We use Carta Compensation as our data source. The Market Data Spreadsheet contains raw market data for every role in the company.

The data is filtered based on: Company Size (post money valuation, $10-$25M) and Location (San Francisco, CA).

Anyone will be able to view the data at any time (though it is commercial data and cannot be shared outside of Buffer).

We work with this data and then derive salaries using our own system, Buffer Benchmarks.

Having the Market Data in its own spreadsheet allows us to much more easily update and re-benchmark salaries with the latest market data.

Once we started working with the Market Data we recognized the opportunity to explore our own percentiles (rather than being beholden to the 50th percentile used in our previous formula) so for each area we have applied unique Percentiles that are based on the trend line across roles in that area. Currently, the percentiles we have arrived at are based on historical salaries which used a different data source (Radford). As such, there is some variance of chosen percentiles across areas. Aligning percentiles across areas is one of our planned Future Iterations.

Starting with a chosen percentile of Market Data for each role, we then build out the Buffer Benchmarks, a grid for every role and level we have within the company.