(2013-06-27) Igalia Programmers Coop

Wingo is writing a series of posts about working in Igalia, a multinational Software Development CoOp. Lessons for a Virtual Company? Although Spanish law explicitly provides for CoOperative-s as a kind of legal entity, Igalia is organized as a limited-liability corporation (LLC). The reasons are not entirely clear to me, and periodically come up for debate. One of the issues, though, is that in a cooperative, 85% of your partners have to be Spanish residents, and we did not want that restriction. Spanish workers are employees of Igalia, and folks outside of Spain are freelancers. However once you've been in the assembly for an amount of time, currently 2 years (way too long IMO), you have the option to become a legal partner in the business, purchasing an equal share of the business at a fixed price.

The theory in Igalia is that we pay everyone the same... The reality, as always, is a bit more complicated... The basic idea is start from a per-location "base salary", and all aim for a common "target salary"... "Paying everyone the same" is a strategy, not a principle, and as you see it's not even the strategy that we have, given the cost-of-living adjustments described above... Effort is measured in hours, as recorded in a time tracker.