Minimum pay at Basecamp is now $70k

https://m.signalvnoise.com/minimum-pay-at-basecamp-is-now-70000/

by rbanffy • 7 years ago

130 52 7 years ago

m.signalvnoise.com

This new floor also means that the entire salary range at Basecamp is now around 5x.

So the highest paid employee at Basecamp is earning around $350k. I've seen several estimates that Basecamp's revenue is north of $100M, so even if every employee were paid $350k, their wage bill would be incredibly low compared to their revenues.

golergka• 7 years ago

That's a strange comparison to make, though - wage is determined by labour market and is unrelated with company's profitability. I worked at many companies that didn't have any profit (and some never made it), but I still got my market-level wages. It works both ways.

blocked_again• 7 years ago

$100 million sounds way too much. In this forbes article it says $25million in 2017. https://www.forbes.com/companies/basecamp/#1245fcb347b7

runako2• 7 years ago

Forbes asks the company, and they guess if the company doesn't share. If the company does share, the numbers are not AFAIK audited. (This is to say that I would not expect the Forbes data to be especially accurate.)

Basecamp is claiming 200k more accounts since 2018. At 100% retention, that's $20mm per month of new revenue. Factor in whatever churn you want, a $25mm annual revenue estimate for Basecamp 2017 sounds ridiculously low. (They are claiming 700k new accounts between 2016 & 2018.)

SmellyGeekBoy2• 7 years ago

Are you implying that they should be paying much more just because the company can afford to? This doesn't seem like good business sense, especially when they're already paying above market rate (and based on the highest market rate in the world, at that).

vostok2• 7 years ago

I think they're saying that it's not a very appealing place to work if you can get $500k or higher offer from the Googles and Facebooks of the world.

aantix3• 7 years ago

My thoughts are that people like Sam and Jeremy have years of open source contributions to Rails that which make their way into Basecamp, are world class programmers and would easily be 500k+ engineers at a FANG company. And they should pay them as such.

onion2k2• 7 years ago

Some of the profit goes to Jeff Bezos as a "profit distribution". https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-deal-jeff-bezos-got-on-baseca...

aantix3• 7 years ago

Along those same lines.. They’re saying the comp is within 10% of SF based salaries.. if you don’t include the options or RSUs.

So one of the biggest factors for Bay Area comp isn’t factored in to their equation? Neat trick.

dsfyu404ed2• 7 years ago

Unless you work at some established company that is or is about to go public options and RSUs may as well be worthless.

michaelbuckbee• 7 years ago

Snarkiness aside, there are a number of factors that make it a bit of an apples and oranges comparison:

- massive difference in working hours

- guaranteed compensation vs potential compensation

- ability to work remote vs a challenging commute

- COL for housing

theredbox• 7 years ago

To me this sounds like a pointless article. If you have a high margin/high profit company with minimum employees you can pay whatever money you want to pay.

Is DHH just saying they could pay less to earn more and they are just generous ?

Minimum wage especially with distributed teams is really a pointless metric.

The same way Google can pay top dollar and above average for all employees is not the same for most of the companies.

I am not saying the companies struggle.. I am saying companies are competitive entities fighting against other competitive entities like google.

Google extracts the vast majority of the wealth from the world that could have gone to small / medium sized businesses and so does any other highly profitable company.

ggg2• 7 years ago

wake me up when the people cleaning the office's toilet bowls are also included in this PR announcement.

myspy• 7 years ago

A remote company has no office, hasn't it?

vectorEQ• 7 years ago

usually that's external companies....

Dobbs• 7 years ago

That’s the point of the statement.

FluffyKitty• 7 years ago

While it is probably nigh impossible to find a facilities company that would pay the staff that much, I don't think simply saying it's another company and therefore out of their hands is a valid argument. You could've said the same about Nike in relation to the factories that used to supply them and use child labour.

SmellyGeekBoy2• 7 years ago

The post does say that this is the minimum regardless of position, not just developer salary. Of course the cleaners could be (and more often than not are) outside contractors.

prepend2• 7 years ago

Step 1) outsource low paying positions to temp/service companies. Step 2) pay all employees at least $70k.

This is a tough problem to solve but nice they are trying. Paying a receptionist or cleaning person $70k doesn’t make much sense because it’s way above market rate. But outsourcing to a company paying $11/hour doesn’t fit into the “everybody makes a good amount” message.

qxcbr• 7 years ago

People are paid depending on their worth.

prepend2• 7 years ago

I think people are paid based on supply and demand. I don’t think it’s accurate to say this is the person’s worth as it’s easily confused with other factors.

ceejayoz• 7 years ago

Spending a day employed at any Fortune 500 company should disabuse you of this notion, in both directions.

thiago_fm• 7 years ago

Yet another self-publicity stunt.

Maybe the next book they want to sell people will be about compensation? :-)

onion2k2• 7 years ago

It's a blog post, on the company blog, about the company. That's not what most people would describe as a "publicity stunt".

EGreg• 7 years ago

Richard Wolff would be proud. A company that actually values all its employees. However, he would advocate the company to be OWNED by its employees, in which case this would be a likely outcome already, not surprising. It's only surprising under capitalism.

Here is another take completely:

https://qbix.com/blog/2016/11/17/properly-valuing-contributi...

crispyambulance• 7 years ago

Good for them.

At ~54 employees according to google search, they're lean, profitable, sustainable and the employees make a good living according to their abilities. They're in control of their growth and aren't beholden to filthy rich investors forcing them to grow like a cancer.

I wish more software companies were like Basecamp.

Elizer0x0309• 7 years ago

This can't be said enough. Taking the time to grow the company for a long term legacy is much more rewarding than a quick buck.

digianarchist• 7 years ago

Basecamp is the mittelstand of software companies.

notfromhere• 7 years ago

There are a lot of software companies that are mittelstand-ish. Honestly, the concept could probably do a lot of good for the us economy; especially its emphasis that not every business needs to be a unicorn

backpackway• 7 years ago

While I share most of DHH positions, I still dislike him/his tonality/too dogmatic view/his lame way of doing content marketing--which is the only thing he seems to be doing nowadays.

It is click-baity and doesn't add anything substantial or new to the discussion.

cascom2• 7 years ago

I’d be curious to know what portion of their employee base is Benefitting from this “minimum wage” - a couple of admins? I’d imagine all of the front office jobs and most of the back office jobs at an SF software company would command wages in excess of 70k?

beberlei• 7 years ago

The article makes mention of this, specifically customer support people are benefiting from this, which according to the article would have a 50k/year salary otherwise.

pbrb2• 7 years ago

They're also based in Chicago - 70k is right where things start to get comfortable.

cascom2• 7 years ago

My question is the PORTION who are benefitting - is this 2 employees? 20? If it’s 20 this is a serious commitment, if it’s 2 it’s more of a PR stunt...

Minimum pay at Basecamp is now $70k

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