I have a friend who work(s/ed?) there. I can check in. It's funny. The $70k thing was a big story everywhere else in America, but was only a small splash here in Seattle where people start around $100-120, at most normal tech companies. Gravity Payments is not a big company, and works in data processing/services, which scale fairly easily without a commensurate increase in costs. Let's see Weyerhaeuser or Boeing or a manufacturer do that kind of thing, where the cost of goods/materials doesn't scale so easily. (Don't get me wrong. I LOVE GRAVITY FOR DOING THIS!! I am a huge proponent of public salary disclosures. It just keeps people honest, and working. The majority of execs I have ever worked with get about 2-3 hours of work done, 3 days a week. The rest of the time is - quite honestly - fucking off, and riding on their previous success in the company. "I did the work to get to this C-suite role, so now I have earned the right to work less.")
Some insider intel would be welcome; I can only find rumors online. Almost all the publicity occurred after the announcement of the plan, especially during 2016, while the minimum was still $60K. Recent coverage in NYT and Forbes mention that Price "told them he was raising everyone’s salary" and "committed to giving every employee" 70K but don't specify whether the program was ever fully implemented or discontinued. Given the amount of attention and praise the company received for the program, it's hard to imagine why they would drop mentions of a generous minimum from their web site, most job listings, and Twitter (which mentions a "living wage").
Can you point me to a sentence in the NYT piece that indicates that the $70K minimum is in effect? It talks about the announcement and drama that followed, and then the current state of the company. Kroll joined by 2015 before the minimum wage policy was in effect. Maggie Goodall joined recently and received $70K, but as you point out that’s not exceptional salary in Seattle. Why would they remove the minimum salary from the list of employee benefits, after it brought them so much positive publicity? If they had raised the minimum to keep up with inflation, why not promote the higher number? Anyway, they still advertise some positions paying $70K. And there’s no mention of the minimum wage for a Technical Support Representative position in Boise, where $70K would go a long way. Company reviews have little information; only one mentions compensation, as a “Con.” I share your enthusiasm for a company that experiments with innovative compensation packages. If it works and the business is successful, it’s an idea that other companies can copy. But it has to work! Their own web site has a dated “Gravity of $70K” page which still says “the current minimum salary is $50K at Gravity” in an infographic. I agree, the announcement went viral, the company enjoyed great publicity, and they seem to be doing well now. It’s a private company and they don’t have to reveal their internal policies. It just seems fishy that they would ride the $70K publicity train while the policy was a popular proposal, and then remove mentions of $70K after it was supposed to go into effect. Would you assume Amazon is keeping it’s $15/hour pledge if Bezos were not still talking about it?Staff members gasped four years ago when Dan Price gathered the 120 employees at Gravity Payments, the company he had founded with his brother, and told them he was raising everyone’s salary to a minimum of $70,000, partly by slashing his own $1.1 million pay to the same level.
So I came to Seattle to see what had unfolded: Did Gravity succeed or crash?
Business has surged, and profits are higher than ever. Gravity last year processed $10.2 billion in payments, more than double the $3.8 billion in 2014, before the announcement. It has grown to 200 employees, all nonunion.
The pay raise also helped attract new employees — including some who yearned to join a company with values. Tammi Kroll, a Yahoo executive, took an 80 percent pay cut to move to Gravity, where she is now chief operating officer.
It worked. Still works. And the company is booming.