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kortilla 3 days ago

This has been the biggest red flag to me about oxide since these blogs came out. You don’t join a startup for salary and every startup I’ve been at that emphasizes fair salaries is doing that to intentionally discourage people from pushing on total compensation.

Employees apart from the very early ones are likely really getting fucked on equity because oxide explicitly treats candidates asking about equity as a red flag.

Companies structured like this end up turning into a combination of rich people who don’t need money and are just interested in the problem space and then mediocre people who can’t get a better offer. (If you are good, remote work with high TC is definitely available.)

Unless Oxide is giving out huge equity bonuses for good perf (which would make their comp post hypocritical), it’s going to have a continuous talent decline as it grows. There aren’t enough independently wealthy high performers interested in what Oxide is doing to sustain a talent pool.

mwcampbell 3 days ago | parent [-]

> (If you are good, remote work with high TC is definitely available.)

But how good do you have to be at things other than the work itself (edit: and how lucky as well) to land one of those jobs with higher compensation? For someone outside of high-cost-of-living tech hubs, Oxide's fixed salary could be life-changing all by itself, even with minimal equity. The fact that they take that deal doesn't necessarily mean that they're mediocre.

Aurornis 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> For someone outside of high-cost-of-living tech hubs, Oxide's fixed salary could be life-changing all by itself,

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at compensation tables and reference data. $200K is definitely good salary, but I wouldn’t call it “life changing” relative to what someone qualified to work at Oxide could earn in an average non-tech hub metro area.

The type of candidate who qualifies to work at Oxide has numerous options for high paying remote work, and probably well paying local work too.

kortilla 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Assuming they are exclusively hiring US, in a low CoL area $200k sets you up for a solid middle to upper middle class lifestyle. That’s a Walmart store manager.

You’re not gonna retire early, take years off at a time, or anything else like that which the big tech companies RSU grants can get you.

steveklabnik a day ago | parent [-]

> Assuming they are exclusively hiring US,

We are not, as long as you are willing to have work overlap with PST. We have several European employees, for example.