The problem is there's no way to know how true the promises are. What do "flex hours" mean to them? Is it conditional, if so, on what? How far does their trust really go?

Compensation doesn't have this problem. You can't offer me $160k and then pay me $120k six months down the road. I mean, you can, but not with a straight face.

The soft benefits you described are one CTO/manager/investor change, or engineer bus accident, away from vanishing and it's not looked at the same way as cutting pay, furloughs, and things of that nature.

While I want to take one of these "work to live" jobs, I always end up taking the salary. I have a much easier time carving out a bastion of sanity in a given company that doesn't advertise the benefits, than to take a significant pay cut along with the risk I just described.

Totally agree. A lot of it is based on trust and a future that no one can predict nor guarantee. We're a small company of 20 (in my opinion) great people and we just have a different relationship with our employees than most other business owners.

While I totally get that the future is always uncertain, I think past actions of myself and our management team (which also includes employees) speak a lot for how we are probably gonna do things in the future. Our philosophy is called Optimizing for Happiness, because we try to base our decisions on what is best for everyone's happiness, even if it means to sometimes make less of an profit as long as the overall profit is still positive.

It's difficult to explain how we do things, but to give you one example of the past. We had always very successful quarters, except of one where we couldn't pay bonuses. In that quarter people did not complain, but also offered us to voluntarily work less (and get paid less) to overcome this situation. In the end it didn't come that far but I highly appreciated it. And I think this can only happen if it's a give and take from both sides and everyone genuinely caring about each other.

> We're a small company of 20 (in my opinion) great people and we just have a different relationship with our employees than most other business owners.

If that's not embodied in contract then it's, regrettably, close to worthless. Companies change, managers change, leadership changes, philosophy changes, contracts only change when they're renegotiated.

Why would you want to change something that works perfectly fine for everyone?

> I think past actions of myself and our management team (which also includes employees) speak a lot for how we are probably gonna do things in the future

In my experience it doesn't.

Soon the company is too big to known everyone, new managements and leaders emerge, whether you want it or not.

There are a lot of people joining in a growing startup. They will outnumber the current employees quickly and shift the current culture with them. Startups change in all aspects, very fast

That is true, if you build a company for growth. We built our company for lifestyle. We don't need to show off that we have 200 employees and make X million in revenue. While other people are busy bragging about it, we go skiing together. Different mindset.

I think the "not with a straight face" thing depends on what you're willing to get in writing up front and then insist on. As you say, companies can cut pay like they can change any other terms (depending on jurisdiction, natch, but mostly true in the US). The difference is that they know people take that very seriously. So if you want those other things to stay true, you have to be just as serious. Agreements don't enforce themselves.

I'm not sure how many companies would agree to it, but you could potentially work those items into your contract so that they are on the same level as other benefits (e.g., salary, health care).

So you're saying startups are riskier...? Don't think anyone here will disagree with that. ;)

The risk I described is separate from startups. A company of any size/age/growth rate can substitute soft benefits for compensation. To be clear, I was not talking about the job stability risk of working at a startup, or startups at all.

Fair enough.

I'm always curious about companies who talk about "caring about things other than just money". Maybe I'm missing somethings but if you are a for-profit company by definition you care about money, any claims other wise feel like marketing.

I used to work for a proprietary financial trading firm, where we turned the founders' pile of money into a bigger pile of money. It's the purest "only care about the money" circumstance, and even there they occasionally cared about things other than money. E.g., the people they worked with.

More broadly, though, you misunderstand what companies are about. They're just a collection of people who get together to do a thing. They are only soulless to the extent that the people there are. (Or decide to pretend they are.)

The best places I've worked and visited actually care about the thing they're doing. E.g., I have friends who do catering. They love making people's events go well. They love making people happy. They fucking love the physical acts of making food and serving it to people. Sure, they have to get paid, or the enterprise isn't sustainable.

They are, legally, a for-profit business. But if clubbing seals or trading bonds got them 10% more annualized ROI, they wouldn't do it. Because they're not really there for the profit. They're there to please and delight people by doing something they enjoy.

(That isn't to say that reptiles in suits won't put on the mask of "changing the world!" when it gives them an advantage. We could all name examples like that. But there are plenty of sincere people out there.)

Never said we don't care about money. But we care also about other things than just money. And that a lot more than most other for-profit companies out there.

There's nothing wrong with making a profit either. The more profit we make the better. But it's important to decide what you do with that profit. And I much rather pay for our employees to join me for a week of skiing in the Alps than buying myself a Ferrari.

I don't want to make this look like marketing (as you already mentioned), but if you're really curious I talked a bit about it just recently on this podcast: https://mobilejazz.com/blog/our-ceo-stefan-klumpps-interview...

This is the right approach. Build a business you want to work at and your employees want to work at. Focus on maintaining operating costs and expenses, everything else is gravy. The buy in and work output isn't necessarily greater or worse than others, but I would argue the quality of life is through the roof. Kudos on what you're doing.

To me the big non monetary currency is time.

Average US commute time is about half an hour [1], add to that another 15 minutes on each side for context switching and "settling in" and it's an easy 10 hours a week at least you're saving.

Remote work isn't for every job or person, but the financial difference would need to be significant to drag me back into an office.

1 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/25/how-m...

Jesus...That certainly puts things into perspective.

10 hours a week is an extra book you can read or 5 movies to watch or just...10 hours to relax and work on your side projects.

520 hours per year.

I find I have context switching and settling in time just as much (sometimes more) at my home office as I do at my office office. (IOW, I don't think I'd be inclined to count it as a cost of commuting.)

As an employee, I value more than money. I value time off, flexibility, office location, my working environment.

I think the distinction isn't making money as that's necessary to keep the doors open, it's more about corporate motivations. Some firms want to be a unicorn and some like where I work are more focused on building a business we all want to work at. While both are motivated, there are different buy in strategies with the employees. We have great growth, but we regularly turn down clients because they're not a fit for our team. I realize this isn't as feasible in all areas of expertise.

There definitely is a bit of marketing though and too much talk of culture is usually a good red flag.

This is a pet peeves mine. It's one thing to be honest but another to brainwash people into thinking that taking less pay is some how good for the employees.

If employees don't care about their money, why should they care about the company's money?

Out of curiosity, what makes your salary "fair", if it results in an offer that's significantly lower than BigCo? How do you decide what's fair?

Both sides are happy with it?

> Both sides are happy with it?

Just wanted to reply exactly that. Obviously fair is very subjective and different to both parties involved. But we try to find a good combination of salary + bonus and also investment in the company itself (be it retreats or taking risks with new products like Bugfender), which then results in temporarily lower bonuses, but an expected bigger payoff and possibilities for everyone in the long turn.

Yep, exactly that. A while ago I took a consulting gig where the company couldn't afford my rates; we just negotiated working 30 hours instead of 40 at a weekly rate that fit within their budget. They got the expertise they wanted, while I got time on the side to work on other stuff. Win-win.

If you can't match salaries, then you can move other levers (work/life balance, flexibility, etc.) in order to get an agreement that's suitable for both parties. For example, I don't think Google allows for part-time engineers for the majority of the rank and file. For a startup, if they're more concerned about results than butt-in-chair hours, it might work out depending on the role.

Am I the only one that when I hear about retreats wonders how much it costs per employee, and given the same situation would rather have that money in my pocket?

I like the apply for jobs with json ;)

Is this Stefan or someone else? :)