Transparency and Enterprise

Paiyak Development is taking the first, exciting baby steps towards becoming a full-fledged web development company. For the past few years, while Nikola was working as a freelancer, one of his most important goals was to offer a quality product to his clients. Too many people in the world live by the thought that if they can charge more and cut corners, they should. Nikola cared more about the actual functionality of his site than the pay, which has led to a group of dedicated, satisfied clients, and a very skilled lead developer for our company.

Now, as we start to grow, we are looking to create the same fair, morally sound environment inside our company as we have developed with our clients. However, being on the ‘other side’ of business, where we are the ones employing people, is an interesting situation. We have to find a balance between creating a stable future for the company and creating an awesome work environment with fair pay.

One of the things we found intriguing is SumAll’s transparent pay system. SumAll is a tech company where everyone knows everyone else’s salary, which is unbelievable in America, where the goal of the employer is to get the employee to work for as little as possible. It is a little more believable here in Bulgaria, where very few people seem to have a problem asking, directly, how much you are paid within the first hour of meeting. However, to be a company policy is far stretched, because it makes it very difficult for the boss to explain their salary compared to those working for him or her.

Bulgaria has the lowest minimum wage in the EU, as well as the lowest labor cost. While developers are usually making well above minimum wage, they rarely have a salary comparable to their Western EU counterparts. However, with the skill in web development in Bulgaria constantly increasing, they are able to produce the quality and consistency of work that should be paid well. Unfortunately, in many companies, that profit stays at the owner/management level and is not reflected in the overall pay scale.

Paiyak Development hopes to challenge that. As we build our company, it is our goal to have a high level of transparency and pay a fair wage to our employees, based on the success of the company. Will everyone know everyone’s salary? Perhaps.