> I was told your initial offer is a "reasonable" number you and the hiring team agree on,
That makes sense, having the people who interview attempt to pick a comp that will get you in the door.
> then is adjusted up/down as your peers estimate your impact over time.
It is the mechanics of this that I am most interested in and no one will answer for me. Do people vote on their peer's salary? How does that not become super political? What happens if they all vote for each other to get 1000% raises, who stops them?
> also interesting was that they sent a driver to the airport instead of offering the normal taxi/uber reimbursement, then had the same driver pick me up after the interview to head back to the office.
If I were them the driver would be the beginning and end of the interview process. Were you kind to the driver on the way there? Did you say nasty things on the way back?
Or maybe they just got a good deal with a company that only had a few drivers. :)
Valve is a close approximation of a worker's co-op, if it had 300 (?) members. There are many insights to be gleaned from this type of business, the difference being that Valve for sure has a boss (or many), because it's not a worker's co-op, no matter how much it pretends to be. However a leader is not a boss, and you can tell the difference when you've been a part of worker-owned startups.
That said, true co-ops of all sizes also struggle with compensation. Much like startups, you want to reward early risk acceptance and loyalty while preserving fairness based on skill and contribution (otherwise you won't be able to recruit new members). It's really, really hard.
(I know who you are but I figured it was worth commenting since others may not know as much on the subject).
That's one downside, co-ops tend to remain small, due to the difficulty of scaling horizontal structures. This means it's easier to start one than to join one.
(This is also why I highly suspect Valve is not truly horizontal: you will never get 100 people to agree on anything important.)
That makes sense, having the people who interview attempt to pick a comp that will get you in the door.
> then is adjusted up/down as your peers estimate your impact over time.
It is the mechanics of this that I am most interested in and no one will answer for me. Do people vote on their peer's salary? How does that not become super political? What happens if they all vote for each other to get 1000% raises, who stops them?
> also interesting was that they sent a driver to the airport instead of offering the normal taxi/uber reimbursement, then had the same driver pick me up after the interview to head back to the office.
If I were them the driver would be the beginning and end of the interview process. Were you kind to the driver on the way there? Did you say nasty things on the way back?
Or maybe they just got a good deal with a company that only had a few drivers. :)