Support is typically low paid because it's a lot of effort for little reward, no matter how much you pay someone in support, there's only so much impact they can have on the bottom line. The organization as an organism where every organ is as equally important as the other is a beautiful sentiment but the appendix is getting jettisoned at the first sign of trouble. Support, no matter how valued and important to the organisation it is, is never worth $200k/year on the output of 1 person.

The exception to the rule for sales is the canary in the coal mine: sales measures itself, but every role can (and will) be measured when the pressure is on, there will be competition for budget, and the support team will get squeezed until they're empty while the engineers coast. I would be more convinced that this model could survive outside of the vc bubble if sales had bought in to too. Sales as a competitive sport is cultural, not fundamental.

Anyway, not criticism, just musing, love that they're trying it, even if this doesn't work out, everyone had a few good years, it's worth a shot.

The easy way to "pay everyone the same amount" when you sorta don't want to is to outsource everything you don't want to pay the same amount for.

Don't want to pay $200k to your receptionists and cleaners? Rent a serviced office and you get their services without them appearing on your payroll.

Will there be challenges - of course!! What growing business doesn't face challenges? Lots of commenters will argue that your structure won't work for this reason or that... but, what are we comparing to? Most corporate structures don't work either, and are full of crippling amounts of waste. People have just convinced themselves that the usual way of doing things is the only way of doing things.

> Some will say that we should be talking about equity, not cash compensation.

I think of compensation as total compensation. It would be fine to say this is Oxide's salary model. And I think it's a fine choice.

It sounds like the equity grants are naturally variable, though I doubt it's just newer vs older employees:

> As for how equity is determined, it really deserves its own in-depth treatment, but in short, equity compensates for risk – and in a startup, risk reduces over time: the first employee takes much more risk than the hundredth.

Edit to add: I assume there aren't cash bonuses for salaried employees. (I've always found it a bit weird anyway, but it's not mentioned explicitly, and would seem against the ethos, too)