Inside Sourcegraph’s Engineering Culture: Part 2
A deep dive into how Sourcegraph works from the perspective of software engineers and engineering managers. Part 2.
Sourcegraph is a code search startup that stands out from many tech companies by applying high transparency to everything it does. This transparency has made it much easier to get a sense of the engineering culture at the company.
I spent weeks in contact with current and former Sourcegraph engineers and examining publicly available sources to share what the engineering culture is like at the scaleup - including details that have previously not been shared. I also sent out clarifying questions to Quinn Slack, the cofounder and CEO of the company.
In Part 1 of the series, we already covered:
1. Introduction
3. Hiring
In this second, and final part of this mini-series, we carry on from here and go through:
4. Compensation
Base salary
Equity
Benefits and perks
External salary transparency
5. Career
Levels and competencies
Engineering job levels
Engineering management
Product management
Design
Performance reviews and promotions
6. Engineering practices
The tech stack
Architecture overview
Testing
Developer experience
7. Advice and learning
Advice for software engineers to succeed at Sourcegraph
Advice for engineering managers to thrive at the company
Inspiration for founders and engineering leaders to take from Sourcegraph
8. Resources
Interview loops at Sourcegraph
Performance review templates at Sourcegraph
As with other deep dives on Facebook/Meta and Amazon, this issue is longer than usual. You might consider treating it as an educational resource for future reference.
4. Compensation
Compensation at Sourcegraph has 3 components:
Base pay
Equity
Benefits and perks
Globally equal salaries. As mentioned, salaries are the same regardless of location. This is a less common approach to remote compensation, as many full-remote companies align compensation with local markets; for example, GitHub.
Salary bands are targeted to match the top 75th percentile of US-based tech companies. The top of the compensation range is 15% above the bottom one. So for example, if the entry point of a compensation range is $150K, it means the top of the range is $172.5K (15% more.) The company uses Radford data for benchmarking, and other data sources when needed.
Salary bands are updated every 6 months with the performance review process, which Sourcegraph calls an “Impact Review.”
Internal transparency. The company makes compensation ranges visible to new joiners. As of 2023, salary ranges are also displayed in all job ads listed on its careers page.
Base salary
I’ve gathered a few base salary values:
In job adverts, the company communicated its compensation philosophy:
“We pay you an above-average salary because we want to hire the best people who are fully focused on helping Sourcegraph succeed, not worried about paying bills.”
Equity
The company issues equity in the form of stock options, with a 1-year cliff, and a 4-year vesting date. Until 2021, options had a 90-day post-termination exercise window, which was expensive for leavers to exercise. In an employee-friendly move, Sourcegraph extended this to 10 years in May 2021, meaning former employees have nearly a decade to decide whether to exercise their vested options.
Additional equity is usually offered upon promotion. As Sourcegraph is a private company, there’s little information available on the values of options or the number of shares issued. The company does provide information for employees.
Benefits and perks
The company offers a variety of benefits and perks listed in the handbook. These include:
PTO (Paid Time Off): a flexible holiday policy. Sourcegraph encourages workers to take a minimum of 30 days off per year. More details about PTO.
Family-related:
16 weeks of paid parental leave
Up to $25,000 in support for family planning services
Full-remote related:
$2,000 desk set-up budget, upon joining
$300-500/month budget to join a coworking space
Other:
$1,000/year educational stipend for courses, education, books, conferences, etc
$1,000/year reimbursement for home-move costs
$75/month mobile phone expenses reimbursement, added to paycheck
$50/month internet reimbursement, added to paycheck
US-specific:
Medical insurance with 100% premium covering medical, dental and vision insurance for employees and dependents
401(k) for US-based employees with traditional (pre-tax) and Roth options.
Basic life insurance
External salary transparency
As of January 2023, Sourcegraph shares salaries for all open positions, externally. But the company has long had salary transparency internally, so I asked Quinn the reason for the delay. He said openness was always the goal, but it took much work to achieve, including:
Ensuring all staff are paid fairly
Dealing with leveling and compensation package debt, like mis-leveled employees or those whose compensation was out of sync for historical reasons
Once discrepancies were resolved, they could go public with salary ranges, said Quinn.
5. Career
Levels and competencies
Sourcegraph has a parallel individual contributor (IC) and manager career path. IC levels range from 1 to 6, and manager levels from 3 to 6. Similar levels are usually similarly rewarded, though there’s no direct overlap between roles. Here’s how they compare: