[HN Gopher] Spotify is letting employees work from anywhere whil...
___________________________________________________________________
Spotify is letting employees work from anywhere while paying SF and
NY salaries
Author : ivanche
Score : 300 points
Date : 2021-02-15 10:54 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.businessinsider.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.businessinsider.com)
| nivenkos wrote:
| Do they pay those salaries in Europe?
|
| Because European salaries are usually 1/3 of the US rate.
| javajosh wrote:
| My experience in Germany may not be typical. But with the EU's
| higher taxes, 80% indeed goes down to 50%. However if you have
| kids, the numbers climb up again because, at least in Germany,
| you get "Kindergeld" and "Elterngeld" and state-sponsored day-
| care (Kita) for your kid(s). Plus, 30-days a year vacation
| standard, you get walkable cities, very good public
| transportation (so, no car costs) AND you get to take
| inexpensive weekend trips to Greece, London, Prague, or
| wherever you want to go. It's up to you to compute that value.
| superbcarrot wrote:
| > That's an exaggeration. At worst its 50%, but usually its
| ~80%.
|
| That's too high. In London getting 80% of equivalent pre-tax
| salaries in a big US city is virtually impossible. And then
| 1/3 of it goes to taxes and national insurance deductions.
| vidarh wrote:
| You really can't just make blanket statements about EU
| taxation effect on take home salary. There are massive
| differences in rates, and you also need to consider specific
| income levels as the profile of taxation by income band and
| dependents varies greatly.
|
| Germany and (especially) Belgium tends to top the OECD lists
| over taxation, so for Germany you may well be right, while
| e.g. Denmark, Ireland and Poland (may be true for others too,
| but those are the ones I happened to be aware of) has tax
| rates that in several of the categories the OECD tracks are
| below US tax levels.
|
| (Source: OECD Taxing Wages 2020)
| [deleted]
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| As someone from Europe, I work in a company with US presence
| and my counterparts do get 3x salary, according to levels.fyi
| at least.
| magnusmundus wrote:
| They weren't doing that in 2019, at least -- and yes, 1/3
| sounds (broadly) accurate.
| eloisant wrote:
| There are many countries in Europe, and many cities, and
| salaries differ wildy.
|
| You'll get a higher salary in northern Europe (Germany, UK,
| Netherlands, etc.) than in southern Europe (Spain, Italy,
| France).
|
| Also you'll get a higher salary in a tech hub like London or
| Berlin and a lower one in the country side.
|
| There are variations in US too, although probably not as big as
| between European countries.
| akmarinov wrote:
| Very interested in that as well
| hocuspocus wrote:
| From what I've gathered when interviewing and the public data
| you can find on levels.fyi, Spotify doesn't pay their
| Stockholm employees very well, even by European standards.
| raverbashing wrote:
| 1/3 is too little
|
| No, a person making 120k$ in NY is not making 40kEUR in a
| western European city. Maybe half of that, sure. But not 40k
| (even if you account the EUR-USD diff)
| [deleted]
| bonzini wrote:
| 130k$ is probably 60kEUR or more in Europe. It's like that in
| Italy and IT wages are abysmal here.
| rightbyte wrote:
| "Most of our offices are in large cities like New York, London
| and Stockholm"
|
| I looked out my window and laugthed abit reading that. They
| can't compare Stockholm with London amd NY like that ...
|
| Spotify in Stockholm does not pay NY wages today atleast.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| Are their glassdoor salaries accurate? 58000 kr/mo for senior
| developers? You could find similar jobs in Warsaw with half
| the cost of living.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I don't have first or 2nd hand info but most likely they
| are.
|
| 58 000 SEK/month total compensation (7000USD/month) is
| approx. the 75th percentile of unionized software engineers
| (all ages) in Stockholm according to the engineering union.
| xtracto wrote:
| I think European salaries are more like 1/2 of the US rate.
| Mexico/LatAm salaries are 1/3.
| patall wrote:
| Most European salaries may be 1/2 the SF rates. But that is
| not a fair comparison. A Google engineer in Zurich,
| Switzerland makes almost as much as one in SF, at an also
| very high cost of living.
| [deleted]
| ornornor wrote:
| What does it take to work for this kind of company though? I have
| about ten years experience, been focusing on frontend for the
| last few years. I have never worked at any of the big names and I
| have a bachelor degree that's not in CS or mathematics but I'm a
| decent developer in my opinion: I write clean, testable code.
|
| And yet the major tech players always reject me before even a
| screening call. Which makes me think I must be missing something
| in my CV or experience. But what? What are recruiters screening
| for at these companies?
| frongpik wrote:
| You're missing a referral.
| ornornor wrote:
| I'm not sure. I was referred by an employee several times at
| Shopify for instance and it did nothing for me. A referral in
| a lot of places is just so that the company knows who to give
| the referral bonus to if you're hired but it doesn't give you
| any kind of edge.
| barrkel wrote:
| The nature of the referral matters.
|
| If the referral comes from a respected engineer known to
| the hiring manager and the candidate is a good fit for the
| open position, things can move pretty quickly.
|
| If it's just a name thrown into a pot or entered into a
| form in some internal system, there isn't a whole lot of
| internal pressure.
| frongpik wrote:
| A strong referral can get you hired even if you fail the
| interview.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Usually a referral guarantees someone at least looks at the
| resume.
| spunker540 wrote:
| Try reaching out to recruiters directly on linkedin to enter
| the system instead of just submitting your resume to be auto-
| screened. You'll probably have to have a short screen call with
| them first, during which you can make the case that despite the
| lack of CS degree you know what you're doing, talk about your
| passion for that company's work etc, and it should be pretty
| feasible to get a true coding screen from there.
|
| These recruiters are so used to cold-calling via email/linkedin
| and getting no reply, I feel they'd be pretty happy to have
| someone actually interested (and qualified) fall in their lap.
| interlocutor2 wrote:
| I'm was a full stack dev with a similar self-taught background
| but only 5 years experience and I just started as a Google SRE
| last year. Maybe it helped that I attended a lot of meetups and
| conferences.
| ornornor wrote:
| > Maybe it helped that I attended a lot of meetups and
| conferences.
|
| How so? Did you meet people there that were part of your
| recruitment process, or for another reason?
| techolic wrote:
| Maybe try different channels, like working with a different
| recruiter or getting a referral? For the few times I've been
| approached in the last few years, recruiters differ by miles
| for how they prepare and present you.
| penguin_booze wrote:
| I wonder if this will make non-techies' life even harder. Right
| now, thanks to the relatively higher pay, techies are concentated
| in cities/urban areas. With rermote work possible on a permanent
| basis, all these relatively well-off techies moving to rural
| areas; and with their spending power, wouldn't they drive up
| prices?
| almost_usual wrote:
| It will in desirable places that techies frequent. Think this
| is a rising problem in the Tahoe region right now.
| ilkan wrote:
| Maybe the firefighters, nurses and restaurant staff who work in
| cities will be able to afford a shorter commute if city housing
| prices fall?
| almost_usual wrote:
| Rent will fall, I doubt home prices will fall that much
| though.
| ralmidani wrote:
| Even if you keep paying SF/NY salaries, you can still save a ton
| by not having to buy/rent office space and incur all the expenses
| that come along with that. One remaining downside: you need to
| screen for people (like me) who don't do well working from home.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| This could create a "golden chains" situation for employees,
| whereby they don't leave their job only because of the money,
| despite not being happy or as productive as they could be.
| senko wrote:
| You've just described how employment feels for most people.
| Y'think people who work two jobs do it so they can maximize
| their hapiness and productivity?
| dannyr wrote:
| Doesn't that already exist working remote or not?
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| The effect is much more muted living somewhere like SF or
| NYC, because there's a bunch of companies around those areas
| that pay similarly that you could switch to.
|
| If other high-paying companies started also paying major tech
| hub wages to anywhere in the US for remote work, then this
| problem would be similarly alleviated.
| kungito wrote:
| Since I've been feeling like this for most of my working life,
| I don't see why this would be a new thing.
| [deleted]
| ivanche wrote:
| It could also be a fast track to the financial freedom. Work
| for 10 years receiving an SF salary living in a low COL area,
| save agressively and invest in low-cost broad-market ETFs. One
| should be pretty well financially doing this.
| nly wrote:
| w.r.t investing: If you're on a good income you are actually
| incentivized to do so in some countries. In the UK every
| pound you earn between $140K and $170K USD is effectively
| taxed at 65%. Investing via contributions in to a pension is
| tax free. 100% gross salary. Even if the market goes nowhere
| for 30 years that's 3.5% annualized return.
|
| You pay tax when you take your pension of course, but by that
| point its on your terms.
| arkitaip wrote:
| That's an amazing problem to have for most people.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Or to rephrase, the employer gets long term commitment and
| loyalty from their employees because they get the best reward.
| The alternative is job hoppers, and I don't think you can
| create a business out of people who skip town whenever they get
| a better offer.
|
| Mind you, the insane wage difference in SF is partly caused by
| job hoppers and scalping between the big and highly funded
| companies.
| levosmetalo wrote:
| You speak here as if it's somehow not fair for the companies
| that employers get paid more? As if the competition only
| works in one direction, to reduce the salaries, because
| employees are interchangeable.
|
| Instead, let's enjoy the interchangeability of employers for
| a while and use the competition of companies for the best
| talent in our advantage. At least while it lasts.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| > Mind you, the insane wage difference in SF is partly caused
| by companies that value their employees and are willing to
| pay proper salary
|
| Fixed for you.
| dan1234 wrote:
| Even in that situation, you could save enough of your cash to
| eventually leave and strike out on your own / take a lower
| paying job with better satisfaction.
| JackPoach wrote:
| It's a classic #firstworldproblem that many wish they had. I
| certainly wouldn't blame the employer for that.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| It could be a problem for the employer as well, if it results
| in having a bunch of employees doing minimum effort.
| brailsafe wrote:
| My experience has told me that as an employee with no
| direct stake in the company, you should do little more than
| the minimum it takes to do what you're hired to do, and put
| all extra energy into literally anything else, like
| reducing your responsibility per dollar earned and total
| allotment of work hours. Anything else is a bad deal for
| you, but a great deal for real stakeholders.
|
| I say this, because most of the time your employer wouldn't
| give two shits about you, beyond what they're required to,
| and your widgets being produced is the only thing they
| really care about. There are exceptions of course, like
| companies that obviously will give you that raise as you
| work to improve your skills etc.. which you should be
| doing. But usually it's just a Jason Bateman movie waiting
| to happen.
| vecter wrote:
| Or you could work hard and advance your career.
| JackPoach wrote:
| I get what you are saying, but the fact that your company
| doesn't give a shit, shouldn't mean that you
| automatically don't give a shit about a company. Giving a
| shit is a great trait IMO. If your country doesn't give a
| shit about you, should you not give a shit about your
| country? Or your relatives? Or parents? Or children. I am
| perfectly fine not giving a shit about many things, but I
| do care about other things passionately, even if they
| don't reciprocate. Work is one of those things that I
| really would rather care about than not. When I don't -
| it usually makes me unhappy.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| Yes, unless giving shit makes you happy you shouldn't
| give any.
| goldcd wrote:
| Way I see it, is that 'just doing the minimum' is utterly
| soul-destroying. And if you're doing that, then just you
| need to focus on everything else to stay sane. Work is
| never going to feel better.
|
| However, if you can find at least a bit of interest in
| something that you do, then it's rewarding to focus on
| it. You take pride in that 5%, you polish it, read up on
| it, stay a bit late to add that shiny new feature, you
| tell others about it etc. If others agree with you, it
| grows and then becomes 10, 20% etc of your time.
|
| Basically you're still stuck at work, when you'd rather
| be asleep under a duvet - but you've made that time more
| tolerable.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| Isn't this an age-old story? Choosing whether or not to take a
| pay cut to get work you prefer?
|
| My initial reaction to "oh woe, my employer pays me so much
| that I don't want to leave!" is "... and this is a problem?"
| sokoloff wrote:
| If you find the work tedious or unethical and have arranged
| your finances such that you're trapped into the bi-weekly
| drip of cash, I'd find that to be a problem.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| I can't help thinking that in that case this really is your
| fault. Remember, we're talking about SF tech salaries being
| given to employees who aren't in SF here; many people get
| by _comfortably_ on far less.
|
| (Obviously there are orders of magnitude more people who
| get paid much less than the sums we're talking about, and
| don't have enough to get by comfortably. But the question
| is specifically about people who have been golden-chained
| to a job in the top 5%-ish of income.)
| sokoloff wrote:
| There is a type of chain that is "I'm seeking to FIRE in
| 10 years and if I quit this job, I can't do that."
|
| It doesn't have to be yachts, jets, or nose candy causing
| the pressure.
|
| [0] - FIRE - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_movement
| Smaug123 wrote:
| I still don't see how your position is any worse when
| Spotify is paying you more.
| sokoloff wrote:
| In one case, Spotify is paying me a locally-relevant
| market wage and I quit Spotify when I find working there
| mentally exhausting, easily matching my income from my
| choice of other local employers. Because that market wage
| is lower than SF, I experience lesser lifestyle inflation
| and still FIRE in 10 years or I choose to have a more
| luxe retirement and retire in 16 years.
|
| In the other case, Spotify is dumping cash on me by the
| bucketload, we drive new cars, live in an amazing house,
| I regularly take amazing vacations with my family, kids
| go to private schools, and I still plan to FIRE in 10
| years and be able to maintain that lifestyle. 3 years in,
| I realize that I'm miserable and the thought of grinding
| out 7 more years of this is difficult to bear, but I
| can't bear asking my family to curtail their standard of
| living to accommodate my unwillingness to keep bearing
| the burden of the daily grind.
|
| Am I as a person happier in scenario 1 or scenario 2?
| There's no question that you're richer in scenario 2, but
| life isn't all about money.
| wooger wrote:
| I think 99% of the population would quit today if they didn't
| need the money.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| Certainly. But the alternative action that anybody can
| unilaterally take is...?
|
| My comment was in response to someone noting that Spotify
| could be constructing golden chains by paying people far
| above the market rates for where they live. The people
| involved are given the means to retire strictly faster in
| the world where Spotify does that, vs the world in which
| they don't.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| For you definitely no. But for employer they would rather
| have new excited person working for a bowl of rice than old
| and tired "just doing my work".
| [deleted]
| wdb wrote:
| Will they start paying SF salaries when you started working in
| London?
| noetokyo wrote:
| Probably just means they will pay it to those that leave and
| not retain the amount afterwards because its unsustainable.
| senko wrote:
| PSA: When comparing US and EU salaries (or anywhere, really), use
| total cost to employer (excluding fixed office costs), or total
| benefit to employee (incl. taxes paid in their name and
| health/retirement costs).
|
| US salaries are mostly discussed before taxes, while often for EU
| countries it's after taxes and/or after mandatory health
| insurance and retirement savings.
| samvher wrote:
| For many of the sibling comments discussing before/after tax:
| part of the confusion arises here because many European
| countries essentially have two steps of taxation. I work for an
| American organization as a Dutch person and have had to figure
| some of this out for my own contract situation.
|
| For the Netherlands, your contract will state a wage "before
| taxes". But the employer will play "employer's taxes" over this
| wage, making you effectively ~20% more expensive. What gets
| transferred to your bank account is wage "after taxes", but
| this is after _income_ taxes.
|
| For example, say that your salary in the Netherlands is
| E50,000. Your employer pays E60,000 for that, but E10,000 goes
| straight to the government (doesn't show on your payslip, used
| to fund primarily social security systems). After that, you pay
| income taxes, let's say 30%, so you get E35,000.
|
| Of course, effectively you're paying close to 50% taxes and
| your employer considers you as costing E60,000, but the two-
| step process hides part of it and makes it somehow more
| palatable for the employee/tax-payer. This is a really large
| part of why European wages are lower than American ones.
| shankr wrote:
| This works very similar in different parts of the world. You
| will hear lot of times CTC (Cost to company) being used when
| discussing salaries.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| It's the same in the US, with different percentages. From:
| https://bench.co/blog/accounting/calculate-payroll-tax/
|
| - FICA tax is 7.65% (6.2% social security, 1.45% medicare)
|
| - FUTA tax is 0.6 to 6.0% (varies, iiuc)
|
| - And then employers (generally) also pay an amount towards
| health care. But that's not a tax, per se; more of a
| mandatory "benefit"
| ViViDboarder wrote:
| Most of all of that comes out of the salary on your payslip
| in the US.
| machinebun wrote:
| There is a 7% employer contribution that does not show up
| on your payslip (as well as the 7% that does). Also the
| employer contribution to your health insurance does not
| show up but your part of it does.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| To give some numbers to play with, here's an official
| simulator for France: https://mon-
| entreprise.fr/simulateurs/salaire-brut-net
|
| Sorry it's in French, but very simple. Choose by month or
| year, and you have in order: total cost (what the company
| pays), before tax salary (what's on the contract), "net"
| salary (ignore that), after tax salary (what they employee
| actually gets).
|
| You can see that the employee gets about half of the total
| employer cost.
| thedufer wrote:
| The US has this as well, albeit to a lesser degree. The
| employer-side FICA is around 7%, and is paid directly by the
| employer, rather than deducted from your paycheck.
| nivenkos wrote:
| EU salaries are also given before taxes.
|
| Have you worked in the EU?
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| Before the employee's taxes, but after the employer's taxes.
| That adds a good 15-30% depending on the country.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > US salaries are mostly discussed before taxes, while often
| for EU countries it's after taxes and/or after mandatory health
| insurance and retirement savings.
|
| Citation? I think pretty much all salaries discussed in Europe
| was before tax
|
| (Stock option on the other hand are usually not counted)
| saiya-jin wrote:
| This is country specific but in many European countries there
| are employer's and employee's social deductions. Usually
| salaries discussed are already without employer's part, but
| with employee's ones. Taxes should be taken away only once
| AFAIK.
|
| So salaries discussed/negotiated will still have in them 1)
| tax; 2) employee social deductions; 3) health insurance. This
| is deducted, and result goes to employee's account. In many
| places, its cca 50% or less that gets into account depending
| on many things (state, family situation, type of employment
| etc.)
| vidarh wrote:
| Employer payroll taxes exists in a number (all?) of US
| states too.
| bonzini wrote:
| Before tax but after retirement savings (or most of them,
| e.g. in Italy it's about 4:1 with the employer paying the
| larger part). Depending on the country after healthcare costs
| too, since often healthcare is simply financed from taxes (if
| not, anyway it will be lower and also come with hardly any
| deductibles).
| marvin wrote:
| Does the US have significant employer tax?
|
| A data point from Norway: Employer tax of 14% of pre-tax salary
| is paid by employer. Employer also has to pay 2-13% (dependent
| on individual negotiation) of pre-tax salary for retirement
| savings. These are both part of the cost to the employer, and
| are rarely considered part of "total compensation". So
| employers have to pay an extra 16-27% of each person's salary
| in addition to what the employee gets.
|
| An 8% tax for compulsory retirement savings is then taken from
| the employee's pre-tax salary, along with other individual
| taxes, that will usually sum up to around 33%. This is _not_
| part of the cost to the employer. The number before these taxes
| are subtracted is usually quoted as the person 's salary.
|
| Although for a US comparison, few employers in Norway have
| significant expenses for health insurance. And the cost of US
| health insurance, a considerable percentage, is rarely
| considered part of your "total compensation".
| cletus wrote:
| OMG I hate this kind of dishonesty by governments (and
| companies).
|
| There should be no "employer taxes". That's money that
| otherwise could be going to the employer so all taxes and the
| like should be reported coming out of the employee's salary.
|
| Example: the US has 6.2% Social Security taxes levied on both
| the employer and employee. This should be reported as
| 12.4/106.2 = 11.7% of the employee's income.
|
| BTW companies do this too. Airlines charge fuel surcharges
| (there's no such thing; the fares are just more expensive).
| US ISPs are famous for things like "Infrastructure
| Surcharges" and other charges you can't avoid. The FTC/FCC
| should step in and make it illegal to underreport true costs
| with mandatory charges like these.
|
| Another beef with the US government I have in particular is
| the "standard deduction". This is actually a way of hiding a
| regressive tax on lower income people. Think about it: you're
| eroding the value of itemized deductions but lower income
| people are disproportionately affected.
| marvin wrote:
| Agreed. Try to make an argument up here that our tax burden
| is debilitating, and all you get in return is <<our taxes
| are the same as every other country, 30% on average>>.
|
| Can be refuted in a debate, but of course the dishonest
| rhetoric reflects what people actually believe and vote.
| eptcyka wrote:
| I've never understood why there's a split between what taxes
| get paid by your employer and what taxes get paid by the
| employee - in the end, the employer pays all of them anyway.
| I'd like to know exactly how much money an employer would
| have to pay for a given amount of money landing in my bank
| account in a given time period.
| pnutjam wrote:
| As long as there is a hidden "benefits tax" that varies
| wildly from company to company, it doesn't matter. It's
| crazy to try to compare offers in the US.
| rags2riches wrote:
| If you just look at the present state of things, the split
| doesn't make much sense. Instead, consider the choice of
| legislators that are about to change taxes on already
| existing employment agreements. There are two sides to each
| employment and affecting one is not the same as affecting
| the other.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| The reason is politics. It's easier to raise taxes that are
| invisible to voters.
| belval wrote:
| It's also a very strong lever that is not very well
| understood by the general public and can be used to
| stimulate growth in a particular area without sounding
| like the government is subsidizing the industry directly.
|
| For example in Quebec the government waves a sizable
| chunk of taxes if the employee works on "research". With
| research being voluntarily defined very loosely so video
| game development falls into that category. The goal was
| to draw Ubisoft, EA, Unity, etc... in Montreal.
| brianwawok wrote:
| You can figure it out with a basic Algebra calculation. Not
| that hard.
|
| But I doubt any employee is comparing your offer on that.
| They are going on the top line number.
| Majromax wrote:
| No, the United States does not have high employer-paid
| payroll taxes. The employer is responsible for about 8% for
| social security (pension) and medicare (old-age health care)
| taxes, but only income up to $150k/yr is subject to this tax.
|
| States also assess a payroll tax to pay for unemployment
| benefits; this varies by state and industry. It is also
| subject to relatively low income caps, especially compared to
| tech-sector salaries.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| For software engineers, keep in mind healthcare is typically
| taken care of via private (high quality) insurance and that
| pre-tax retirement contributions (401k) are matched as well.
|
| So these aren't really issues.
| _-___________-_ wrote:
| Having worked in many EU countries, I've never once had salary
| quoted or discussed after tax.
| alistairSH wrote:
| "After tax" in the US means after the employee pays their own
| share of various income taxes. The portion of those taxes
| paid by the employer are not discussed (in salary
| discussions).
|
| Either way, the point stands - for cross-border salary
| discussions, you need to consider the "fully loaded" cost of
| an employee, not just net salary. You also have to consider
| non-cash benefits and costs (high US salaries offset by high
| health care costs, etc).
| reader_mode wrote:
| Once you go fully remote you don't really need employment
| contracts either - in Europe opening some sort of legal
| entity and invoicing your salary as an independent
| contractor will be more profitable and more flexible.
| eloisant wrote:
| In France there is employee taxes and employer taxes. You
| discuss before employee taxes, but after employer taxes
| (which is about 50% of the salary before employee taxes). If
| you're on a French payroll the amount is written on your
| payslip, but most people don't even notice it.
|
| At the end of the day it doesn't really matter if it's an
| employer tax or an employee tax, the employer spends some
| amount of money and the employee gets a portion home. But the
| discussion never includes employer taxes.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I'm sure you have - but not after _income_ taxes. All taxes
| that are taken before you get your gross (before income tax)
| pay, is typically what is quoted in Euerope.
|
| E.g. My employer pays X _1.25 for my "before tax" salary of X
| because there is 25% payroll taxes/fees. I pay 35% taxes on
| that, so my net is 0.65_x. Is X "before"or "after" taxes
| here? It's _after_ payroll taxes and similar deductions, but
| _before_ income taxes (which I pay myself).
| javajosh wrote:
| Less experienced, but I've never seen EU salaries quoted
| after tax, either.
| senko wrote:
| As one data point, people never discus before-tax salaries
| in my home country (Croatia), it's always after-taxes and
| all other mandatory deductions. I believe the same holds
| true for at least several other EU countries from the
| region.
| egman_ekki wrote:
| by "people never discuss" you mean the negotiation
| between the employee and employer is based on after tax
| salary, or do you mean casual conversations with friends?
| I haven't seen discussing after tax salary at all during
| interviewing process in the 4 countries I applied for
| jobs and got offers (Slovakia, Czechia, Switzerland,
| Denmark).
| senko wrote:
| Both.
|
| Officially, on the employment contract, the salary is
| shown before-tax, but after mandatory pension and
| healthcare deductions.
|
| However, in the negotiations, in casual conversation, and
| when you're hearing someone talking about their salary in
| the media, it's always discussed after taxes. Most people
| have no idea how much tax (or health insurance) they're
| actually paying.
| Hamuko wrote:
| In Finland, I usually hear people talk about salaries
| before taxes and less often after taxes. For example my
| union has a yearly salary survey and publish results in
| before taxes salaries. But since it's so confusing, you
| usually see "brutto" ("gross", before taxes) and "netto"
| ("net", after taxes) being discussed when talking about
| salaries.
| levosmetalo wrote:
| Croatia, as well as other post Yugoslavia countries is
| more of an exception here.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I have; last time when I was looking for a job, some
| employers (and mostly recruiters) asked me what I'd like to
| earn per month after taxes.
|
| I'm sure there's some shuffling they would end up doing when
| it comes to wages, stock options (not really a thing),
| transportation, and other benefits.
| vidarh wrote:
| I'd never discuss that with a recruiter, because that would
| involve a discussion about how I conduct my personal
| finances well beyond just the salary and other benefits...
| E.g. additional pension contributions I make, or
| investments I make would affect it.
| AhtiK wrote:
| Which EU countries have net salary in their employment
| contracts?
|
| Employment contracts in Germany have gross salary
| (Bruttogehalt), all the social security, healthcare and taxes
| will be deducted from that amount.
|
| Estonian employment contracts are a bit of a mix: the amount
| listed is gross (brutopalk), but the employer pays an
| additional 33+% on top of that gross salary for social security
| etc.
| dkyc wrote:
| That's not _completely_ true, part of the German social
| security is paid directly by the employer and not deducted
| from the Bruttogehalt. It 's about 15-20% in total.
| odiroot wrote:
| I used to have when I worked in Poland. Was really surprised,
| after moving to Germany, people don't seem to care about
| their net salaries.
| ulfw wrote:
| What you're saying is impossible. Prospective employers don't
| know what your exact after-tax income is as it depends on a lot
| of factors (dependents, marital status, etc)
| senko wrote:
| As an employer in an EU country (Croatia), I know _exactly_
| how much each of my employees ' after tax income is,
| including everything you've said (and adding stuff like some
| debt payments if there are any, etc).
|
| It's all withheld by employer - employee never sees a penny
| out of it. Although they always get full documentation of
| exactly what's wihhheld, in my experience almost nobody ever
| reads it.
|
| Note that there are some adjustments employees can make a
| return for at the end of the year, which takes into accounts
| stuff like dividend income, tax deduction on mortgages and
| similar.
| andrewingram wrote:
| Note the comment you're replying to said "prospective
| employers". Until you're entered into the payroll system,
| your employer likely won't know what all the applicable
| deductions are, so can't give you a net income figure as
| part of an offer, just a pre-deductions figure.
| senko wrote:
| Good catch, thanks for pointing it out.
|
| The way this works here in practice is the employer
| assumes "standard" level of taxes based on your location.
| So for example, you'd negotiate EUR2k net salary, and
| you'd get a some EUR extra if you have a dependant,
| mortgage, etc.
| pkaye wrote:
| In the US, the employer withholds taxes based on filing
| status. Like if you are single or married, have kids,
| spouse is also working, second job. There is a short form
| called W4 that the employee fills out to help determine
| this.
| ericmay wrote:
| Yea but you don't know that before you hire them (or at
| least that's the case in America).
|
| Here you might live in a different township or city, taxes
| will be different depending on school district, etc.
|
| AFTER you hire them, sure, you will probably know what
| their tax rate is. I think originally the discussion was
| about before you hire someone.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _I know exactly how much each of my employees ' after tax
| income is_
|
| > _Note that there are some adjustments employees can make
| a return for at the end of the year_
|
| So you don't know _" exactly"_ how much your employees'
| after tax income is. You just know how much you are
| withholding and have some kind of an estimate of what they
| make after taxes.
| alkonaut wrote:
| > dependents, marital status,
|
| Is this common outside the US? I thought this co-taxation
| thing was becoming less and less common. I have only ever
| been taxed as an individual.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| My wages / wage offers are always listed as wage before tax. On
| top of that, the employer will pay an X amount for pension
| contributions and health insurance, but that doesn't show up on
| my wage slip because it's not coming out of my income.
| alistairSH wrote:
| What country?
|
| In the US, my wage slip shows the portion of my salary that
| was withheld to pay federal/state income taxes on my behalf,
| plus my personal pre-tax retirement account contribution,
| plus health insurance fees. It does NOT show the taxes paid
| by my employer in my name (workman's comp, employer share of
| FICA, employer share of health insurance, etc).
| pnutjam wrote:
| I've had paystubs that enumerate what the employer is
| paying for different benefits, like health insurance or
| short term disability (US midwest). There is no standard in
| the US.
|
| When I worked at a university, they made a big deal about
| how they contributed 10% of your income into a retirement
| plan. Unfortunately it had a cliff vesting cycle that I
| never got close to meeting. (another scam that employers
| use to pay you less)
| JackPoach wrote:
| Let's see how long this lasts. This used to be the pathos for
| many US manufacturers 30 years ago, but it did not last.
| chrischen wrote:
| They were already paying what they were paying. You can either
| get same talent at lower salaries or higher salaries and better
| talent.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I can't see a reference if this is for current employees only or
| will be applied to future hires as well.
|
| Does anyone have more details?
| jobvandervoort wrote:
| FWIW we [0] employ a lot of people in the EU working remotely and
| a large part of them earns SF/NY salaries.
|
| Probably a strong selection bias to the types of companies that
| choose to work with us.
|
| [0]: I'm the CEO of remote.com
| tsss wrote:
| Sure because remote.com is so outrageously expensive that only
| people earning 100k and more can afford it.
| jobvandervoort wrote:
| We tend to be the most affordable employer of record with
| quite some margin.
|
| Paying contractors is free through us.
| bombcar wrote:
| I couldn't help but remember the classic IRC exchange:
| http://bash.org/?258908
| raverbashing wrote:
| Too bad that employee's poker face was lacking
| komuW wrote:
| I wonder what the mood was like when homo sapiens was
| transitioning - unbeknownst to many - from a hunter gathering
| nomadic lifestyle to a sedentary agricultural one.
|
| I know the scales are different but sapiens is in another
| transition, again unbeknownst to many.
| TENACIOUSANT wrote:
| that's nice - it would be even better if they paid artists
| remotely equitably.
| timvisee wrote:
| Maybe they should pay their artists more, instead of their
| employees.
| IndySun wrote:
| Many people here are against copyright and thus by fault,
| royalties (of other peoples work, not their own), but as a
| hypothetical, I wonder the same.
|
| It appears the major labels sold their catalogues for a
| pittance and streaming platforms are 'making hay'. We could
| have been streaming The Beatles on an app called EMIMusic had
| they not been so slow on the uptake of the internet.
|
| As soon as all music is finally only made by people who have no
| monetary concerns, the end of revolutions will also be nigh.
| peteretep wrote:
| Who are Spotify's artists? I thought the artists contracted
| with record labels
| garbagetime wrote:
| The people who make the music. Some don't have record labels,
| so it would be weird to not just talk about the artists.
| peteretep wrote:
| I thought Spotify didn't contract directly with any
| artists?
| dbbk wrote:
| They don't
| steverb wrote:
| It is pretty straightforward to get your music on Spotify and
| all the other streaming platforms. No record label needed.
| There are very inexpensive services that will do all the leg
| work for you, but it take approximately 230 streaming plays
| on spotify to earn a dollar.
| cabbageoverload wrote:
| How many plays _should_ it take to earn a dollar? I don 't
| know anything about the music industry.
| steverb wrote:
| A radio play is around 9.5 cents per play. Assuming there
| are no royalty splits, then that would be 11 plays to
| earn a dollar.
|
| I think royalties of 1 to 3 cents per stream are
| completely reasonable. Subcent royalties are just
| platforms taking advantage of the content creators.
|
| Which is why most artists see all the streaming platforms
| as merely a way to advertise for live shows and merch.
| That's the only way to really make money without hitting
| Taylor Swift levels of streams.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| Assuming your number of 1 cent/stream, and considering
| that 7$ out of the 10$ subscription pays for the music,
| that gives an average of 23 streams/day for a subscriber.
|
| That's about 80 minutes of music per day, down to 50
| minutes or less if you're sharing the subscription.
| steverb wrote:
| And somehow terrestrial radio stations, which have no
| subscription base manage to make it work.
|
| As I said in the comment above, artists are free to NOT
| put their music on Spotify if they don't think it's a
| good deal, but regardless streaming services are only
| commercials for artists. Spotify is far from the worst
| offender. :-)
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| But on radio, 1 play is listened to by many people.
| That's equivalent to many streams.
| ProblemFactory wrote:
| A radio play is also tens of thousands of listeners.
| Compared to that, Spotify pays many orders of magnitude
| more than radio.
| whiddershins wrote:
| How many people on average hear a single radio play?
| Without that number this isn't a reasonable comparison
| point.
| peteretep wrote:
| Going from your original numbers (which I didn't check),
| a play current pays out just under half a cent (1/230),
| and you'd like Spotify to pay around 5 times that (avg
| 2c). Spotify distributes about 70% of revenue to rights
| holders so you're asking Spotify to pay out ... 350% of
| revenue to rights holders?
|
| Spotify could almost certainly be charging more, but it's
| already incentivised to maximise revenue, and it has
| competitors, so it seems like it's probably found the
| market value of a play?
| steverb wrote:
| From wikipedia: "Spotify pays royalties based on their
| "market share"--the number of streams for their songs as
| a proportion of total songs streamed on the service."
|
| Regardless, Spotify is free to pay whatever they think is
| fair and artists are free to accept or reject that
| compensation as they will. But if you're an artist,
| Spotify (and the other streaming platforms, which mostly
| pay even less) are not going to be something that you can
| ever expect to be an income source.
| svachalek wrote:
| For Spotify to pay 1/3 of radio stations, wouldn't that
| imply that only 3 people are listening to the radio
| station? I don't know what typical numbers are but that
| sounds... low.
| nassycheezy wrote:
| Please take note that Spotify pays sub-market salaries for these
| cities. The reason being that they do not offer RSUs but instead
| public stock options without any discount.
|
| - Typical FAANG compensation: X base pay + Y RSUs + Z signing
| bonus
|
| - Spotify: X base pay + Y stock options (public, so equivalent to
| you purchasing stocks really) + no signing bonus
| wan23 wrote:
| Spotify gives you the choice of RSUs or options or straight
| cash. https://hrblog.spotify.com/2019/06/13/show-me-the-
| incentive/
| nassycheezy wrote:
| Cool, they must have changed their comp structure then as the
| previous model was an immediate "no-no".
| onion2k wrote:
| The pay isn't particularly attractive compared to other tech
| companies in those cities, but it's still _massively_ better
| than 99% of other places in the world.
| doctorbaum wrote:
| What's the difference, for the laymen
| iso1210 wrote:
| Say Spotify's share price is $100, and as part of your
| compensation you are given an option to buy 100 shares at
| $100 in 5 years time
|
| If Spotify in 5 years time is $500, you buy 100 shares for
| $10k, and immediately sell them for $50k, making a $40k
| profit (or you keep them).
|
| If Spotify in 5 years time is $102, you buy 100 shares for
| $10k and sell for $10,200, making $200
|
| If Spotify shares in 5 years times is $90, you don't bother
| buying the shares, but your options are worthless.
|
| Now imagine you were given 100 shares instead, but couldn't
| sell them for 5 years (an RSU - or restricted stock unit)
|
| In 5 years time, if Spotify is $500/share, your shares are
| worth $50k
|
| In 5 years time, if Spotify is $102/share, your shares are
| worth $10,200
|
| In 5 years time, if Spotify is $90/share, your shares are
| worth $9,000
| tomerico wrote:
| You only earn money if the stock price appreciate
| closetnerd wrote:
| I'm envious of your laymen speak.
|
| Exactly right.
|
| RSU means they gave you the stock at price X. Options mean,
| they gave you the right to buy the stock at price X
| sometime in the future.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| This is ridiculous. I find well paid devs super arrogant. Some
| of them made 150k, 200k, 250k - while other people, also
| qualified, make salaries that are not enough to start a family
| and have a decent life.
| nassycheezy wrote:
| Fully agree, this is why I didn't put numbers and only
| mentioned pay structure and market rate.
| dt3ft wrote:
| What are you trying to say? Anyone can demand a greater
| salary if their qualifications are in demand. If they are not
| - they should consider working on learning new skills which
| are in demand.
| dd_roger wrote:
| I just hope the home office trend doesn't lead to an urbanization
| of the countryside. I'm from a charming village that was
| overtaken by ugly and expensive developements during the past 20
| years because people from the nearest city realised it was within
| commutable distance.
|
| I die a little inside every time I see someone oneline saying "I
| can't wait 'till X area has better internet so I can move there",
| understand "I can't wait 'till X area has better internet so 10k
| people can have the same idea as me and turn this rural community
| into a city".
|
| Now in bigger countries (the US, France, Germany, etc.) there
| will always be cheap rural areas left (though the most desirable
| areas will probably urbanize and/or become completely unafordable
| for workers of the primary and secondary sector) but I'm very
| worried for smaller countries like mine where rural areas are
| already sought after as of now and it's only going to get worse.
| throw14082020 wrote:
| Please embrace the visitors. You share this planet with them.
| Your fear of losing your resources is natural, but they weren't
| yours to begin with.
|
| If you still want your special benefits on Earth, well thats
| what politics is for.
| cumwolf wrote:
| sounds like visitors aren't the problem it's visitors who
| come and force an area to change to their liking, being
| disruptive to existing culture.
| ecf wrote:
| That's just the nature of change at this point. I'd like to
| think the culture we value today wouldn't be near what it
| is without prior generations moving around the planet and
| blending their beliefs with those of the locals.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Only the best rural locales will see an urbanization. There is
| likely to always be a hierarchy to human growth since people
| like to be around other people, in general.
| humanrebar wrote:
| It's tragic, yeah, but the same thing happens to different
| urban neighborhoods. And the resistance to this kind of
| transformation just limits residential option and drives up
| housing costs for everyone.
| nly wrote:
| Make hay while the sun shines. A true shift to remote work,
| should it happen, spells the eventual end of insanely high SF
| FANMAG salaries. Market forces will soon close these
| opportunities.
|
| My limited experience tells me people aren't prepared for
| homogenization of salaries across geographies:
| South East England, outside London: 1x London: 2x New
| York: 3x San Francisco: 6x
|
| On making hay: A friend of mine is currently earning around 3-4x
| in Romania paying almost no tax.
| cko wrote:
| What country is your friend's employer based in? I'm America
| living in Romania soon to apply for developer jobs and I see
| time zone and residency status as potential obstacles.
| actuator wrote:
| Umm.. FANMAG pay the same comp for NY and SF. Roughly the same
| for Seattle too.
| nly wrote:
| The multiples I cited are what I tend to observe in the
| industry generally. There aren't really any FANMAGs outside
| of London.
| actuator wrote:
| Ah, your comment referred to FANMAG hence my reply.
|
| > There aren't really any FANMAGs outside of London.
|
| There are. For example, AWS has a development center in
| Cambridge.
| bfung wrote:
| To be a little bit picky, Amazon & Microsoft pay about 1/2 in
| total compensation than the Bay Area companies.
|
| using data from https://www.levels.fyi/
|
| It's been true since 2014, as I check salaries around the web
| to see how my hiring goes, and also for my own opportunities.
| My own records: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BoMvt
| Y_mICEYygy0jXVG...
|
| Point being - Amazon&MS salaries aren't likely to change,
| while Bay Area tech companies, the outflux happening, will
| have to adjust.
| 2W2 wrote:
| I already only do 10 hours of work per week in this pandemic
| WFH. No one seems to notice. I'm L6 at google.
|
| Why not double down and get two "full time" jobs. I've heard
| from my friend in BoA that he works less than 1 hour per day.
|
| TC: 800k
| almost_usual wrote:
| WFH where? Are you paying 400k+ in taxes?
|
| What are you doing with your time? I think I'd go mad if I
| only worked 1hr a day with these lockdowns.
| purplecats wrote:
| nice! how do you manage that?
|
| I have a system that tracks how long I use my work machine
| for, and visualizes it in a bar that is 10 units long.
|
| I got by doing this for about 15 months before they started
| somewhat catching on. Productivity is still the same, but
| some things are leaky.
|
| I'm nowhere near your TC though. I feel like you are a
| smarter, more optimized version of me, but I hope to get
| there someday and that's the path I'm currently on.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Wait until you find out how many people work less than 1 hour
| per day in the office!
| jackcnreturns wrote:
| People having been claiming the death of high salaries for
| years. My employer (FAANG-like) is willing to hire across 3
| hour time zones, we have 20+ headcount to fill, and still can't
| find people fast enough.
|
| Fact is, good engineers that can scale reliable systems, build
| product, work with other teams, mentor junior engineers, etc.
| are still damn hard to find.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Except that employers aren't going to become less picky when
| switching to remote; likely, they will become even more picky
| and will want to improve their employee base since the supply
| has increased and that will be possible where it wasn't before.
| nly wrote:
| It doesn't matter. The top 1% of a large pool is still bigger
| than the top 1% of a small pool, so competition increases for
| the same number of jobs.
| ironmagma wrote:
| However, a company that was previously land-restricted to
| only the 98th percentile (top 2% minus top 1%) now has
| access to the top 1% and will be trying to compete, so
| there are actually more jobs available at the top.
| rightbyte wrote:
| You are forgetting that for each "land restricted"
| company that had 0% 99th percentile hires locally
| available there was x companies having more % somewhere
| else for it to eventually be an distribution.
|
| There is no way you can filter out top 1/100 candidates
| anyway.
| ironmagma wrote:
| All that implies is that the number of top 1% candidates
| remains constant. Of course it does. Some companies had
| more than they needed, but if you take luxury away from a
| man, he will seek it out because he is used to it.
| np32 wrote:
| This assumes talent is geographically homogeneous. IMHO,
| Talent in top cities in the US is better than the one in
| the rest of the countries, and so it goes for other
| countries.
|
| For top US firms, it may well be that there is a better
| pool for top talent, but not THAT much better. I believe it
| would be possible to do inferences from # of non-US citizen
| in FAANGs.
| yhoneycomb wrote:
| If you want to maximize earnings, I almost wonder if it would
| be cheaper to rent the cheapest possible place in a remote area
| with a higher COL/salary, and then just live in a cheap area.
| nly wrote:
| Yes, but until remote work is the norm it's a quality of life
| trade-off. Living in low COL area around London for instance
| is complicated by the fact that the entire commuter zone, for
| certain classes of housing, is basically priced at central
| prices less cost of commuting.
|
| If you want a comfortable family life, with a bunch of kids,
| then you're looking at a long commute.
|
| Housing in the UK is severely messed up though. It's actually
| better in most of the US.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think GP means "rent an address" somewhere expensive,
| claim you live there, and actually live someplace cheap,
| working remotely.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Or let the company pay you the million dollar mortgage
| while you rent in some backwater town.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Similar to how Apple keeps all its intellectual property
| in Grand Cayman I keep everything I know about tech in
| the heart of SF.
| wooger wrote:
| Yeah, at least the US has multiple cities with similar
| pressure on price, the UK market is so unbalanced by
| London.
|
| But anecdotally a huge swath of the younger population is
| moving to Birmingham or Manchester to escape the South East
| price crunch.
|
| It's essentially insane for anyone not on or approaching
| 100k GBP to even bother with the South East at all imo.
| ownagefool wrote:
| The thing about London and the UK generally is the real money
| was historically in contracting. I reckon I was hitting the 6x.
|
| The perm market here has always been silly.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| How much were you hitting? I haven't seen contracts that go
| that high, I'm on 140K base + car allowance now (8K), in
| total I make around 220-215K cash w/ bonuses. employer
| pension is about another 20K or so a year.
|
| IR35 made contracting complicated but even before that I've
| never seen anything that gets you to SV levels of total comp.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| I've heard of contracts of 250K-300K GBP for senior
| architects positions.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| That's around what my role is, but I've never seen
| anything close to 300K p/a contracts for those, at least
| not actually 300K bailable since you don't get that many
| days on those daily rate.
|
| I've seen short term contracts with PS1500-2000 day rates
| but you'll be hard pressed to bill 200-250 days on that
| rate a year.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Folks from the UK should simply vote with their feet instead of
| whining and move to SV.
|
| It's the only way it will change.
| petercooper wrote:
| And that's the reason why UK rates are so low. Relatively few
| people meet the conditions of both wanting to move (for
| cultural or family reasons, say) and being _able_ to move
| (visas being the main impediment here - as someone who
| considered it 15 years ago, moving to the US to work is no
| walk in the park).
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Time to negotiate better visa options for UK engineers!
| petercooper wrote:
| I'm not optimistic, but if the UK and US ever do a trade
| deal, an Australian or Canadian style deal that allows
| more freedom of labor would certainly be interesting.
| yowlingcat wrote:
| > A true shift to remote work, should it happen, spells the
| eventual end of insanely high SF FANMAG salaries
|
| On what grounds? People said the same thing about outsourcing.
| It didn't really change anything. Engineer salary has already
| been bimodal for quite some time. Trying to recruit for the
| upper tier hasn't gotten any easier.
| headcanon wrote:
| That works both ways though. The 6x places might move to, say,
| 4x over time, but the 1x and 2x places will salary upwards to
| compete.
|
| As someone who works in the Midwest USA, I don't see anything
| but upside for people like myself.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| A company that goes fully remote might simply choose to close
| offices in the 4-6x places.
|
| > As someone who works in the Midwest USA, I don't see
| anything but upside for people like myself.
|
| I worked for a large tech company that started going remote
| before COVID. Once they started pulling out of expensive
| cities and opening offices in cheaper foreign countries, it
| became an uphill battle to hire anyone in the United States
| at all. Why hire a $100K Midwest US engineer when you can
| hire two good international engineers for the same salary and
| not have to pay for their health insurance?
|
| There will always be some demand for US engineers and time
| zones put some limits on outsourcing, but opening the
| floodgates to full-remote companies means that even engineers
| in the cheapest US cities are now competing against
| increasingly qualified engineers who will happily take half
| the compensation to do the exact same work.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Indeed. The only folks in trouble are the ones who decide to
| remain in VHCOL geographies.
| SomewhatLikely wrote:
| I'm not sure sure about that. The 6x places can pay that
| because of high revenue per employee. It's not like the 1x
| places will suddenly see a higher revenue per employee to pay
| higher compensation.
| jb775 wrote:
| There's people scattered all over the country making 2x-3x
| rates that _could_ have been earning 6x, but moving to San
| Fran or NYC was never a feasible option. The 6x companies
| will offer them 4x, settle on 4.5x, and both parties are
| happy. It will inevitably drive down the 6x pay, but drive
| up the 1x-3x pay. However, the companies will be the real
| winners though unless there 's some type of coordination
| between all employees...Not only will they have massive
| payroll cost savings, buy they will reduce office rent
| expenses, electricity use, etc.
| chmod600 wrote:
| What happens when that pattern repeats into highly-
| educated parts of Eastern Europe and Southern Asia?
| jld wrote:
| In a world where employees need to show up to 6X Co HQ
| everyday to work, the cost of living and the cost of
| hiring is directly linked (6x). But in a world where
| people can work anywhere, salaries will be disconnected
| from housing costs and we may see a lot of 6x companies
| happily slide lower. It will come down to how many
| employees meet the 6X Co's hiring bar and how good 6X Co
| is at turning new hires into productive employees. If
| there are enough available people above their current
| headcount, the floor will be closer to 1x. How close to
| 1x (2x? 4x? 5.5x?) is hard to know. I don't think it's
| simple to know where the market will fall after a remote
| work revolution.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| If the company comes to you it might. It's like how a Cuban
| can move to Miami and have their "productivity go up", but
| with remote work the employee can stay where they are and
| the company can "move to them". Of course the flip side of
| this is offshoring where the company can raise someone
| else's productivity more cheaply than someone making US
| wages already.
| [deleted]
| cletus wrote:
| You'd be surprised at how few people can do these jobs. An eye
| opening exercise is doing interviews and seeing how many people
| with years of college and/or experience can't code a for loop.
|
| Demand exceeds supply and it's market forces not location that
| is the key driving factor here. Want a data point: London is
| roughly as expensive as NYC or SF yet the Big Tech total
| compensation is 30-40% less than SF/NYC.
|
| I don't believe Big Tech will ever go fully remote. There are
| inherent advantages in physical colocation. I see this as a
| means of satisfying the ever-increasing demand. The Bay Area in
| particular is both largely exhausted in available talent and
| saturated in how many more people can be supported (given
| available housing and infrastructure).
|
| Disclaimer: I work for Facebook and have gone remote.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Those can't-loopers are interviewing for many scores of jobs
| before they wiggle slightly higher on one interview and get
| hired.
|
| The ones who can code interview at a couple places and pick
| from among their offers.
|
| I don't think you can extrapolate from how many terrible
| coders you see in interview pipelines that the industry is
| overall terrible.
|
| The interview selection processes _working_ is what you're
| seeing.
| blub wrote:
| This "can't code a for loop" is a misleading statement given
| the kind of interviews that are typical at e.g. Facebook.
|
| Even if that candidate could code a for loop and a while loop
| and knew the syntax of that programming language by heart and
| knew their algorithms to boot, it's more than likely that
| they would fail the interview anyway.
|
| Complaining about people that can't code loops emphasizes
| that the candidates are incompetent while omitting the also
| very relevant fact that many companies are ridiculously
| difficult to please.
| nly wrote:
| > London is roughly as expensive as NYC or SF yet the Big
| Tech total compensation is 30-40% less than SF/NYC.
|
| I don't know. NY seems to be consistently more expensive
| judging by [0], particularly rent. Overall NY taxes are only
| 1-3% lower from my calculations, so I think overall NY'ers
| don't have it much better. The UK is also particularly
| generous when it comes to tax-advantaged investment and has
| state healthcare.
|
| [0] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
| living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
| cletus wrote:
| I've lived in both NYC and London (although not in London
| for years now). Housing is a hard one to compare. Your link
| mentions city center and out of city center. I'm not sure
| what that means exactly.
|
| The big issue with London is you have to go _far_ to get
| affordable housing and commute times are generally
| terrible. I'm not sure what the picture looks like now with
| Crossrail.
|
| The thing about New York is yes, Manhattan is expensive
| (generally) but affordability within 30 minutes of, say,
| Midtown can be substantially higher. London doesn't really
| have that. You'll see charts showing commuter towns being X
| minutes from Liverpool Street, King's Cross, whatever. My
| experience with London was that those were... unrealistic.
| Or rather they assumed everything went right. And it almost
| never does. Particular if a transfer is involved.
| barrkel wrote:
| My experience of London:
|
| - There's little difference, time-wise, between being
| located in a town on commuter rail, vs somewhere three
| connections away on the tube. If you're inside the M25
| but outside the North / South Circular, you need to be
| very close to a station or you're practically worse off
| than someone living in a town on the railway.
|
| - Motorcycles and scooters, and increasingly, electric
| bicycles, are the big hack. Free or cheap parking, mostly
| unaffected by traffic (filtering), not stuck when the
| trains are cancelled, not constrained by the sparseness
| of the rail and tube network as you get further from the
| centre.
|
| Crossrail isn't open yet (due next year, but I wouldn't
| bet on it); Crossrail 2 is mothballed and probably won't
| be built for a few decades.
|
| I live in a 120sqm 4 bed house with garden in Enfield, 40
| minutes motorcycle commute from Clerkenwell, or 60-80
| minutes by tube and train, depending on delays and timing
| (don't leave enough slack and you miss a connection). We
| used to live in a very small 60 sqm 3 bed house with
| garden in Bow, which was about 30 minutes from
| Clerkenwell. Mortgage now is PS1500; rent (for over 10
| years, nice landlord) used to be PS1300. There's fewer
| food delivery options, and an Uber home is (or was) the
| preferred route after a night out, vs a night bus to Bow,
| but overall it's a higher quality of life.
|
| Of course, with Brexit, I'm headed for Zurich.
| anm89 wrote:
| ok, I think we can all agree not to add any more letters to
| that acronym at this point and just call it big tech.
|
| Although I really would like to get a job at GAFNDMRASDGAMGICZ
| soon.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I'm not stopping until we reach FANDANGO.
| kibibyte wrote:
| My personal favorite that I've seen is FLAMINGASS (Facebook
| Lyft Amazon Microsoft Intel Netflix Google Apple Salesforce
| Square) (at least one of these is definitely a bit of a
| stretch)
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| I think you are overestimating suply of talented ppl. On my lvl
| there's 100 ppl per year in Poland. So it's 100 per 40M. Guess
| in other countries it's similar or less and here programming is
| quite popular.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| > On my lvl there's 100 ppl per year in Poland.
|
| How do you figure that?
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| There's only 2/3 top universities (if you are being
| generous, 1 if honest) that are match worldwide here (have
| people doing substantial research, funding valuable
| companies or just working in FANGs) producing around 100
| graduates per year (combined). This gives me some ballpark
| estimate.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| I myself have a CS degree from a Polish university that's
| regularly in top1-top3 of the rankings. I don't think it
| means that much. We've had a fair share of people who
| didn't enjoy the work that much and did bare minimum. On
| the other hand, I've worked with plenty of people from
| lower ranked universities who didn't graduate in CS (but,
| for example in Maths or Physics) who are very strong
| contributors. The truth is that university pedigree is
| not a definitive indicator of on the job performance.
|
| BTW (unrelated) - I think all Polish universities are a
| joke when it comes to CS. I've never heard of either one
| of them making you write a compiler or an OS or a
| database engine from scratch as a part of taking a
| course, while it seems fairly standard on top US
| universities. Instead, the workload is superficial and
| skews towards semester-long BS projects that prepare you
| for run-of-the-mill jobs in industry (web dev, big data
| etc.). Anyone who expected hands-on grappling with hard
| CS problems will be disappointed. The reason for that is
| because none of the professors, barring maybe a few
| exceptions, are doing any meaningful research, so they
| have no understanding of the state of the art.
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| I also don't think degree means much but anyone with some
| curiosity gets one here as it's free, so it's still good
| estimate. Even if you add all outliers, physics and math
| students then you get max 3x my estimation.
|
| > Anyone who expected hands-on grappling with hard CS
| problems will be disappointed.
|
| Those people are above my lvl and I estimate them to be
| max 30 per year.
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| This means that India, almost most populus country on earth
| has around ~3300 per year, correcting for internet/computer
| access in 20 years ago it's probably 1/3 of that.
| hahahahe wrote:
| If anything this is going to drain talent from other places
| toward traditional big techs. WFH greatly increased talent pool
| for top payers.
| freebee56 wrote:
| How is he acomplishing that? You couldn't do that in the US
| unless you had a C2C contract
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Yep people who work remote from a low COL area will benefit now
| and will benefit possibly even more once market pressure would
| start ramping up.
|
| Whilst everyone wants to get paid as much as possible getting
| paid period is even better.
|
| If you have a competitive advantage that would increase the
| likelihood of them making you an offer by asking for less
| because your housing costs only 50-25% of what it would in SV
| you'll use eventually.
|
| And whilst yes in a perfect world everyone would understand
| that they are eventually playing themselves but this is
| essentially the prisoners dilemma on a bigger scale and someone
| will flinch eventually and then the race to the bottom will
| start.
|
| Eventually we may bounce back again towards working from a
| centralized location and then history will just repeat itself.
| Bombthecat wrote:
| My firm works with a huge telecom company, some 15 years or
| so.
|
| The first time i saw them going from central to decentral i
| was line :why? My colleagues, working longer with them, where
| like : meh its not the first time.
|
| They go from central to decentral every five or so years for
| two reasons : getting rid of old workers, and hiring cheaper
| new workers.
|
| They will probably do the same every few years..
| lanevorockz wrote:
| That is true, it might be the end of the sustainability of
| overpopulated cities ...
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Funny because cities are more efficient from an energy and
| carbon footprint perspective. The only thing that makes it
| unsustainable is that some cities haven't figured out how to
| make it so everyone who should abbe able to live there can
| afford it
| ramblerman wrote:
| > some cities haven't figured out how to make it so
| everyone who should abbe able to live there can afford it
|
| Barcelona comes close. Perhaps not so much these days, but
| its a city that was really built with that in mind. And
| some of that persists.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Japan doesn't do too badly either. Some brief research is
| showing me that the configuration of apartment we would
| recognize as a 2BR would rent for something like $1200 or
| less in a lot of the Tokyo metro.
| wooger wrote:
| They're already more efficient though, and there's no
| benefit to the current residents (tech rich or not) from
| massive incoming population growth.
|
| There won't be equivalent investment in services,
| recreation, leisure facilities to cope, so they'll degrade.
| imtringued wrote:
| >There won't be equivalent investment in services,
| recreation, leisure facilities to cope, so they'll
| degrade.
|
| That's what happens in suburbia. You build a lot of
| infrastructure for very few people. That infrastructure
| was partly funded by private companies or federal
| government incentives. Once you have to collect property
| taxes and maintain the infrastructure you've overburdened
| yourself and can no longer meet your obligations
| precisely because there are not enough people living in
| that area.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| The scope of what I'm talking about is bigger than yours.
| Cities are more efficient, and we need to move more
| people into them (not just the ones that are big right
| now, just to cities in general) to give ourselves a
| better shot at keeping our planet habitable in the long
| run.
|
| To your second point - degradation of infrastructure is
| not an issues with cities, it's an issue with management
| and investment. On a practical level, with additional
| people should come additional industry and tax revenue
| which should in turn allow metropolitan areas to keep
| pace infra-wise.
| humanrebar wrote:
| It's not that complicated. Build more housing and better
| transportation options. If particular kinds of businesses
| have a hard time thriving (like grocers), actually pay
| attention to what kills those businesses and fix it. It's
| often some sort of overboard regulation like zoning.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _It 's not that complicated._
|
| On paper.
| mdtusz wrote:
| It really isn't all that complicated though, and just
| takes money to fix the urban planning mistakes that have
| been made in many metropolitan cities.
|
| Montreal is probably the most livable "big" city in North
| America, and it's mostly because of three things:
|
| 1. Excellent transportation. The metro is for the most
| part consistent, extremely affordable (it's ~$85/month,
| and about half that for students and youth), safe, and
| works as a great mainline transport. Busses are also very
| frequent - most coming at most 15 minutes apart during
| regular hours, and usually every half hour or so past
| 1am. You can get almost anywhere in the city in an hour
| or less using public transit.
|
| 2. Renters are protected. The Regie Du Logement heavily
| favours renters in housing related disputes, and as such,
| the prices also favour renters. Most individuals pay
| $1000 or less in rent, for entirely adequate housing, and
| if they want to move, it's almost certainly an option.
|
| 3. Permissive zoning. With the exception of the downtown
| core, there are grocery stores and pharmacies everywhere.
| Combined with depanneurs (corner stores) being within
| 500m of just about any point in the city, you are never
| far from milk, eggs, bread, beer, wine, and other
| necessities. Combined with businesses themselves being
| able to set up shop nearly anywhere as well. Ground floor
| business with residential above is the norm for nearly
| all "main" streets.
|
| Yes, there are difficult things for existing cities to
| recreate, but it is almost entirely due to poor urban
| planning choices being made by the municipal (or
| state/provincial) powers that be.
| michael1999 wrote:
| All true, but don't underestimate the impact of the
| FLQ/PQ crisis. Several hundred thousand people moved from
| Montreal in the 90s, and immigration and money shifted to
| Toronto and Vancouver. Montreal was a renters market for
| 2 decades as a result, and Toronto experienced a boom
| that hasn't stopped since.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| I have to point out here the co-existence of permissive
| zoning AND rent protection. This is the way.
|
| I'm not sure if rent control exists in Montreal, but
| advocacy organizations in US metros often push rent
| control as a standalone solution to various housing
| crises. But rent control requires the existence of a
| decently functional housing market to do its job
| correctly.
| imtringued wrote:
| Yes, I have seen a lot of US cities that used rent
| control to do nothing except reduce accountability. You
| can build a decently functional housing market without
| rent control. But with rent control you don't need to
| build a functional housing market so the suffering
| continues.
| mywittyname wrote:
| How dare you make housing affordable. I just spent 20x
| the median annual American salary on this house, and
| _now_ you want to make it affordable?
|
| /s
| imtringued wrote:
| One day the fed will do the unbelievable, it will raise
| interest rates and all those mortgages will be
| underwater.
| syshum wrote:
| That is only true in a non-remote work environment where
| people would have to commute into office building for work
|
| if everyone is commuting 5 feet to a home office then the
| efficiency of rural vs urban becomes less disparate
|
| Add in Solar power and it becomes even less so
|
| of course there still is some in the delivery of supplies,
| but even these can be some what mitigated to where the
| differences are minor
| pnutjam wrote:
| Utilities, deliveries, etc... Urban areas are way better
| in many ways.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Heck just roads. At a certain level of rural you are
| paving and patching 10 miles of road per person. In the
| city you are paving like a few feet per person.
| adamcstephens wrote:
| Per capita, rural and suburban are much less efficient
| and more costly. Infrastructure is orders of magnitude
| more expensive and resource demanding to build as
| distances spread. Water, sewer, electricity, internet,
| roads, etc. That's without even looking at the supplies
| and movement of people.
|
| Sure, if you can afford to build yourself a self
| sufficient off grid home, you may perceive it as more
| efficient in day to day costs.
| jhpriestley wrote:
| Walnut creek (suburban city near San Francisco) budget is
| about $1500 per resident, Contra Costa county, which
| contains Walnut Creek, spends about $3500 per resident.
| San Francisco is like $14000 per resident.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| We're not talking about taxes, but environmental cost.
| San Francisco provides a bunch of (human) services walnut
| creek does not.
|
| As one example, muni costs money and sf pays more for
| BART than WC does. These are still cheaper and more
| environmentally efficient than everyone owning cars.
| jhpriestley wrote:
| If Walnut Creek paid an extra $9000/year for each
| resident then they could easily offset whatever extra
| environmental cost. Carbon offsets etc are not all that
| expensive.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| 1. Carbon offsets do not reduce emissions
|
| 2. Bart and muni are not the majority of the $9000
| difference. The majority of the cost is various social
| services. The actual cost of muni per sf resident is
| something like $500, which is still significant (muni is
| not a great rapid transit system), but that's far less
| than the cost of carbon offsets for every resident.
| ilkan wrote:
| There's not enough tax base to support infrastructure
| like installing broadband, repairing and winter upkeep of
| roads and electric grid, fire stations, hospitals. Even
| businesses like nursing homes which one expects would
| benefit from lower property costs do not prosper due to
| lack of population and supportive medical services. Lower
| COL areas are net users of tax revenue from the country
| due to inefficiency, cities are net generators to the
| country.
| riversflow wrote:
| That's only a result of the resources made available by
| the inhabitation of rural lands being under-valued on the
| market due to subsidies. Say goodbye to affordable food
| prices if we don't subsidize rural locales.
| imtringued wrote:
| If you have to subsidize something, you only want to
| subsidize as much as necessary. Farmers can get their
| subsidies. A remote worker moving out of SF with a fat
| paycheck doesn't need the subsidy.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| You're ignoring the fact that people take up space.
|
| Every single cabin in the woods running off solar used to
| be an area with trees.
|
| EDIT: And don't even get me started on those cabin
| dwellers buying cats and letting them roam the forest
| like the invasive bird and mammal eating machine that
| they are.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Where would people go? Underpopulated cities? Rapidly expand
| towns?
| pault wrote:
| There is a massive population outflow from high COL coastal
| cities to smaller interior cities happening right now. SF,
| NY, LA, and Seattle are all shrinking.
| harrydehal wrote:
| Here's a great, interactive map based on Redfin data:
|
| https://www.redfin.com/news/data-center/migration/
| h0l0cube wrote:
| > A true shift to remote work, should it happen, spells the
| eventual end of insanely high SF FANMAG salaries.
|
| ... and the beginning of a new wave of entrepreneurship. The
| best talent goes towards companies that are too big to take
| risks. If you're ultra-competent, and the fat juicy wages
| aren't there to tie your resources on maintaining the status
| quo at some giant tech firm, maybe taking a punt on your own
| product (or teaming up with a friend) might be a little more
| appealing.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| This is why it will always be worth paying inflated salaries
| for FAANG companies. Taking all the top talent is a moat.
| onion2k wrote:
| I don't think any company can afford to employ a
| significant percentage of the world's tech workers. Google
| has 150,000 staff, and even if half of them are developers
| that's only about 0.25% of the number of developers
| globally. Employing people as a moat only works within a
| large city (or a few dozen large cities). It can't be done
| if people can work from anywhere.
| lostcolony wrote:
| They don't need to. They just need to set the market rate
| so that start ups can't easily hire or retain the best;
| they're all competing to get into FAANGs, or failing
| that, companies that have the coffers to be second tier.
| The startup is left with the people willing to take a pay
| cut.
| r7f7rhr wrote:
| What's the real pool though? Most of the world's
| developers are either trash compared to the standard or
| working in a trash environment like Europe. It's
| basically SEA and the US in the leagues that matter which
| is a much smaller pool.
| onion2k wrote:
| I'm in Europe (geographically anyway, technically the UK
| isn't in Europe right now). It isn't trash but I'd gladly
| swap my job for a remote one that pays NY wages.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| What makes you think their salaries are inflated and others
| are not lowballing?
| rorykoehler wrote:
| I meant inflated relative to the mean. In principle I
| agree with your sentiment.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Until their competitors are providing the same products for
| less, or they are forcibly broken up by the government.
| nhance wrote:
| I've run a smart consulting business for 16 years now. I've
| watched over the years as many I've worked with have gone
| to FAANG.
|
| There may be opportunity costs involved, but there is no
| way FAANG can grab all of the top talent. Some of it is
| going to make its own way simply because they want to write
| their own rules.
| mywittyname wrote:
| You don't need to grab all of the top talent, just enough
| to keep them from coalescing into a threat.
|
| The few that slip by get acquir-hired in a few years.
| pxue wrote:
| Extremely relevant for Canadian talent pools. Bleed to
| SF/Bay area is real.
| syshum wrote:
| Not even homogenization, for the US this will be the precurser
| to the next round of Layoff's, and all those people that took
| part in the #LearnToCode and other movements to retrain people
| displaced from other employment into Programming jobs / office
| style jobs are going to be shocked when their nice remote job
| is outsourced to another nation.
|
| Round 1 was the manufacturing Sector, Round 2 will be the
| office sector.
|
| Economically the US is on a down hill path, and there is not a
| money printer large enough to fix this problem
| tester34 wrote:
| I hope you're right
|
| That's what I'm looking for - increasing salary 4 times for
| similar stuff while having living costs of 400-500 USD /
| month
| ilkan wrote:
| Many companies tried and failed since the 90's, because most
| coampanies' software dev is a core group of skilled people
| using vague specifications to build a product for their first
| time.
| superbcarrot wrote:
| I still think that remote in general won't be that prevalent
| after covid. Remote with SF/NY salaries? I seriously doubt that
| they will keep this up long term or that many companies will do
| the same.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| Access to world class talent, not paying for office space and
| greatly improved corporate culture all seem like things that
| are going to stick. Every new startup I've seen in the past
| year has been 100% remote since day one.
| superbcarrot wrote:
| You're right about the reduced cost but I can't agree that
| remote leads to improved corporate culture (that's largely
| personal preference though).
|
| > Every new startup I've seen in the past year has been 100%
| remote since day one.
|
| Any reasonable company that had the option to work remotely
| has done so over the past year, it's hardly a trend that you
| can project into the future.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| I'm saying that new companies that were remote from day one
| will never be non-remote. They're not going to go buy a
| bunch of office space and force their disparate workforce
| to relocate. All hiring has been remote the past year,
| that's not really reversible.
| ghaff wrote:
| Instead, they'll do like Basecamp and get people together
| a couple times a year.
|
| If you hired people on the basis of being remote and
| they're all over the place, if at the end of 2021 you
| tell them they all have to relocate to San Francisco,
| expect to hear a whole lot of big "Nope"s.
| superbcarrot wrote:
| It shouldn't be some switcharoo that the company pulls
| off anyway. Every company that I've talked in the past
| year has clarified whether they are remote indefinitely
| or remote only while the pandemic lasts.
| dustinmoris wrote:
| That's the only right way.
|
| Talent is still scarce, even remote. There is not nearly enough
| good developers out there to fill all the demand. Employers who
| try to tell you differently in order to cut pay for going remote
| cheat you out of the salary which a good dev deserves.
|
| I've explained it in great detail here:
|
| https://dusted.codes/equal-pay-for-equal-work
| coldcode wrote:
| This is making finding people for our (large but non tech)
| company (not in a high tech area) very difficult; we never paid
| those kind of salaries (cost of living here is much lower) but
| now you no longer need to be local to work for us, so we have to
| compete with these high paying companies which our company cannot
| afford to. It takes the location requirements out of the picture
| entirely. This is going to kill SF and to a lesser extant, NY, to
| no longer have these high tax paying employees, but also ruin the
| work environment elsewhere with now super affluent employees
| living in low cost but desirable locations.
| xtracto wrote:
| It is already happening in Mexico (in GDL where I live at
| least): The city has been a "tech hub" for a good 10 to 15
| years with growing presence of technology firms (Oracle, IBM,
| HP, Tata, HCL, Cognizant, Intel, plus several small startups),
| paying roughly 1/3rd of the price per talent. In the last year,
| we have seen an increasing number of employees moving to remote
| jobs for American companies that decide to pay 1/2 the price
| per talent. This is _a lot_ of money for locals and still a 50%
| saving for US companies.
|
| The bad thing is that, the start-up culture that was being
| formed here is starting to disappear. I know several CTO or
| CEOs friends who lost developers because they cannot compete
| with those salaries (paying in USD) when they are charging in
| MXN.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > This is making finding people for our (large but non tech)
| company (not in a high tech area) very difficult; we never paid
| those kind of salaries (cost of living here is much lower) but
| now you no longer need to be local to work for us, so we have
| to compete with these high paying companies which our company
| cannot afford to
|
| It's simple: Pay more.
|
| Maybe it's time for a new funding round.
| auiya wrote:
| > This is going to kill SF and to a lesser extant, NY, to no
| longer have these high tax paying employees.
|
| Sounds like a simple market correction, since those two cities
| have been extreme outliers for quite some time.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It sounds like you don't think people doing the same job you do
| don't deserve the same pay.
|
| It comes across as classism to be honest, looking down your
| nose at people because they don't live in the most expensive
| areas of the country.
| tpetry wrote:
| You do understand this wrong! The message is that any
| startup/company not in the valley will have a hard time
| finding employees. Until now every company paid a salary
| fitted for the locale the company is in: You are in an area
| with a low cost of living you are paid a lower salary than
| elsewhere.
|
| But from now on you can get the inflated valley salaries from
| everywhere. They are so high because cost of living is very
| high and competition with other companies too.
|
| But from now on your potential new employees can choose to
| work for your local company or some fang company for a much
| higher salary. And many companies will not be able to pay
| these high salaries.
|
| There is a world outside of investor money burning valley
| startups and the most profitable software companies on the
| world. And they may have a big problem now.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| The idea of a company paying based on the cost of the
| locale is just another way of saying "what's the lowest we
| can pay people for these skills compared to what else they
| can get locally?" and divorced from how much value they
| bring to the company. Sadly, for these companies, local
| just got a whole lot broader and they will need to pay more
| to get the talent they need to stay competitive.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| I assume fair amount of these startups service Mexican
| market and local people. What do you expect them to do,
| charge locals the US prices? If you don't have that
| insane SV investor money to burn it makes them struggle.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| In your life, I'm sure you try to pay as low as you can
| for things. Have you ever said 'no, I will pay more for
| this car because its value to my life is higher than
| $10k' ?
|
| Remote work is great, because it's making a more free-
| market. It's almost like we immediately recovered the
| mobility that the population used to have overnight.
|
| This will also mean that you are competing with 10x more
| people, so wages may go down because of that fact.
| superbcarrot wrote:
| > But from now on you can get the inflated valley salaries
| from everywhere.
|
| You can't. Spotify are an exception and I doubt that
| they'll keep this up long term or that many companies will
| follow.
|
| And I think that that people overestimate these effects in
| general - the most likely outcome is that the salary
| distribution gets smoothed over to some extent i.e. big-
| city salaries go down a bit (or don't rise as high and as
| fast), remote and lower-cost areas see some increase in
| salaries but to a limited extent. But at the end of the day
| SV and big cities will still offer the best compensation,
| just with a smaller delta between them and the rest of the
| market.
| ghaff wrote:
| To the degree that true remote becomes more prevalent (a
| lot of people will be more in the 1-2 days/week commute
| camp), you probably see a new equilibrium over time as
| you say. Even if companies are hesitant to actually cut
| salaries, given how contentious that is, new hire offers
| in high CoL areas start coming in a bit lower and raises
| get skinnier while offers to people living in Little Rock
| are very generous for the area. You still have
| disparities but there's more of a nationwide equilibrium.
| [deleted]
| humanrebar wrote:
| Some business models would need to adjust if pay outside of
| tech centers started going up, yes. Possibly some will have
| to be abandoned entirely.
|
| My instinct is that if a tech problem doesn't have a fairly
| high upside, though (5-10x), it already has a tenuous
| business model given how famously risky technology projects
| are. It's very hard to impossible to consistently complete
| them as estimated and budgeted. Not to mention actually
| getting folks to adopt the finished product.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| > But from now on you can get the inflated valley salaries
| from everywhere. They are so high because cost of living is
| very high and competition with other companies too
|
| You have it backwards. Silicon Valley salaries are not
| "inflated" nor are they unreasonably high. In fact even at
| large FAANG companies, engineers are _underpaid_ relative
| to actual revenue contribution, it's just that competition
| drives those companies to pay closer to a fair value wage.
|
| Across the US, engineers are massively _underpaid_ due to
| specious rent-seeking policies by employers who tether pay
| to cost of living (treating it like an allowance for
| employees instead of an earned wage).
|
| This change where remote employees can earn the same high
| salary based on their value instead of being a
| paternalistic allowance based on their employer's opinion
| of where they live and what they should be allowed to
| afford, it is a good thing, because all these rent-seeking
| companies acting like vampires on low-wage suppression due
| to location are going to have to radically change, get rid
| of their paternalistic attitudes, and start being fair with
| employees.
| sedachv wrote:
| > Silicon Valley salaries are not "inflated" nor are they
| unreasonably high.
|
| More people need to understand this. Even here on HN most
| people appear innumerate. A round number like a $100,000
| salary might have seemed like a large amount of money in
| the year 2000. There has been 55% inflation in the
| meantime.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| What will happen to all the employees at companies who
| are not able to leverage them to create as much value as
| FAANG companies can? ie. every other company that isn't a
| global tech behemoth?
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| I deny your premise. All those companies can and already
| do leverage software engineering talent for the same
| multipliers or orders of magnitude impact on revenue that
| tech companies get out of it.
|
| They are just using rent seeking opportunities to
| disingenuously pay uncompetitive salaries and reap
| surplus for executive pay.
|
| Either those companies will get better management and
| leaders who successfully rebuild the business model to
| account for this, or else executive and manager pay will
| go way down to reflect the reality that competition for
| high leverage software talent takes away the cushy
| executive surplus, or else the market in general will
| deem the company to be unwanted and not useful and it
| will decay out of business or get acquired.
|
| The company has no right or expectation for things to
| stay in the current unfair state. The "cost of living
| wage" free lunch is ending, so adapt or fold.
| m4tthumphrey wrote:
| Recruiting is proving insanely difficult right now. We are based
| just outside of London and have been offering "local remote" (1
| day in week office generally) for about 4 years now. Candidates
| were always hard to attract (salary and office location) but
| offering remote work 4 days a week really helped. Now, that perk
| is now a norm so access to even remotely (no pun intended)
| skilled candidates is next to impossible.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| It shouldn't be that hard. I'd drop the one day a week in
| office requirement and make sure you're paying market rates
| (e.g. PS100k+ for mid level devs). Lots of good people looking
| to go fully remote right now.
| m4tthumphrey wrote:
| PS100k for web dev does not happen outside London in UK.
| Barely half that.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| It's definitely the solution to the problem you're having:
|
| > Recruiting is proving insanely difficult right now.
|
| If you pay a competitive rate, people will work for you.
| You have to realize that now you're competing with 10X more
| remote first companies who will hire people who live
| locally to you.
| ghaff wrote:
| Possibly. Although the surveys I've seen show something like
| 75% of employees want to come into an office at least one day
| per week. Of course 25% is still a lot of people and opens up
| options considerably for someone that doesn't want to live
| near a city or at least near your city. Monthly team off-
| sites are also an issue if you don't mind paying for some
| travel/hotel.
| m4tthumphrey wrote:
| This is a definitely a polarising issue. Some devs prefer
| to come in to be social, some prefer the office environment
| and others prefer it at home for the flexibility or are
| just more productive at home (me included).
| ghaff wrote:
| I expect those who can will seek out workplaces that
| conform to their preferences. Those who want a bustling
| office won't have that if none of their teammates comes
| in on a regular basis. And someone who lives a 2 hour
| drive from the office, much less someone who wants to
| move out to the mountains, will deeply resent teammates
| who constantly bug them to come into the office more
| often.
| barrkel wrote:
| Mid level devs are more like PS70-80k. Although actual
| quality varies.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| > (e.g. PS100k+ for mid level devs)
|
| You wish. In London's fintech maybe.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| I'm talking about global dev salaries. Those London based
| devs can now easily get SV remote jobs and the matching
| salaries.
|
| It's not that SV salaries are unusually high, it's that
| most places artificially depress dev salaries. I think
| we'll see the elimination of layers of over paid management
| with all that money being captured by developers.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| In my opinion the artificial bubble is more the SV-type
| salaries.
|
| Compare developers salaries with similarly
| educated/skilled engineers in other disciplines
| (mechanical, electrical, aerospace, civil...), you'll see
| that SV developers are the outlier.
|
| The reality is that on the global market you can get a
| good mid-level dev from a first-world country for half
| that price. And it's not artificial, it's just the market
| at play.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| I think you're underestimating the amount of investment
| flowing in to tech companies right now. There's massive
| VC overhang with billions of dollars more to invest than
| there are opportunities. Devs are going to capture a lot
| of that money. It's the tech industry that's the future,
| the rest have just yet to catch up.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| You are wrong. The revenue impact of more manufacturing
| heavy and device heavy industries is lower for those
| engineers - that's just how the overhead of other
| engineering and biotech companies work.
|
| Software is fundamentally different and the revenue
| impact can be multiples or even orders of magnitude
| higher, in really any industry or company type.
|
| Software engineers, even in Silicon valley, are
| _underpaid_ relative to revenue or profit contributions.
|
| Paternalistic and entitled employers in other areas have
| milked the opportunity for rent seeking by suppressing
| wages due to disingenuous cost of living policies for a
| long time. Finally workers have options that let them
| say, "no, I just won't take your poor pay job. I don't
| care that _you think_ someone in Kansas City or Wyoming
| should earn X% less for doing the exact same job, and I
| won't accept that anti-worker paternalism. Improve your
| offer or get lost."
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Employees aren't paid based off the value they provide,
| they're paid the least the company thinks they can pay to
| get an acceptable worker to fill he position.
| cccc4alll wrote:
| This is the right move. All FAANG companies will have to fall in
| line quick.
|
| All the nonsense about location based COL salary adjustments are
| based on pure HR fantasy.
|
| High performance engineers are valuable and rare.
|
| All this talk about more talent being available remote to
| companies and companies can demand salaries lower miss out on the
| other aspect.
|
| More companies are now available to high performance engineers.
| High performers can now negotiate higher salary with multiple
| companies for remote positions.
|
| It will be upward feedback loop, pushing higher salary offers for
| higher performers.
| auiya wrote:
| It will be both. The higher performers will have higher
| employer pool availability driving demand up, the entry-level
| performers will have higher competition barriers to entry from
| peers.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-02-15 23:01 UTC)