I'd agree with the "pay your own vacation" thing as long as there is profit sharing to ensure people are still getting the income they deserve from the work they already put it to build the company.

But with healthcare, at least in the US, the big issue with pricing is within the healthcare system - not employers paying for it. It certainly doesn't help to have healthcare tied to employment but having people pay high prices themselves instead of a company paying it doesn't really solve an issue it just moves it somewhere else.

It seems like the most proven solution is to socialize medical costs more, but that seems like a long-shot if we continue to insist that healthcare has to be profitable in the short-term. It's like saying "no we won't build this road because we can't charge the drivers tomorrow to make a profit on it", totally overlooking that it's an infrastructure investment and not a purchase

That would be lovely, but pelasco's point is still a good one. If PullRequest _only_ pays "rates[...]comparable to those of a senior-level engineer", without those extra perks (and, to be clear, I agree with you that in an ideal world those perks would not related to employment), then PR's actual total comp is actually effectively much less than for senior-level positions.

So, we can infer that higher-skilled individuals will take the more highly-paying positions, and that the folks working at PR will be less-skilled or juniors. That's a gross over-simplification, of course, but it probably bears consideration.

$3k/week is not a metric, if you don't define a week. 40 hours? 168 hours?