Your First 90 Days
Congratulations! You’re part of the team!
In your first 90 days, you’ll be getting aligned with your manager on approach and expectations. You’ll get up and running, doing real work. It’s your manager’s responsibility to give you proper opportunities to demonstrate your skills and fit for the job. This includes your technical expertise, your engagement with coworkers, and your ability to take feedback and adapt to the 37signals culture. Similarly, it’s on you to take advantage of those opportunities and to show that you’re capable of meeting the team standards.
When you start, you’ll receive an outline of expected performance metrics for your first 3 months. Those standards will be clear and attainable, and your manager will give you frequent, candid feedback. On occasion, despite our collective best efforts, it’s not a fit. We don’t do full-scale performance improvement plans during the first three months. So if during that time it starts looking like your long-term employment won’t work out, your manager will let you know early and why.
We hope, and fully expect, that your first 90 days will confirm what we learned in the hiring phase — you’re well suited for this job, and you’re invigorated by the work to be done. Just put in your best effort, make sure you reach out if things aren’t feeling right, embrace the feedback you get from your manager, and openly share your feedback with them!
Mastery & Titles
Advancing your career at 37signals doesn’t mean giving up on your craft. No matter your role, you can become better at the work itself and level up that way. This is especially important since we’re a relatively small company with few layers of managerial cake.
Within each of our job functions, we’ve mapped our trajectory of mastery to five different levels. That title structure is shared amongst all departments, but the particulars of what characterizes one level from another will of course be different. Here’s an example of the titles for programming:
- Junior Programmer
- Programmer
- Senior Programmer
- Lead Programmer
- Principal Programmer
While this is how we recognize mastery, it’s by no means an expectation that everyone will start as a junior and end up as a principal. 37signals needs people and perspectives from all levels of skill. And for those who do end up progressing all the way through this path, it may well be a journey of many, many years, if not a decade+.
You can see the specific titles and proficiencies expected for: Designers, Ops, Programmers, QA, and Support.
Pay & Promotions
37signals pays at the top 10% for our industry at San Francisco salary levels, regardless of where you live. The comparison data is provided by a company called Radford that polls compensation data from all the major companies in our industry and plenty of our smaller peers as well.
Some jobs at 37signals are not matched to Radford comparison data. Compensation for common technical roles like programming and design is reliably competitive in a market like San Francisco. For some non-technical roles, compensation is much lower, and much less competitive. To compensate for that industry disparity, we instituted a $73,500 salary floor (floor adjusted for inflation since publishing).
The Radford data is reviewed once per year at the end of November. If it’s warranted, that is if the market rates in the top 10% have gone up, we’ll increase pay on January 1st to follow suit. We don’t decrease pay, even if the market rates may have dropped. If that happens, we’ll hold them steady until they come up again.
Everyone in the same role at the same level is paid the same at 37signals.
When you get a promotion, that is you move from one level to another, you’ll get a corresponding pay raise effective on your next pay cycle.
Performance Reviews
You’ll meet with your manager for formal performance reviews. When you’re new to 37signals, you’ll meet at the 3-month, 6-month, and 1-year marks. Then you’ll meet once a year, around your anniversary with the company. Your manager will share performance expectations for your role when you start, and they’ll keep you apprised of any changes to expectations should they evolve.
Managers are expected to document performance review outcomes and any action items or deadlines that come out of the meetings.
Performance Improvement Plans
If your work performance is not meeting expectations, you may be put on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP). We only initiate PIPs if your manager’s concern is correctable in the short term. We do not initiate PIPs for fundamental performance issues that relate to your core job skills. If you’re a Programmer whose coding skills are not at the level they need to be, we’d forego a PIP. However, we may initiate a PIP to help you improve your performance in a coachable skill like project management.
If you are terminated, you may be eligible for a severance package. If you’ve been with the company for less than 1 year, you’ll be offered 4 weeks severance pay. After a year, you’ll be offered an additional 2 weeks of severance pay for every 6 months of employment over 1 year, with a maximum of 6 months of severance pay. The package includes health insurance for you and your dependents if you’ve been on our policies for the same time periods, compensation for unused vacation time, and compensation for unused sabbatical time if applicable (1 year look back). Compensation for all pay categories is calculated using your hourly rate. In return, you’ll be asked for a general release of liabilities and other standard employment termination terms.