> First, no one would have coached you on "how to interview at Oxide" because that's not where the process starts
I was using “interview” as a generic term for applying to a company, not literally referring to your internal process.
I didn’t interview with or even pursue Oxide after the conversation (and never said I did)
This all came up because I asked the person what the equity compensation was like. Not an unreasonable question when talking about a startup. That’s when they started advising me that I shouldn’t bring it up and it’s not something they talk about. After that I got uncomfortable about pursuing a company that discourages any conversation about compensation to the extent that someone felt necessary to warn me about it when I hadn’t even applied.
> no one at Oxide would tell you to "not bring it up" because everyone at Oxide knows that it is a subject dealt with early in the process.
They were trying to tell me that it was important that I avoid giving the impression that I cared about compensation, as that would be a negative if I talked to anyone else at the company. Just repeating what I was told.
> And finally, this is all assuming that you were talking to someone before March 2021, when we published our blog post on it.[1]
No, they told me to look up the blog post, but I had not read the company blog before taking to this person.
> After the blog post, compensation simply doesn't come up: everyone has seen it -- and indeed, our approach to compensation is part of what attracted them to the company!
Or maybe your approach to compensation is what filters people out of the application pipeline? I don’t think it’s realistic to think that this compensation strategy is what attracts people to the company rather than pre-selecting people out.
I read the blog post, but I feel like I’m missing the equity portion of the conversation still.
Regardless, is it so hard to believe that compensation “simply doesn’t come up” because potential candidates (like me) are sometimes coached to not bring it up? Or that the company’s stance appears to discourage bringing it up? This feels like some circular logic: Nobody brings it up because we discourage people from bringing it up.
It definitely wouldn't be viewed as a negative to talk about it, and in fact our transparency on this topic makes it very easy to talk about directly. So we absolutely don't discourage talking about it -- but it's also true that people for whom the compensation is going to make Oxide impossible do self-select out. And that's okay! People have different needs at different stages of their career, and there are different things that they want; there is nothing wrong with optimizing for compensation -- but it's also true that Oxide is very unlikely to be a fit for someone optimizing for compensation, for many reasons.
> People have different needs at different stages of their career, and there are different things that they want; there is nothing wrong with optimizing for compensation -- but it's also true that Oxide is very unlikely to be a fit for someone optimizing for compensation, for many reasons.
I think you are missing that there are other reasons to avoid Oxide that doesn't have to do with optimizing for compensation. They may very well be optimizing for something else, but compensation is still a data point and while they may take less money, maybe not too much less.
Oh, there are definitely many reasons to not work at Oxide -- not least that it's hard, grueling work! (Indeed, part of our process is getting candidates sufficiently understanding what the work actually entails to allow them to make a decision for themselves.)
I was using “interview” as a generic term for applying to a company, not literally referring to your internal process.
I didn’t interview with or even pursue Oxide after the conversation (and never said I did)
This all came up because I asked the person what the equity compensation was like. Not an unreasonable question when talking about a startup. That’s when they started advising me that I shouldn’t bring it up and it’s not something they talk about. After that I got uncomfortable about pursuing a company that discourages any conversation about compensation to the extent that someone felt necessary to warn me about it when I hadn’t even applied.
> no one at Oxide would tell you to "not bring it up" because everyone at Oxide knows that it is a subject dealt with early in the process.
They were trying to tell me that it was important that I avoid giving the impression that I cared about compensation, as that would be a negative if I talked to anyone else at the company. Just repeating what I was told.
> And finally, this is all assuming that you were talking to someone before March 2021, when we published our blog post on it.[1]
No, they told me to look up the blog post, but I had not read the company blog before taking to this person.
> After the blog post, compensation simply doesn't come up: everyone has seen it -- and indeed, our approach to compensation is part of what attracted them to the company!
Or maybe your approach to compensation is what filters people out of the application pipeline? I don’t think it’s realistic to think that this compensation strategy is what attracts people to the company rather than pre-selecting people out.
I read the blog post, but I feel like I’m missing the equity portion of the conversation still.
Regardless, is it so hard to believe that compensation “simply doesn’t come up” because potential candidates (like me) are sometimes coached to not bring it up? Or that the company’s stance appears to discourage bringing it up? This feels like some circular logic: Nobody brings it up because we discourage people from bringing it up.