Why would you let your employees choose their own salaries?

Companies like Semco, Buffer, Squaremouth, SumAll and WholeFoods have shown that making previously confidential information like salaries available to employees can counterintuitively drive up engagement and positively impact a company's culture.

An interview with Evgeny Shadchnev, CEO and co-founder of Makers Academy.

Makers Academy is a truly fascinating start-up. Europe's leading Web Developer bootcamp that not only teaches "the principles of software craftsmanship" but also supports students to get their first programming job — and it is a Culture First company.

A few of the unique and fascinating things about Makers Academy:

• Everyone in the company sets their own salary
• They do not use targets in the sales team and they do not pay sales commissions or bonuses
• Instead of interviewing candidates, they ask potential employees to interview them
• They pay candidates to come and work for the company for a day as part of the interview process
• Making the decision final to hire a new team member is the team's responsibility

How does the process of setting your own salary work in practice?

We initially started by having completely open discussions with the entire team about individual salaries. We realized that this was not an ideal format, so we decided to change that process to having the initial conversations in private, where an individual will have one-to-one conversations with other members of the team about their salary and then share the final outcome with the entire team.

The process is as follows: you are expected to write an essay describing your role, what you have been doing for the past year, and what you have done well and not so well. You outline any change in compensation you would like and why, how it compares to the external market and how your proposed salary relates to any equity you have in the company. Each team member is expected to do this on an annual basis.

Self-setting salaries is not about asking permission; it is about getting feedback. The goal is not to get others to approve your salary, but to get feedback on what you are doing, the impact it has had, and to understand how you and your work are perceived by your colleagues. Everyone in the company does it, including me.

What have you done as a company to define your company values?

We see the handbook as a living document and in that sense will never be completed. The handbook is composed of two parts: firstly, our philosophy, which we will make public, and secondly information on how to handle practical matters such as how to invoice the company or the onboarding process.

For me, defining and baking in the company values is not a one-off process. I expect our values to continue to evolve as the company evolves. The values that we had when we were a team of five are not the same as the values we had when we were twenty-five.