Compensation transparency at small companies is rare because the numbers are personal. Ours are published because the meal-donation math ties directly to headcount cost — if we hire a person for $200K, that's ~200 subscriptions worth of runway per month that no longer funds meals.
Salary bands (when we hire employees)
The company is currently 1 FTE + 1 contractor; there are no active salary bands. When we start hiring employees, bands will be published on this page in the same shape as below.
Reference bands (what we'll target)
No negotiation policy on initial offers
The offer we send is the offer. We don't want candidates who negotiate hardest to earn more than candidates who accept the first number — this is a systematic pay-inequity mechanism that we opt out of. If our band is wrong for you, tell us and we'll either revisit the band for the whole role (rare) or acknowledge the fit isn't right. We don't move numbers for individuals.
Equity
Standard 4-year vesting, 1-year cliff. Grant sizes at the mid-band of standard tech-industry ranges for the company's stage. Grants are documented in the offer letter with the strike price, share count, and current 409A valuation. As a PBC, our equity comes with the same tax treatment as any other C-corp equity; the public-benefit obligation doesn't change the equity math.
Benefits (US)
- Health / dental / vision — 100% employer-paid on the individual plan; 80% on family plans.
- Retirement — 401(k) with 4% match (safe harbor).
- PTO — 20 days annual + 12 US federal holidays. Sick leave separate + uncapped.
- Parental leave — 12 weeks fully paid (birthing or non-birthing parent) + phased return option.
- Home office setup — $2,000 one-time on hire.
- Learning budget — $1,500 / year, no pre-approval required.
Benefits (non-US)
Country-appropriate equivalents. We're happy to hire remote-anywhere subject to legal and tax feasibility (some jurisdictions we can't hire directly and would require a contractor arrangement). We match the local statutory floor and add company benefits on top.
Why the cap on the top of the band
Every $1 of salary is $1 that doesn't go to WFP or into product runway. At Staff level we cap around $260K because paying $350K to Staff engineers (the SF frontier-lab norm) would require either raising subscription price or cutting the meal donation — neither of which we'll do. This means we'll lose some candidates to companies paying more, and we're okay with that. The candidates we want are okay with it too.