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Ask HN: What a universal remote job salary should be?

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Re: Ask HN: What a universal remote job salary should be?

#41

Post by segmondy »

offtop5 wrote: post #8
yulaow wrote: post #6

A thing I never understood is, what happens if, let's say, I stay in a HCOL area until I am doing interviews (eg Switzerland) and then when hired I move back instantly to a LCOL area (eg Albania): what happens now to my salary? Do I get a cut just because I decided to move? And what if I am a digital nomad and know I want to change nation in which I stay every x months?

Even if, why not just legally live of your uncle who has an apartment in San Francisco, while you defacto live in South Alabama. With remote jobs I don't understand why someone living in a cheaper City should get less.

There's nothing legal about that. If you claim that you live in SF to get SF salary but live in Alabama. You are committing tax fraud. You need to file state taxes based on your location. If you live in both places, tax forms allows you to set how long you have lived in both places. You will be earning the benefits of Alabama but paying no tax to them. That's why it's not legal, so if you wish to be legal you shouldn't lie about your location. Also your unemployment tax will be paid to SF and not to say Mobile, Alabama. Outside of taxes, different states have different rules on say over time, paternity leave, termination process, non-compete, discrimination laws that companies need to be compliant with.

You're not getting less, the world doesn't have a global currency with fixed price. It's all about earning power. If a company has an office in Alabama, and another office in San Francisco and another in Accra, Ghana. Employees won't expect to be paid the same, so why should they expect the same because they are remote?

Re: Ask HN: What a universal remote job salary should be?

#42

Post by muzani »

notsag-hn wrote: post #15

Living in a poor country shouldn't be a reason to get a low rate. But this is really common, mostly because companies look for people in third-world countries to get the same level of employees waaay cheaper. I'm from Uruguay and have had interviewers thinking they're doing me a favor for extending me an offer in USD, even if it's ridiculously low for my experience. In the end it depends on how the potential employee…

I live in Malaysia. I'm getting paid USD24k annually right now. If someone wants to offer USD40k, I'd take it right away even if it's the lower end of the US standard rates.

At some point, you're competing with other remote offers though.

Re: Ask HN: What a universal remote job salary should be?

#43

Post by notsag-hn »

g3rv4 wrote: post #37
g3rv4 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ha, I'm also from Uruguay. A couple months ago I received 3 offers. One of them explained their offer was "the salary from Philadelphia adjusted to the local market". The other two offers where comparable to what I've been making (similar to a US salary). I didn't go for the "local-market adjusted" one. The only thing they're doing is missing on some talent, but that could be ok for them.

Also: nice to see you here as well, this is a small scene :P it took me a bit to recognize you!

hahha no waaay who are you?

Re: Ask HN: What a universal remote job salary should be?

#44

Post by notsag-hn »

brokenkebab wrote: post #40
notsag-hn wrote: post #15

Living in a poor country shouldn't be a reason to get a low rate. But this is really common, mostly because companies look for people in third-world countries to get the same level of employees waaay cheaper. I'm from Uruguay and have had interviewers thinking they're doing me a favor for extending me an offer in USD, even if it's ridiculously low for my experience. In the end it depends on how the potential employee…

In most countries to hire a remote foreigner requires to jump over some legal, and accounting complications. So yes, they do it because they want to find a cheaper deal abroad. It's pretty much the only reason why it makes sense for them, besides searching for very rare skills. And there's nothing wrong with it. Nobody is prohibited to try to negotiate the same rate as in an expensive city in US, and good for you if…

Sometimes it's not just about finding people that work for less money, it's because they know there's also talent out there. Even for companies that pay good salaries it's very hard to hire local senior-ish engineers, most of them already have a job, so they have to hire somewhere else.

Re: Ask HN: What a universal remote job salary should be?

#45

Post by notsag-hn »

muzani wrote: post #42
notsag-hn wrote: post #15

Living in a poor country shouldn't be a reason to get a low rate. But this is really common, mostly because companies look for people in third-world countries to get the same level of employees waaay cheaper. I'm from Uruguay and have had interviewers thinking they're doing me a favor for extending me an offer in USD, even if it's ridiculously low for my experience. In the end it depends on how the potential employee…

I live in Malaysia. I'm getting paid USD24k annually right now. If someone wants to offer USD40k, I'd take it right away even if it's the lower end of the US standard rates. At some point, you're competing with other remote offers though.

Totally, and probably from there it would be easier to find a 60-70k job. That's why I think assuming people from "poor countries" will be necessarily cheaper is a huge misconception

Re: Ask HN: What a universal remote job salary should be?

#46

Post by throwaway823882 »

We have that now and it's called the market-based salary.

> if we took out rent from the equation

Then we only need to consider

  - employee's age
  - employee's education
  - employee's experience
  - industry
  - job requirements
  - local, state, federal taxes (income, sales, excise, tariff, etc)
  - number of family members supported
  - public transportation availability
  - local auto insurance premiums
  - local school district
  - local cost of food
  - local cost of health care
  - local cost of child care
  - union requirements
  - hours working
  - pay period
  - local/national requirements for paid/unpaid vacation / sick days
  - inflation
  - if employee would rather own a home than rent:
    - avg local property taxes
    - avg local homeowners insurance (basic, flood, fire, earthquake, tornado)

Re: Ask HN: What a universal remote job salary should be?

#47

Post by smt88 »

notsag-hn wrote: post #39
smt88 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you aren't able to estimate how much value somebody would bring to the team before hiring them, you maybe should oil your hiring process a bit. I can't interview someone for a few hours and predict how they will be as an employee. No one can. Sometimes you hire people and are under-paying them, sometimes you're over-paying them. > assuming you can trust somebody more or less depending on their legal jurisdiction…

You may underpay or overpay people, that can also happen with local people. I bet you don't leave much space for overpaying a foreigner if they are already getting 50% of what a local would get. Regarding the criminal related comment, you should first and foremost trust and empower your employees independently of where they come from. And then you should also have controls in place to make it really difficult to stea…

> I bet you don't leave much space for overpaying a foreigner if they are already getting 50% of what a local would get.

They are getting 50% of what a very senior dev would get.

They each make 4x the market rate for their country for this type of work (based on Upwork rates), which is 27x the average salary there.

> Regarding the criminal related comment, you should first and foremost trust and empower your employees independently of where they come from. And then you should also have controls in place to make it really difficult to steal your clients' money.

Thank you for the philosophy lesson. Do you have experience hiring people from many countries, or is this theoretical for you? It isn't theoretical for me.

What you are saying is exactly what I do. I trust all of my employees completely, but literally everyone who is betrayed made a mistake in trusting someone. I am not arrogant enough to say that my trust is 100% correct.

So how do I make it difficult for people to steal money? I rely on my country's law enforcement.

It is impossible to keep devs away from at least some sensitive data, like API keys. The "control" you're talking about is partly to hire people who have more incentive not to steal than to steal.

Re: Ask HN: What a universal remote job salary should be?

#48

Post by notsag-hn »

smt88 wrote: post #47
notsag-hn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may underpay or overpay people, that can also happen with local people. I bet you don't leave much space for overpaying a foreigner if they are already getting 50% of what a local would get. Regarding the criminal related comment, you should first and foremost trust and empower your employees independently of where they come from. And then you should also have controls in place to make it really difficult to stea…

> I bet you don't leave much space for overpaying a foreigner if they are already getting 50% of what a local would get. They are getting 50% of what a very senior dev would get. They each make 4x the market rate for their country for this type of work (based on Upwork rates), which is 27x the average salary there. > Regarding the criminal related comment, you should first and foremost trust and empower your employee…

If that impersonal approach works for you and everybody is happy with it, that's fantastic.

I haven't hired myself but I have worked with people from all over the world with different backgrounds for many years and have had literally zero close cases of anybody misusing an API key on their benefit for whatever reason. It wouldn't have made any sense for them to do so.

And the control I talked about is security logging, monitoring, alerting systems, etc. I've worked for a banking company and also for a fintech one and all the money movement operations were duly logged and monitored. Literally nobody would risk doing anything malicious in an environment like that plus people are happy with their salaries

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