Salary is that high in the US because we have no social net or price caps here. Your on your own for everything. Healthcare, retirement, overpriced homes, out of control rent, etc

Forget the numbers, just knowing that CEO is not fucking me over to build a second vacation home is Aspen would be enough for me.

That's probably [EDIT: decidedly] on the low side for the bay area for rock star devs, and Oxide has lots of rock star devs. I haven't looked but I assume they pay bonuses, probably differential bonuses.

This really is one of these things where every employee in a cheap cost of living area will say "Exactly, man!" and people in an expensive area will see it differently because it might cap them lower than what they could get.

I always find that a very naive point of view, of course I would want to earn a US tech salary while living somewhere in the country side, who wouldn't. But I'm also aware that this is not how the world works in reality, there's different tax systems, different expense costs and we don't live in a global one-market world.

I find the strategy of defining different "zones", like most of the remote first / salary transparency companies much more realistic.

Except if everyone gets paid the same, you're not being rewarded for the value you provide. I don't think salary should be tied to location, but it should be tied to experience, ability, and effort.

Location independence is not the interesting part of Oxide’s compensation strategy. It’s that everyone makes exactly the same. There are no negotiations, no levels, no promotions, and consequently no promo packets or promo projects. This is extremely enticing to FAANG types who are tired of a certain kind of bullshit, at the cost of a certain level of ambition.

That's just base salary. For Staff+ engineers making 600-700k at BigTech, it is probably still a block.

But for senior engineers at these companies, 200k is pretty competitive with the base salaries offered at those places

That is only a problem if you insist on hiring people from such expensive areas. Given Oxide hires remotely, I doubt this is an actual problem for them.

user: sunshowers has been replying in this thread and mentioned going from FAANG-> Oxide and taking what seemed like about a 60% paycut.

Yes it is somewhat of a stumbling block, but I'm betting they are getting extremely high quality employees who are doing it for the passion and not just for the money.

We've got designers, me included, and a few others on the team who aren't engineers. I also hail from what people like to call a "third-world country". So far it's working great, and we're hiring more folks from all over the world, not just the USA.

Why would that be a problem? Surely there are some designers willing to work for $200k.

We have two!