Buffer Open Blog

Buffer | Full Stack and devOps engineers | Remote (anywhere) | Full Time We are currently hiring for: * Full Stack Engineers (TypeScript, JavaScript, React, Node, PHP) * Frontend Engineer (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Next, React) * Infrastructure/Devops Engineer ( Docker / Kubernetes / Python / Node / Mongo / AWS ) Our perks: * we put people first, and we mean it (check https://open.buffer.com) * 4 days work week * unlimited books (physical or kindle) * full remote from anywhere (is that a perk now? - but we’re the first ones) * minimum holiday policy (we know unlimited holiday doesn’t work) * healthcare covered, no matter where you live * cafe in coffee shops / or co-working space covered More details here : https://journey.buffer.com/#vacancies Salary: https://buffer.com/resources/compensation-philosophy/ Our culture: https://open.buffer.com/

Consider using a base amount modified by cost of living, esp locational, with a formula that adapts when it changes. Buffer does this for their transparent salary calculations: https://open.buffer.com/transparent-salaries/ Btw, love what you're doing. It might have helped me back when I was in a rural area. We didn't have Internet, though. So, would've been whatever I could do at libraries during narrow windows of computer use. These days it's McDonalds' Wifi for lots of folks. Do factor that into your offerings somehow if you don't already. Good luck LS! Looks like awesome stuff you all are doing.

I don't know, Buffer considers a small or medium company (you asked a larger company), but they have transparency on equity, salary, revenue, pricing, and soon. Details of transparency are presented on https://buffer.com/transparency. They also share inside their company on https://open.buffer.com.

Buffer is most transparent and open startup I know, they've posted their salaries here: - https://open.buffer.com/transparent-salaries/ With a calculator here: - https://buffer.com/salary/ And are open about their sales, subscribers, revenue, churn, etc - https://buffer.baremetrics.com/

A similar one IMO would be Buffer. Remote, extremely transparent, treating their employees and customer well, etc. One big difference is that Buffer, while initially bootstrapped, did eventually raise VC money, while Basecamp famously never has. You can read more about Buffer at their company blog: https://open.buffer.com/

It's hard to give a recommendation without knowing your location and other specifics. I would first talk to the employee and see if she prefers more salary or more equity. Buffer uses their own formula for calculating salary and equity: https://open.buffer.com/buffer-open-equity-formula/

Also worthwhile reading: Buffer's transparency dashboard: Public salaries, equity and more [0]. The original post: Open salaries at Buffer [1]. [0] https://buffer.com/transparency [1] https://open.buffer.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffer-including-…

> One explanation is that Buffer’s sample population may have changed over the years. However, Buffer sampled well over 1,000 employees in each annual report and doesn’t provide any indication that their sampling technique meaningfully deviated from past years. Sampling technique might not have differed or it might have. I did some deeper diving on the stats because I have a hard time believing remote shot up drastically like it makes it seem and that it suddenly pays great... 2018: https://open.buffer.com/state-remote-work-2018/ 2020: https://lp.buffer.com/state-of-remote-work-2020 Compare 2018 > Most of the folks we surveyed work in the software industry (26%) followed by IT and Services (20%) and Marketing (19%). Only 5% of respondents work in Education and 8% in Media and Publishing. To 2020 > Forty-one percent of those who took the survey work at organizations in software space. Other industries include: IT and Services (19.5 percent); Marketing (8.7 percent); Other (7.3 percent); Financial Services (4.6 percent); Media and Publishing (3.6 percent); Education (3.3 percent); E-commerce (3 percent); Medical and Healthcare (3 percent); Consumer products (2.3 percent); Travel and Tourism (1.6 percent); Non-profit (1.5 percent); Government (0.6 percent); and Law and Legal Services (0.6 percent). Do we think that software suddenly had a 50-100% rise in engineers working remotely in 2 years? Maybe - but, personally, I'm skeptical. Seems more likely that the way they…

The point is you and I don't have a say either way. Jim, congrats on being a VP but you and I are just pawns. We have no leverage. If you don't believe me, try bringing this up in a board meeting and see how far it flies. Employers benefit tremendously from the I formation assymetry which to me is a much bigger crime than some idiots who can't keep their junk in their pants. I'm just an idiot on the Internet and you've actually made it. I'd like to apologize if this sounds condescending because it is absolutely not (in part because I'm so far below you that it is physically impossible but regardless of my fortune it is not meant to be). Mind you, i have no original thoughts and this is something i stole from buffer. I think buffer is a great example on how to do things. I wish all the sjw's in silicon valley would direct their attention to something that actually benefits the world for a change. https://open.buffer.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffer-including-… I encourage you to keep an open mind about this. Thank you for your time. Sincerely yours,

Unless I'm reading the blog post wrong[1], you've got it totally wrong about Buffer, Joel made Buffer 1.0 and was the technically minded co-founder at Buffer, not Leo. Sunil might have been an early hire, but we're talking a year after company founding. Joel + Leo took a while to grow it. I remember watching a talk by Joel before he'd even brought Leo on board in Nottingham, UK (Joel was starting up in Birmingham, UK if I remember correctly), about his previous products/failures and how he'd just built Buffer and the problems it solved. I think I saw a post about Leo joining 3 to 6 months later, at the time a recent uni grad compared to Joel's more experienced dev + freelance dev background. I've always been pleased to see Joel succeed, as he's a great guy, but I have to admit some of the posts they came out with have ultimately proved to be utter b%!!$hit. I remember calling them out on a post about how the UK was a bad place to startup, I've seen a couple of $100+ million buyouts of startups here since then just in Nottingham. Then they claimed bootstrapping was best, then raised. Claimed a flat structure was best, then go a traditional management structure, etc., etc. I sometimes felt they were just echoing back to the startup community what the community wanted to hear, and to be fair, it really worked, they got lots of upvotes on HN, etc., so great marketing out of it, and good traction. There was a time when like clockwork they'd have a high-rated post here every…

> almost everyone thinks they are an above average performer.[...]Therefore, if salaries are shared, at least two thirds of your workers are liable to be pissed off at what they are making, even though the amount is completely fair based on their actual worth to the company. This is a strawman. Where is your data to back up that "almost everyone thinks they are an above average performer"? At least anecdotally I've never run into anything close to that. Almost everyone I've ever worked with that would be considered at or below average knew very well where they were. Their managers also had the data and would sit down and discuss it with them so even if they thought they weren't they certainly knew the company felt they were. Perhaps if you jumped into an organization where feedback wasn't given (or given honestly) and opened up salaries you could have an issue. But the majority of companies should be giving employees valid, data-backed feedback which would not make them surprised if someone better performing is making more money than them. Buffer[0] seems to do well with it and an experiment where a Plumbing company[1] did it ended up having lots of positives out of it. Those are just two data points but it shows it's doable. If you have data that shows otherwise, especially for the numbers you made up, feel free to post it as I would be interested in it. [0] https://open.buffer.com/transparent-salaries/ [1]…

All the obligatory books and references have already been mentioned, so I'll refrain from repeating. I'm a recent developer-turned-manager [close to two years now] and have always been a voracious reader. Apart from specialist books of the profession, as an introvert I find that a healthy dose of fiction helps me in my day-to-day dealings with people at the workplace - especially those who report to me. [https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201401/reading-f… [https://open.buffer.com/reading-fiction/] ^^ As such, I'd recommend some well-written fiction. Try The Godfather - always thought it was the best "people management" book :-) Fantasy [or novels with a touch of the fantastic] would also be good. War books are also good. Try some interesting non-fiction - I'd recommend WW II books by Stephen Ambrose. All about teamwork and beats reading dry management books. You should probably stay away from satire, lest your manager think you a d*ck ;) Before you do any of this, you should probably find out if your manager is in the habit of reading. And despite the best advice, what a reader gets from any book depends on what she brings to it...so don't be surprised if reading doesn't help your manager :D

Good Ideas that get tested will make money and mature with feedback. Truly Great Ideas hidden away rely on you (and your confidants) alone to mature, grow, and test. Perhaps part of that intrinsic value in a Truly Great Idea is the debt you start to incur working the Great Idea before it's ever given a chance to prove itself. There's a bunch of discussion about this [0][1][2][3], but it comes down to the cost of opportunity and the drive to spend that effort and resources. You've had your idea, already bought into it, and have the history around the idea that will drive implementation and innovation. Probably no one else you tell it to has that. And anyone else that wants to work on some awesome new startup is already circling their own fantastic(TM) idea. So share! Get feedback from smart people who will help shortcut the path to takeoff for your idea. Because if someone has a good idea in the same vein as your great idea and executes, how long until your great idea is yet another "that could have been me"? 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4732684 1: https://beacon.wharton.upenn.edu/entrepreneurship/2015/02/no-ones-goin… 2: https://open.buffer.com/one-will-steal-startup-idea/ 3: https://www.google.com/search?q=no+one+is+going+to+steal+your+great+id…

I agree that responsibility is what we are actually looking for. The term 'ownership' is popular in product teams [1] and in engineering career frameworks [2]. In the second example, it's defined as "The rest of that story is about owning increasingly heavy responsibilities". Even github allows defining code ownership through the CODEOWNERS files. [1] https://svpg.com/autonomy-vs-ownership/ [2] https://open.buffer.com/engineering-career-framework/

Except for I think California, it means no payout whatsoever. Fun! I've had unlimited policies before and I'm much happier having a specific number of days now that I use every year. Banks often require that employees take vacation, typically around 2 weeks a year. An employee-focused software company should implement a similar policy of "required minimum vacation" [1]. The connections I have in Germany working in relatively "low-skill" fields are taking over 5 weeks a year of PTO. Even the most generous companies in the US are a joke by comparison to the most barebones companies in many EU nations. Without collective bargaining, we will always be far behind in benefits. [1]: https://open.buffer.com/minimum-vacation/

Yikes! For contrast, Buffer burns through $20k per month in managed hosting ( https://open.buffer.com/transparent-pricing-buffer/ ). Running a site at scale is an expensive ordeal

Hey! Thanks for the response. We've definitely heard this before but the research continues to show that when people work remotely their top complaints are collaboration and isolation. We are hoping we can hit both problems with our product but bringing people in a room where they feel like they are together. It's not a fully optimized "pragmatic" approach, but humans are social creatures and it shows in productivity and happiness when they are working remotely. https://open.buffer.com/state-remote-work-2018/

Do you mean like Buffer buying out it's investors? https://open.buffer.com/buying-out-investors/

Buffer is mostly if not all remote and they adjust salaries based on employee location. Their salaries are open for everyone to see as well. https://open.buffer.com/transparent-salaries/ It looks like GitLab does the same thing

Buffer have published their formula (and all salaries) https://open.buffer.com/salary-formula/ it's basically: base reference salary * cost of living * role * experience edit: oh you where talking about payrole, sorry, I'm OT

Try the pomodoro technique. https://lifehacker.com/productivity-101-a-primer-to-the-pomodoro-techn… https://open.buffer.com/work-less/

Thanks, but Buffer used to pay 5% of one single employee’s salary in bitcoins [1], and that employee has switched jobs since the annoucement. [2] [1]: https://open.buffer.com/getting-paid-in-bitcoin/ [2]: https://twitter.com/nieldlr

(2016) The formula in that post is outdated, they recently changed it again, this is the blogpost from December about the changes: https://open.buffer.com/salary-formula/

It definitely makes sense to not hire for a certain period to see how this salary bump impacts the company as a whole. Anecdotal mention: https://open.buffer.com/layoffs-and-moving-forward/ Fast Hiring at that salary level is probably why SV startups burn through money so quickly. I doubt they will see major performance boosts with the salary increase. If they don't, it indicates the team is already working optimally OR salary increases don't always translate to increased performance. If they do, do they then start asking themselves why performance was so average (relatively)?

You might be reading the table wrong? Last column is their adjusted baseline, 2nd column is their baseline+options+dependents. Comparing with [two years ago](https://open.buffer.com/transparent-salaries/) it looks like engineering at least has about 35% turnover, but everyone is up in salary - some by quite a bit if they've relocated.

Something like Buffer's formula (https://open.buffer.com/transparent-salaries/) isn't really "gameable", as far as I can tell. And the counter argument might be that you'd attract talent that appreciates the transparency.

Might as well add the non-anonymous PM salaries from Buffer. Not sure if they have that exact job title though (Product Creator? Operations Champion?): https://open.buffer.com/transparent-salaries/

Not the parent but this article discusses benefits: https://open.buffer.com/reading-fiction/ They discuss benefits in: 1. Increasing empathy 2. Decreasing stress 3. Sleep 4. Relationships 5. Memory 6. Inclusivity 7. Vocabulary 8. Creativity 9. Pleasure

Buffer flat-out admitted the existential concerns last June after layoffs: https://open.buffer.com/layoffs-and-moving-forward/ (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11918553) > We know that we have many untapped opportunities for growth. This time, however, we simply weren’t able to trigger growth fast enough.