Introducing our Open Salary System: Reflecting on a Decade of Transparent Salaries at Buffer

Buffer has been in business for 13 years now, and we’ve had transparent salaries for 10 of those. This means that for over a decade, all Buffer salaries have been publicly viewable, and we’ve shared our approach to salaries and the formula we based them upon

Buffer has been in business for 13 years now, and we’ve had transparent salaries for 10 of those. This means that for over a decade, all Buffer salaries have been publicly viewable, and we’ve shared our approach to salaries and the formula we based them upon openly.

We’ve maintained transparent salaries through significant market (and world) changes and through ups and downs in our performance as a business. I’m proud of the fact that we never took away that transparency, internally or externally.

That said, over the years, our salary formula has been stretched and needed to adapt to new scenarios. At times, we have fallen short of our true level of commitment to transparency.

What we’re sharing today is the result of applying our lessons learned from running a company with transparent salaries for a decade. The Open Salary System we’re sharing is a project we took on last year to re-imagine how we approach salaries, resolve the issues we identified over time, and set ourselves up for another decade of salary transparency.

But before I get into the changes we made in evolving from a salary formula to a salary system, let me answer a question that may come to mind: why be transparent with salaries at all?

Why salaries are transparent at Buffer

Compensation is a very important and sensitive element of work. Compensation is directly connected with life overall, in supporting peoples’ livelihoods and their dreams. It is also intertwined with fairness and equity, as the choices a company makes around compensation will be a key component of how the