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.
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.