"Make sure you build a company where you want to work" is also one of the top-5 pieces of advice, yes. But I think the general argument is that at least at some points in a startup's life, it's an all-out fight for survival. Ben Horowitz probably wrote the best essay about this, peacetime vs. wartime ceo[1]. And he notes there are certain really good things that only happen in the "peacetime" type company (where it isn't about just survival).
In this case, maybe it's a cost/benefit thing. If the cost of going from an informal consensus common salary to a more transparent formal salary (in implementation cost, and risk if it screws up) is low, go for it. If it's something like "we're going to try a new thing: only working one day a week", the cost is probably really high, so you'd want to be sure it was core.
That's an interesting comparison. I think you could extend the analogy as well.
There are strategies a company, or country, should abandon when survival is in jeopardy, but there are also values which are core to your identity. Abandoning those values when you come under pressure has a pragmatic effect on perceptions and ethical ramifications.
I also agree with you that being sure of what exactly your core values are is very important.
However, our example appears to be a company in peacetime. Our example experiment also appears to be very low cost. It isn't useful data to judge if non-survival core values for a company are worth defending in wartime.
For a country, defending non-survival core values during wartime is clearly worthwhile. This is where the analogy breaks down. For a company, there is clearly less moral obligation and practical costs to abandoning these values.
We can't say without doubt that defending values in a wartime company is the wrong priority. A combination of personal ethics and potential damage make that a case by case decision.
> at least at some points in a startup's life, it's an all-out fight for survival
There are certainly situations where that's true, but it doesn't seem applicable here. They just launched a major new release of their core product, and suddenly found themselves with a bunch of extra money in the bank that they were deciding what to do with. That's not a "fight for survival" situation.
In this case, maybe it's a cost/benefit thing. If the cost of going from an informal consensus common salary to a more transparent formal salary (in implementation cost, and risk if it screws up) is low, go for it. If it's something like "we're going to try a new thing: only working one day a week", the cost is probably really high, so you'd want to be sure it was core.
[1] http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/15/peacetime-ceowartime-ceo/