldn't be much wealthier than another. In America, there has traditionally been the idea that you as an individual might be able to get rich.

I'm not taking a position on which side is better or worse, just noting that whether you aim to get richer than your neighbour is probably going to be the main thing determining whether you think salaries should be public or private.

In the Army we were all broke so it didn't matter. Now there is no fucking way I want my peers knowing how much I make. I've been very successful in negotiating 25%+ higher salaries than them on balance. I commonly make more than my boss.

Additionally, there is a privacy aspect to publishing this information on a public website. People I don't know or trust don't need to know how much I make. The reasons for this should be totes obvi to HN.

I'm actually horrified that I'm able to see the salaries and so forth for complete strangers.

I agree

The other side of the coin is totally taboo free. IE, people on the employer side freely talk about salaries with people at other companies & recruiters in order to d exactly what the employee-side taboo prevents, get information to help them negotiate.

Do people get performance bonuses in the military?

It's not really the same as in civilian jobs, but there are several pay bonuses for people in hazardous areas, imminent danger, at sea, etc.

The answer is no. You do not get performance bonuses. You get little bits of colored ribbon.

> When I got my first office job a few friends had to coach me to not talk about salary. To me it seems the only one really benefiting from not talking about money is the company paying you.

And the people who make more than you :). Sorry but I see this point thrown around often in this context, and there is truth to it, but also a little more to the situation than that.

Can any engineers who work at Buffer chime in as to why you work there? It's been noted before on HN that the salaries are on the low end for the SF area. Obviously salary is not everything, so I'm curious as to specifically what made you join and what keeps you there.

Hi there! Sunil here (CTO at Buffer). Really great question! We've had a long and hard look at our salaries and have been in the midst of overhauling how exactly we determine salaries. One of the great things with being transparent about our salaries is that we learn so much about how we've originally set up our salaries and how we'd need to further adjust things. We received some great feedback and through that, we've realized how under-market our rates have been for areas like SF and NYC, while being quite above market rates in many other regions. We've been in the middle of overhauling how salaries get set, and have adjusted developer salaries based on some solid feedback. I believe we'll update the public numbers and be transparent about the process we took and our overall learnings quite soon!

Generally our approach with salaries (and much of the company) has been to iterate with continuous feedback loops. The feedback we receive in HN may further influence how we think about things. Would love any more thoughts/advice you have :)

> we've realized how under-market our rates have been for areas like SF and NYC, while being quite above market rates in many other regions.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that you have to pay more in markets like SF and NYC. The costs of living are much higher, and employees can switch jobs almost effortlessly.

Well, that's the weird part - they obviously knew that, because they have the location modifier (SF/NYC are location A/+$22k). Seems like the base levels are too low.

You get $10k more for living in SF over Nashville. Seriously, $10k? SF has to be somewhere around 50% more expensive than Nashville.

Perhaps that is intentional? Buffer may prefer employees in Nashville to those in SF for all manner of reasons.

Perhaps

I worked in another state for a well known and generally hated company based in SF who wanted me to transfer there, offering a 20k cost of living adjustment. But the actual standard of living increase that would be required amounted to a raise of at least 50%. The response was that a lot of people want to live in SF and would take the hit. No thanks.

Taxes and rent costs blow away these piddly adjustments. Moving into SF from elsewhere requires _massive_ income adjustments.

After you take out the difference in house prices and gas prices, the rest is minimal.

I'd say an apartment here would cost $2000/mo more than Nashville. Gas is say 50% more expensive; let's say that's another $4K/year. That adds up to an additional $28K/year after tax; or, roughly $40K/year before tax.

Could you talk more about how it took "great feedback" to realize how under-market you were? I would imagine a tech company -- especially one that took so much time and effort coming up with compensation formulas -- would have their finger on the pulse of salary levels.

Thanks for the reply, Sunil! Wasn't expecting a response from the CTO. :) Glad to hear you are constantly making changes and improvements. I almost applied a while ago, but the salaries were off-putting.

How do you deal with someone who's doing just as much work as a person in SF/NYC, but living somewhere else feeling resentful that they're not making as much?

You send me their email because my team compensates people based on talent, not zip code.

I don't think you should pay some one more because they want to live somewhere expensive, just like you shouldn't pay them more if they decide they want to drive a tesla.

> I don't think you should pay some one more because they want to live somewhere expensive

I don't think that's the problem. The problem is, if you have someone you want in your team, and if that someone is living in SF for example, then you can't offer him the same kind of salary otherwise he will never accept.

I don't think I was very clear because this example is backwards. Maybe I should say we don't pay people less because they live in a flyover state. Engineers in sf do produce value that justifies a high salary. In many cases engineers outside sf can produce as much value.

So you don't have offices in SF then?

We do.

Buffer seems to be aiming to provide an equal standard of living rather than an equal salary, so by that measure, they are making as much.

Offer to relocate them?

How's the $177k/yr and 0.96 equity treating you?

What choices have you made in the past year that make you feel you're worth $63k/yr more than Colin? I mean, is Colin just not quite as smart and good at technology as you? Have you two talked about how much better you are than him?

That rhetorical line of questioning is a low blow, but as CTO you might be able to answer: what positive open and honest discussion has the open equity/salary table actually encouraged?

Idle gossip around the virtual water cooler is one thing, but for open salaries to be appreciated, there have to be positives that outweigh the obvious negatives.

Another thing not mentioned, does Buffer give bonuses for good work or is the spreadsheet an employee's total compensation?

What are the "obvious negatives". Not trying to be snarky, I honestly wonder what people think the downsides of this approach are.

Resentment?

I think this level of openness and such a specific salary formula speaks volumes about the work culture and that should partially answer your question.

If my employer made this level of information available to everyone, I would have a great deal more trust and confidence in the senior management and probably wouldn't be job hunting on the side.

>> "If my employer made this level of information available to everyone"

...I would stay well away. I guess it's different for everyone but I don't want this kind of information available to my colleagues never mind the general public.

Yeah, perfectly understandable. I'm sure Buffer's intention here is largely to attract people who will fit the environment they want to foster and this draws a pretty hard line.

And it is a double-edged sword - an employee could look at that formula after a year and think, "Well, I know where I am now and where I could be in two years, no reason to stay here for that."

I also can't even imagine what it would be like trying to implement such a policy if it weren't in place from the start, hah.

"an employee could look at that formula after a year and think, "Well, I know where I am now and where I could be in two years, no reason to stay here for that.""

The good part about this is that the formula and system is open to change and will continue to evolve as we find ways that it could be working better for us. We're actually in the midst of some changes right now that have and will really help the formula work in the coming months & years.

Yeah, I'm not at all surprised about that based on what this degree of openness says about the culture of Buffer. Keep it up.

I also have to think balancing such a formula is a very interesting challenge. On the one hand you don't want it so hard coded that there is no wiggle room, but on the other a higher fudge factor can really change the type of applicants that come along.

"Well, I know where I am now and where I could be in two years, no reason to stay here for that."

I am self employed now but honestly this could be said of any company - public salary formula or not.

>> " I'm sure Buffer's intention here is largely to attract people who will fit the environment they want to foster and this draws a pretty hard line."

Good point.

May I ask why? What's wrong with people knowing how much you make?

It's asking for trouble along several axes.

There is the social aspect. If people you know and interact with on a daily basis know your income, they'll preload their assumptions about your money management skills into every interaction. Sometimes they'll ask for money and resent you if you decline, even though they probably have no idea what kind of liabilities you're facing (and it's reasonable to keep those private too). They'll judge all of your choices against your income; if you buy something that's a bit of a stretch, like a nicer car, you may get lectured on, but you'll definitely get judged on, how you can't really afford that, or how you're terrible at managing your income, etc.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Publicized salary information makes personal interactions more difficult all around.

It can make business more difficult. Consider a world where everyone's salary is public, and anyone selling you a product can look up your income and demand certain payment based on a percentage of your income. It'd be a lot harder to negotiate or deal with salespeople this way.

"Salary history" is one of the HR department's great tools for screwing over employees; instead of paying you a salary commensurate with the value you bring to the company, they just have to offer a marginal bump. Again, it neuters negotiation, since they know your hand ahead of time.

There can be legal ramifications. Consider a situation where you get in a car accident, exchange insurance information, and the other party looks up your salary online and discovers that you make enough to be worth bringing to court. Even if he'd lose the case, and even if it's small claims, it'd cost you time and money in transportation, time off, etc. If it's not small claims, it'd cost you legal fees too. The claimant would anticipate that your lawyer would recommend a settlement and may sue even if his prospects were poor; since your income information would be public, said lawyers would take your case on contingency, since you have enough money to be worth trying to wring out.

The old saying "good fences make good neighbors" applies and can be generalized as "a reasonable amount of privacy keeps people civil" (it needn't refer exclusively to fences). Your personal affairs can and should stay personal.

Cookiecaper "Government worker salaries are not usual directly associated with the names of the people receiving them; the classifications are public, but you can't just type in "my neighbor salary" in Google and see what they make;"

Not google, but not much more work. If you know their name you do not need to know their classification.

http://php.app.com/fed_employees14/search.php

It can lead to uncomfortable social situations. Although I would like to believe people don't get jealous of how much others make or change their opinion based on that they do, even if they don't mean too.

This is entirely based on the people you work with. I'm sure some of my co-workers make more than me, but I would never think for a moment they don't deserve it or haven't earned it.

The future is radical transparency; we should be prepared to embrace it.

I actually wasn't even thinking of the workplace. If people contribute more to the company and therefore earn more, fine. I was thinking outside of the office. E.g. a friend offering to pay for a meal when you know they can't afford it as easily as you can or vice versa.

Most government worker salaries are already public information. Everyone's property value and home/condo sale price information is already public. I don't see personal financial information moving towards being more private anytime soon.

Government worker salaries are not usual directly associated with the names of the people receiving them; the classifications are public, but you can't just type in "my neighbor salary" in Google and see what they make; you don't know what classification most government workers hold. Elected officials are the common exception to this, since we know senators make $x and we know all 100 people that are currently senators, we can look up the salary for the mayor and associate it with the mayor of the city, etc. Even then the published salaries should be seen as a baseline, since many public personas have multiple streams of income.

In California they are public and searchable by name, see http://transparentcalifornia.com/.

Who needs google: http://www.transparentnevada.com/salaries/search/

There has been plenty of pressure applied to state government to provide this information under freedom of information laws. When a local paper initially collected this information and made it available there was public backlash against both the paper, and the way certain people were compensated (mostly firefighters, police officers but also some school teachers and university employees). After a while most people forgot about it but the push continued and now we have things like the above linked site where you can find the total compensation of every employee of the state of Nevada.

How would your friend come across such a page? My friends don't browse the entirety of my website company, I actually wonder how many have actually looked at it.

Forget the co-workers, how about your neighbors, debt collectors, direct marketers. Publishing the salary of private citizens should be criminal.

"Criminal" is a bit excessive..

If my employer suddenly published salaries then it may be an issue but they've been publishing these reports for years.

I'm sure everyone who works there is both aware and accepting of the publishing. If they didn't like it, they wouldn't have accepted the job in the first place.

Perhaps you're right. Perhaps I let my emotions get the better of me.

Interesting. In general, I'm curious why we all seem to feel wealth should be private. That ability to hide liquid wealth is something (relatively) new to our brains and societies. I would think a society where we could easily size up one another's wealth would be more in line with how our brains evolved to understand our social space...

That's just the thing, though. People want to connect on a personal level with other people, and if other people know that they make 50% more or 50% less than you, they will (by and large) treat you differently, even if subconsciously.

In Norway everyone's income is public. I'd be curious to hear from any Norwegians how this works out in practice.

My personal top reasons are the culture, the people and what we value as a company. I believe it's a phenomenal place to work as an engineer and the remote working setup has been one of the most fun, interesting and liberating ways to work in my career.

Dan, Engineer w/ Buffer for 1 1/2 years

>culture, the people and what we value as a company.

Curious if you have specific examples.

Culture - I find the engineering culture great, lots and lots of trust, everyone deploys at all times throughout the day, freedom to experiment with new technologies. No one points fingers and the team is all in it together. Non-engineering wise, there is a ton of respect for each other on the team, it's a super positive place to work.

The people - you'd have to get to know them, they're awesome bunch :)

Our values - here's the easiest way to show them: http://www.slideshare.net/Bufferapp/buffer-culture-05

I hope that helps a bit!

Thank you for your response.

I can't help but think that there are tons of places that don't treat people like children and are respectful to each other. I wouldn't want to get underpaid for something generic like this. Just my personal opinion, everyone is different.

I just feel like you are being underpaid by a lot.

Sure! My previous employers were also great places to work, I've been pretty fortunate in my career. I can understand my response may feel generic, if we were having this convo over a coffee or beer, I could tell you in greater detail.

If I was someone just after the money, I could choose to go downtown and work in fin-tech. Everyone has their own motivations, values and desires. Buffer fits very well within mine!

How is it underpaid if you're not living in SF? Some of them are living in countries that are pretty cheap, they actually live much better and save way more than anyone living in SF.

Thanks for the replies and the link, Dan!

So Dan, how does the $118k/yr and 0.24 equity factor into making Buffer a "phenomenal place to work" and "fun, interesting and liberating"?

I'll take his salary, thank you very much!

Most likely because they allow you to work remotely from anywhere in the world.

The only thing I dislike about this is that the salaries are literally public -- not just known to each other in the company, but your friends and family could also look up your salary. I'm not sure I understand the purpose of this. Is it really necessary to have names in the public listing?

I'm just starting with Buffer as a Product Creator. I gave this a bit of thought at first and it did indeed make me nervous.

Now, however, it's completely freeing to have it out there and have one less thing bottled up that I can't talk about.

Finances are a funny thing in the US; money is completely taboo to talk about, but why? Does it really matter that your friends/family know how much you make? Maybe it does and that might keep you from working with a company like Buffer, which is just fine. In that case it might not be a culture fit and you should probably pursue working with a company with a little less transparency.

The openness and transparency is what most drew me to work at Buffer. They don't compartmentalize and that's a great thing. Transparency extends to all corners of the company. Some places say they stand for something but then you find out there are boundaries. Not the case here. :-)

Justin, new Product Creator with Buffer

I'm undecided on if public transparency of salaries is a net positive or net negative for society and for Buffer.

However, I do applaud you as an employee and the organization itself for trying something different. You can tell by the polarization of responses here on HN that you guys are truly on to something (not sure what though!).

I don't want anyone but my closest of friends to have any idea as to what I make for a living. How do I benefit from that? Now when we go out to dinner, or to buy drinks, is this acquaintance that I see a few times a month going to pressure or guilt me into paying for things? Are they going to be upset that I spent $20 on a birthday present when I make 2-5x their pay? It shouldn't even be a consideration unless I want it to be. Are they going to talk behind my back about how I only tip $1 on drinks but make XYZ amount of money?

When people know you're making money they come out of the woodwork and do things they wouldn't do if they had no idea. I'd rather it not even be a consideration in our relationship as friends/family/whatever.

Honestly how many friends/family member/whatever actually made the effort to look at your company website? How many how them looked further that the frontpage?

aka A recruiter's dream. Now you know exactly how much you need to offer each employee to poach them!

I'm a big fan of internal transparency of these things, but external not so much.

However, I did make it a point at reddit to show our AWS bill to anyone who asked, but that was actually selfish in nature. I was hoping that if enough people knew it would drive the price down.

If this were truly a recruiter's dream, we'd see this company's employees getting "poached" left and right. Is this happening?

I HATE the term "poach" in this context. It implies that an employee is merely the property of a company, like a deer or fish, being "taken" by another company, rather than employees freely choosing among mutually beneficial business relationships with employers.

Eh. Not really. If you're a company and you've hit an employee's baseline salary for what they need to make (YMMV) there are other things you need to do differently in order to attract and retain great people.

For me there are just some jobs out there that I would never do. Unless you're paying me seven figures there's no way I'd ever work for Facebook, or Google, or pretty much any Silicon Valley company. Those places would have to drastically change how they operate in order for me to consider working there.

A place like Buffer seems nice and I'm sure it's a great place for people to work but the product is just boring to me. They're not working on anything that I personally feel strongly about.

In short: It's way more than salary.

That is indeed a downside, but I imagine there's a less obvious benefit to Buffer. If Buffer has an employee that is working there despite the ability to get a higher offer somewhere else, I imagine that that employee is pretty engaged.

Multiply that by the whole company, and I bet you have a pretty great team. In other words, the there is likely a positive self-selection effect going on.

It's not perfect, but no other system is either. Right now I am seeing a lot of people at my job thinking a lot about comp, which makes me think about comp, etc. It's contagious.

Oh yeah, because salary is the only thing that people optimize for. A salary range is easy enough to ascertain if you are a good recruiter anyway. If you think this dashboard really helps you poach employees, you are a terrible recruiter.

Did it drive the price down?

Hard to say. They were driving the price down anyway and they don't give special pricing to anyone (they just do usage tiers that get cheaper)

Every time Buffer did something like this, I was skeptical. I thought this was just a marketing angle and they’ll have to abandon this at some point when they scale.

But I was wrong. Shame on me.

Props to the Buffer team. You’ve set new standards. An engineering candidate referred to Buffer’s salary during the interview and I realized how much they mean to all of us now.

They're still small. While they could probably keep their formulae public, I seriously doubt that the personal data exposure will be able to continue if/when Buffer matures into a company with more than a handful of employees. There are many good reasons to have some opacity around personal income, and at scale, people will expect that from their employer. It's one thing to find a couple dozen people in SF who don't mind, but it's another thing to hire hundreds or thousands of employees this way.

Kinda frustrating though, because Buffer's salaries are very low (esp in SF and NYC). So to whatever extent they're anchoring standards or w/e, they're anchoring them to a very low level.

I like openness as much as the next guy, but it is really nobodies business to know, how much I earn, except for my employer, the tax office and myself.

Keep in mind this is only in European and US culture. In Japan is normal to talk about it.

In Norway, you can find out how much anyone makes by looking up their public tax returns!

http://www.joshuakennon.com/tax-returns-in-norway-are-public...

Not really.

1) Public information is income/assets after deductions, and deductions vary greatly.

2) Only selected newspapers get the whole dataset, everyone else can search in DB, but the searches are logged by Tax Administration (presumably to help police in case someone gets robbed).

>the searches are logged by Tax Administration (presumably to help police in case someone gets robbed).

This was my first thought! A list of high value targets.

Honest question: Why?

I consider that private information. Why do my friends/neighbours whatnot have to know, that I make more money than they do? It creates all sorts of awkward situations, at least in the culture, that I live in.

How do you know they're not the ones making more money than you?

because I am a very well paid software engineer and they are not..

Yes, but that culture is deeply damaging to your own ability to negotiate better pay. If you don't know how much other people doing the same work you do make, then you don't know when you get lowballed. Public salary information is -- in the aggregate -- better for employees everywhere.

what makes you think there isn't a neighbor making more than you?

Why do people who say this always assume they're the ones making the most, and aren't the lowballed ones?

Most software engineers make considerably more than the median salary, so it's not unreasonable to suppose that you make more than your neighbors (unless you can barely afford your home).

Why do you get to ask why? Why can't people decide for themselves what information they want to have public? Would you want a public website with everybody's health stats, or the report from every GP visit? If not, why not? It's only our bodies, everybody has physical issues sometimes, what's the big deal?

You do get to choose: Don't work at Buffer.

I like openness as much as the next guy, but it is really nobodies business to know, how much I earn, except for my employer, the tax office and myself.

Don't forget your co-workers.

Capitalism only works with information transparency. The minute there's an information asymmetry, things break down.

In this case, without information about the salary of your co-workers, you cannot effectively negotiate for your own value, which puts you and all of your colleagues at a disadvantage to the employer.

Of course, that's really the American way these days, but that doesn't make it a good thing.

Have you ever considered why you feel that how much you earn should be a secret?

Why not?

Why or why not. I'm asking if he has seriously thought about it. Your question to me makes no sense.

I guess I can answer why from my perspective. I consider myself to be an Individual and I don't want any of my information to be made public.

No problem. Don't work there.

Why should I reveal something about myself without a quid pro quo?

If I'm going to give information away I want some information in exchange. How about next to all price tags for products in any store, put the cost of the product next to the price? Would you be for that? How would you think everybody would react when they realized all shirts cost 39 cents, all pants cost 45 cents, all shoes cost 76 cents, even though all along we've all been paying $30, $50, $100?

It's an honest question, I also don't know the answer, but my point is the way people interpret information (as mobs) is outside of any one individual's control, and maybe people don't want to give that control up?

Here's a direct link to the Google doc with all the info: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0AgrWVeoG5divdE81...

Edit: I find this hugely inspiring. I love that they're sticking to their transparency promise.

Hope their equity pays off because those salaries are shit for SF. For that matter, they're shit for Dallas.

things are most of their devs are not living in the US.

Pretty cool of these guys to do this.

There now appears to be 3 ways of allocating salary

1) The typical negotiate and keep secrete way most companies work

2) The finance model where everything is public and you get bonus-ed out based on your performance with some discretion.

3) The buffer way where everything is public and you get paid based on a pre existing formula

Case 1 is how most firms work and it kind of sucks for people who don't job hop and don't negotiate well.

Case 2 works well when you:

    - make a profit

    - can directly relate profit back to an individual or group

Case 3 Not sure if this works well or not, at the very least everyone knows where they stand and that counts for something.

Is there a better way to do this?

I love it. The explanations for equity, salary, etc are great. If the individuals within the company are on board with having this information public, then it's proof that they hold the same values as the company with regard to transparency--almost like a test, right up front. All of the comments below about people wanting to keep that information private is perfectly fine, but that means you don't share the same values as the company.

I agree with the previous comments about government/military salaries being pre-defined. It completely removes the negativity usually associated with secret salaries. That's now a non-issue.

Well done.

I'm curious what, if any, effect this has on the type of people who are attracted to a company. I'm personally not a fan of arbitrary pay metrics. I want my compensation to be tied to my performance. I don't want to be pigeon holed based on some formula. I suppose having equity helps with this, as it presents some more upside for everyone to accomplish exceptional things, but I would personally stay away from a company like this. It's not so much driven by the transparency aspect, but I want to be compensated based on my performance.

I certainly can't speak for Buffer, but most companies use bonuses to account for this (for salaried employees). Having a tiered salary structure lets both the company and the employee plan for a base salary from year to year and provides opportunities to "move people up" as the progress through a career. Beware what you ask for: if you produce less value for the company in a given pay period, they should be able to pay you less!

I think tying a base salary to performance creates a really unstable financial situation for the company and the employee.

I agree on the bonuses, but if I understand Buffer's compensation properly, this is not how they operate. They take out any possibility for comp that's not determined by their formula, which was my general complaint against the rigidity of their compensation.

> I want to be compensated based on my performance.

I imagine they'd increase your experience and seniority multipliers based on your performance, so you could advance (up to "lead master developer").

I am surprised that this equity distribution isn't raising more eyebrows. Is this considered normal by anyone ?

I might be ignorant, but if they hit profitability relatively early in their hiring (and meaningfully de-risked themselves as a result), I could see them having the leverage to parcel out lower equity amounts.

Were you expecting a shallower decline in equity grants over time? Definitely curious to hear what others view as an expected employee equity structure.

Well yes. Joel has been at Buffer for 6 years and Andy for 4 years. Joel has 42 times more equity than Andy. How's that make sense ?

Anyway, I want to stop picking on this particular startup because, from looking at Angellist ballpark offers and various HN comments, this is seen as the normal.

I find this reassuring in a way. That Silicon Valley is cocking up on this vital issue so vastly and consistently shows that it's still being run by fallible humans...

Also, kudos to Buffer for opening themselves up to criticism from randos such as myself

I find the location modifier interesting. Obviously, the living costs in major cities are being factored in here, but if two employees provide the same amount of value to the company, it seems odd to pay someone more just because they choose to live in a big city. It seems like that might also cause some resentment between the two employees.

Does the company get some additional value from having their employees live in a big city? Is there some other factor I'm missing?

The company I work for does something similar. Everyone at the same level gets the same salary, with percentage variations based on geography. It completely removes the competitive and secretive nature I've seen elsewhere. And it also pushes each individual to live up to their title due to the extra transparency.

I work for a large (30K employees) company that does something similar. For each job title, there is a salary and bonus range. So from someone's title in Outlook, you can pretty much guess their salary within 10% or so. This information is all readily available to all employees, though I don't think it is shared externally.

I work for a large company that does this - except it's pretty much useless for guessing someone's salary, because the salary range for each job title are something like $X to $2.25X.

I think it is a very great movement of companies being transparent. I've learned a lot of the companies that share their ups and downs and how they distribute their salaries, equity and how much and on what conditions they raise funding.

This is brilliant, and I love that they aren't holding back.

I think if society govts/corps/ngo's operated like this the world would be a much better place. Or perhaps I've just gone hippie.

Buffer keep it up!

Governments usually do operate this way. As does the military, many ngos and oddly enough lots of trading/finance firms.

This is so fucked up for employees. I'm a little surprised at how mad this is making me given I don't work there.

Want to negotiate a big raise? Sorry everyone will see and might not agree you deserve it.

Want a big salary bump at your next job? Sorry, the recruiter now holds all the cards in salary discussions.

Want to get robbed? Yes! We can facilitate this by publishing you are a top paid individual at company XYZ.

OTOH the other visible salaries make nice "comps" for appraising yourself to justify your raise. If you think about it, the usual reason you would want to negotiate a big raise is because you are significantly underpaid in the first place, and that shouldn't happen under this scheme as long as you're as transparent as the company is with your expectations and only accept what you believe is fair. Furthermore, if someone disagrees with you getting a big bump then maybe they have a point. You might have something to say if somebody two levels below you started posturing for a leadership role and more pay? This way you can't just ignore it and say it's none of your business - that's the kind of behavior this level of transparency discourages. Everyone's an owner.

You really should be honest with recruiters about your previous salary. Lying about that is more likely to hurt your chances or get you fired down the road - http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/is-it-illegal-to-l...

You have a good point about it being risky. If any of these people end up making a great deal of money I hope they do more to obfuscate their identities in the public versions. From the looks of it right now they are all massively under market for their roles.. it's clear they're doing a startup and are taking startup sacrifices. I wouldn't worry about any of them being targeted as a filthy rich mark.

> Lying about that is more likely to hurt your chances or get you fired down the road

that hasn't been my experience

Apparently, you don't negotiate a big raise at Buffer. You prove that you've increased your experience level. The only thing I would add to the equation would be a multiple for "years employed at Buffer". Then they would be automatically handling raises for people as the stayed longer.

You could think you're in a meritocracy, that no one is getting an outsized deal over anyone else. The reality is that reviews and promotions will be subjective, gamed, or both. This is human nature. It might work with fewer than 100 employees. The military is proof it doesn't work in large organizations. The point and promotion system was endlessly gamed.

I upvoted this because I think your concerns are actually legitimate. I hope others will engage with your post rather than being turned off by the slightly inflammatory tone.

I'm honestly curious what was inflammatory about my tone?

The discrepancy in equity is huge

Like it is in every other company?

Nice of you to publish this. It takes a lot of courage to break the mold. I would like to hear how publishing this info has affected you later down the road.

As someone who has followed Buffer's business for a while, this has been public for quite some time.

I'm under the impression from reading a lot of the founders' writings that it has certainly had small challenges but overall has been a huge net positive.

yeah, I read that kickstarted projects have a huge problem when dealing with providers, everybody wants the biggest share of the loot, they know that the backers reacted well the last time they were late, etc.

All of the Engineers took the salary over the equity. Anyone else find that interesting?

Not me :) I opted for the equity option. -Tom, Mobile Engineer @ Buffer

question I have is how can one use all of this to evaluate company performance in terms of productivity and morale?

I'm curious about: 1) employee turnover 2) offers made to candidates vs declines 3) promotions and job changes

At some point, all of these transparency posts/pages start to reek too highly a self aggrandizing marketing ploy. A successful one, no doubt (especially since the readership is also a main target demographic)... but it's getting a bit tired.

Good luck to Buffer, try not to throw your shoulders out while patting yourselves on the back.

They thing they make a good thing to make it open. They are wrong. It may be ok to share their calculations, it may be ok if the CEO tells how much he makes. It is not ok to share full names of employees. And if they do they should make it internally. This absolutely helps nobody outside the company. Really Buffer, you're making me angry. Privacy is something I decide and not my company in this case.

Actually, employees had deliberated on this and voted. It wasn't a top down decision.

They don't appear to be sharing full names, only first names.

> They are wrong

I stopped reading there

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