Preface: I work at Figure 53, nearing three years. We're an LLC (so he's owner, not CEO), not a startup, not funded, profitable for five years, and we only have five full time employees.
I think the set of principles we've been operating under have been working pretty well and I believe Chris to be a genuine person, but I'm biased by being personally involved with this particular story. It might also be important to note that while he didn't give the numbers in the story, we all who voted got to see the numbers before and after (he's never hidden them from us) and the effect the new salaries have on our bottom line.
I can see how it could go wrong given employees trending towards unhappy/defensive and a boss trending towards dishonest, but that would be an awful situation to be in no matter what kind of gimmicks the bosses introduce.
So then stop teasing us and tell us what the numbers were already! I mean it doesn't make sense to blog about this idea about transparency and then withhold the most interesting point which is what the actual dollar amounts were.
I think it'd interesting to know how the absolute salaries are relative to the market for particular roles. No absolute numbers are necessary, but I suspect a lot of folk would be interested to know how it shook out when you would compare apples to apples for a given role in the baltimore market.
Also, since you're the OP and on the thread, I would love a post [or even a reply to this] on how your rental scheme is going [and perhaps some idea as to what portion of the product's revenue is from rental]. Very cool & interesting model we've thought a lot about lately.
You showed a scale, but there was no relative basis. Just sharing percentages would be interesting as it would help us understand what the variance is. Did you want to give everyone a raise of about 10% and they wanted 15%?
BTW - I love the experiment and may use it for my next hires, your transparency is commendable and while it may not work for everyone I love the idea of making new hire salary negotiations into true salary discussions.
If you would like to see salary numbers, there are a ton of them on the web. Personally, I thought the numbers were the least interesting part of this.
I think the set of principles we've been operating under have been working pretty well and I believe Chris to be a genuine person, but I'm biased by being personally involved with this particular story. It might also be important to note that while he didn't give the numbers in the story, we all who voted got to see the numbers before and after (he's never hidden them from us) and the effect the new salaries have on our bottom line.
I can see how it could go wrong given employees trending towards unhappy/defensive and a boss trending towards dishonest, but that would be an awful situation to be in no matter what kind of gimmicks the bosses introduce.