That’s cool, transparent salaries in what way? There are a few options companies employ.
I’m personally transparent and have mixed views on companies making an individual’s salary public - some more discussion on audio form on Changelog & Friends if that’s of interest too
The approach we landed on - after years of evolution, many before I joined the company - was:
A career ladder for almost all roles. Roughly: if you’d demonstrated W, X, and Y with clients in the past year, you were on level Z. There was a salary associated with each level, and that was invariant. Regardless of seniority, age, circumstance, etc. you got paid Z.
All salary figures were public to employees, but not to the general public.
All levels, reviews, salaries, etc. were public to employees. So if I wondered why Alice and Bob were level 17, I could look and find that it was because they’d done certain work with certain clients in the past few years.
All company financials were public to employees. So I could see how we were doing, and also, how the surplus disbursement to shareholders and staff was calculated. This was particularly welcome during the pandemic as we had weekly all-hands to review how close to doom we were.
Oh yeah. 50% of operating surplus was paid out to shareholders (the co-founders and later CEO), and 50% to staff - based on tenure, not level. So the surplus disbursement was nice for senior staff, but a big ol’ windfall for juniors, as a % of salary.
This was particularly welcome during the pandemic as we had weekly all-hands to review how close to doom we were.
Wow, that sounds nice. We had a big party with clients in February 2020 to celebrate how well the company was doing, just after I sat down with the CTO to discuss how to allocate the year’s budget for the tech team to payrises and new hires, then at the end of March the CEO told us that the company had no money and they wouldn’t be paying us our salaries for the past month.
I do think it’s probably not ideal to publish an itemised list of all employees and salaries. We just happen to have, at Oxide, the one salary right now, so you can infer: if employee then this salary. I think if we ended up with a few bands for some reason in the future, we’d be a bit fuzzier about the precise way those bands map onto individuals.
I do think it’s probably not ideal to publish an itemised list of all employees and salaries.
Speaking purely from my own experience, it actually worked very well this way. We didn’t exactly have a list of employees with salaries, rather, it was a list of employees with their “level” (i.e. position on the career ladder).
Each level then had an associated salary, usually several levels shared a salary. So “junior” might be levels 6 - 8, all of which were on a given salary. This was important because it’s not just transparency about the salaries that’s important; it’s transparency about why people wound up in the bands they did.
So e.g. at the end of our annual review process we might let everyone know that Alice had moved from level 8 to 9, because the work she’d been doing for the past couple of clients fostering team communication and practices. Or that Bob had decided to stay at a level 16 because he didn’t want the additional burden of a lead role (true story).
Yeah, while I’m not an executive, I feel we would be pretty deliberate and consensus-seeking before making a drastic change like that.
Edit: Also, we often consider our values as being in tension with one another, and in a similar vein while transparency is an excellent thing to value is does nonetheless stand opposed in some cases to safety and privacy, both of which are also often crucial to wellbeing.
I just took a look at your public record of your salaries. That’s great idea! I’d like to copy it and publish my own but I saw that you once had a concern about its legality: how did you resolve that? Can it be illegal to publish your salary in the UK?
I am also in the UK so that’s alright (also, I checked and for future reference the relevant legislation is the Equality Act 2010, c. 15, s. 77, just in case anyone ever needs to know that).
Having worked for years for a company with transparent salaries and level reviews - I can confirm that it’s a wonderful way to do business.
That’s cool, transparent salaries in what way? There are a few options companies employ.
I’m personally transparent and have mixed views on companies making an individual’s salary public - some more discussion on audio form on Changelog & Friends if that’s of interest too
The approach we landed on - after years of evolution, many before I joined the company - was:
A career ladder for almost all roles. Roughly: if you’d demonstrated W, X, and Y with clients in the past year, you were on level Z. There was a salary associated with each level, and that was invariant. Regardless of seniority, age, circumstance, etc. you got paid Z.
All salary figures were public to employees, but not to the general public.
All levels, reviews, salaries, etc. were public to employees. So if I wondered why Alice and Bob were level 17, I could look and find that it was because they’d done certain work with certain clients in the past few years.
All company financials were public to employees. So I could see how we were doing, and also, how the surplus disbursement to shareholders and staff was calculated. This was particularly welcome during the pandemic as we had weekly all-hands to review how close to doom we were.
Oh yeah. 50% of operating surplus was paid out to shareholders (the co-founders and later CEO), and 50% to staff - based on tenure, not level. So the surplus disbursement was nice for senior staff, but a big ol’ windfall for juniors, as a % of salary.
Wow, that sounds nice. We had a big party with clients in February 2020 to celebrate how well the company was doing, just after I sat down with the CTO to discuss how to allocate the year’s budget for the tech team to payrises and new hires, then at the end of March the CEO told us that the company had no money and they wouldn’t be paying us our salaries for the past month.
Ouch :( Was that the pandemic, or were there darker forces at work?
The pandemic lockdown was the proximate cause but it revealed a lot of dishonesty and dodgy practices that had been hidden by the facade of success.
Cashflow can hide a lot of sins.
Pretend cashflow even more so!
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I do think it’s probably not ideal to publish an itemised list of all employees and salaries. We just happen to have, at Oxide, the one salary right now, so you can infer: if employee then this salary. I think if we ended up with a few bands for some reason in the future, we’d be a bit fuzzier about the precise way those bands map onto individuals.
Speaking purely from my own experience, it actually worked very well this way. We didn’t exactly have a list of employees with salaries, rather, it was a list of employees with their “level” (i.e. position on the career ladder).
Each level then had an associated salary, usually several levels shared a salary. So “junior” might be levels 6 - 8, all of which were on a given salary. This was important because it’s not just transparency about the salaries that’s important; it’s transparency about why people wound up in the bands they did.
So e.g. at the end of our annual review process we might let everyone know that Alice had moved from level 8 to 9, because the work she’d been doing for the past couple of clients fostering team communication and practices. Or that Bob had decided to stay at a level 16 because he didn’t want the additional burden of a lead role (true story).
That’s good to hear you’re thinking about it like that.
Ie https://buffer.com/salaries doesn’t quite sit right with me, but maybe that’s me assuming that people don’t have the choice to opt-in to this.
I’ve very actively chosen to publish my own, but very few people want that!
Yeah, while I’m not an executive, I feel we would be pretty deliberate and consensus-seeking before making a drastic change like that.
Edit: Also, we often consider our values as being in tension with one another, and in a similar vein while transparency is an excellent thing to value is does nonetheless stand opposed in some cases to safety and privacy, both of which are also often crucial to wellbeing.
I just took a look at your public record of your salaries. That’s great idea! I’d like to copy it and publish my own but I saw that you once had a concern about its legality: how did you resolve that? Can it be illegal to publish your salary in the UK?
Love to hear that 💜 I’ll happily link to yours when it’s up!
I’m safe in the UK because it’s something that’s protected under the Equality Act in 2010.
Where abouts in the world are you? Definitely worth double checking, as I didn’t but was luckily OK! 🙃
I am also in the UK so that’s alright (also, I checked and for future reference the relevant legislation is the Equality Act 2010, c. 15, s. 77, just in case anyone ever needs to know that).
My salary information can now be found here.
Love to see this, thanks for sharing 🙌🏽