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Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

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Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#111

Post by Bahamut »

chris11 wrote: post #88
Bahamut wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can verify - I turned down an opportunity for lead frontend work a year ago for $350k-400k (a lot of compensation in stock/bonuses, so it was variable), and that wasn't even at a big tech company. (For the curious, I opted for tremendous work-life balance instead)

Where are you currently in your career? I'm kind of curious, because I never hear of compensation packages normally going up that high. So I'm wondering what skills companies are looking for at that price.

At that point, I was 2 1/2 years in - that was a year ago. That was a rarity I think, although there are numerous stories of Netflix paying $300k+ now.

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#112

Post by rco8786 »

source99 wrote: post #99
rco8786 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do a lot better then a 1Br on a 300k salary in the Bay Area. Even in the most expensive parts.

Just for fun: $300K pre tax. Tax rate of 40% $180K after taxes High Quality Child Care for 2 Children = $6K per month or $72K / year 108K after childcare 3Br house in SF - http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/hhh?search_distance=4&pos... Call it $6K / month or $72K per year $36K left after housing + Childcare + taxes. $3K / month for transportation, food, clothing, vacations. Good luck...

Effective tax rate would come out to about $100k, not 180. Income tax brackets are marginal... https://www.taxact.com/tools/tax-bracket-calculator.asp and https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator#CZ1Kw...

You also just kinda snuck in a random 72k/year for something that was never discussed.

How about a spouse who also works? Would likely cover that 72k right there. 300k was a single person's income in the context above.

How about public school? How about just not sending them to the most expensive private schools possible?

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#113

Post by hueving »

branchless wrote: post #79
wrong_variable wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its a lot more complex than that. If the cost of beef was increased 4x for whatever reason, then most people would just switch their preference for meat. There are ofcourse a lot of greedy companies. But a lot of the time the consumer demands a price point for software product, many startups cannot afford to pay 400K to developers. I think its not a reflection of how difficult it might be to create software b…

The system of usury against land ensures that land costs adapt to absorb all available income after food/clothing/energy costs have been accounted for. Why is silicon valley more expensive to rent in? Because people came with money and the banks agreed to loan at a multiple of the new wage ceiling. If wages increase x4 guess what will happen? We need to stop banks creating debt to issue against land otherwise it will…

>Why is silicon valley more expensive to rent in?

Because supply and demand. High salaries attract a lot of people to the bay and communities systematically refuse to build new housing to meet the demand so the price goes up.

You can do whatever you want to the banks but that won't change the fundamental of 2X people trying to live in X houses.

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#114

Post by devonkim »

ryanSrich wrote: post #43

Remote work is not a silver bullet for solving the faux work shortage. Aside from the fact that there is no shortage in the first place [1], remote work is still very new. Without proper operations in place and a solid, tested, management structure you'll end up with a hodgepodge of culture and unhappy employees. I used to be bullish on remote work until I actually started doing it. It can certainly work, and I still…

Those of us that have worked as remote engineers for a lot of our career know that most companies in general are just plain not managed in a way that would work for companies that have lots of remote workers, especially larger companies. Policies that discourage and undermine remote work that are popular with large companies include:

1. Mandatory all-hands meeting times

2. Banning popular communications platforms like Slack, Google Chat, Skype

3. Expectations of all workers to be present continuously for their timezone instead of letting workers self-organize

4. Performance and productivity metrics based around KPIs that do not actually measure productivity but presence

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#116

Post by p4wnc6 »

tensor wrote: post #104
RKoutnik wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

400k is market rate for top-quality bay area engineers, depending on specialty [0]. You don't see job ads for those folks, because hackers like that don't read them. [0] And even for lower-paying specialties (like UI/UX), 400k isn't even 2x market rate.

At these rates it doesn't make any sense for any company to hire in the bay area. There are amazing engineers elsewhere in the US and in the world who have much more reasonable salary expectations and also live in places with much more reasonable living expenses. Bay area engineers like to pretend that there are no people of their calibre elsewhere in the world, but that is just flat out wrong.

Not really. Developers who are good enough to command that wage in the Bay Area, but who live elsewhere, also know how good they are. They might be willing to take a slight pay cut from what the lives-in-Bay-Area person would be paid, but whatever the pay cut is, it will not be proportional to cost of living. E.g. if I could earn 400k living in SF, but you offer to pay me 200K living in Lincoln, Nebraska, I'll turn you down. Not because that's not a good wage for the area, but because it communicates to me, as a potential employee, that you are trying to effectively extract rents on my productivity. You know that I'd be worth at least 400K to your business, but you want to slurp up an extra 200K off the top of that by paying someone who resides elsewhere. As an employee, this says you don't value me according to what I can add, but instead are looking to minimize my share in what I produce, and will use geography as a convenient excuse for it.

Beyond a certain level of salary, salary stops varying too much by cost of living or geography. If I make well over 200K per year in a major city, I'm going to expect someone else to pay me 200K/yr at least no matter where I live.

I wouldn't even try to get other job offers to negotiate you on it -- I'll just simply believe you're not meritorcratic and flat out reject your offer and view your company skeptically from then on. Low-balling an exceptional engineer over geography is dysfunctional in the same way as working really hard to hire a senior, experienced engineer and then telling them "2 weeks vacation is the standard for all new hires.." or something. It's just a big red flag.

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#117

Post by Artlav »

I wonder how meaningful the "remote work" is, considering the legal issues of hiring workers from another country?

What if there weren't any?

Time zones aren't always the problem, high-speed internet is often common, lots of IT jobs are location-agnostic.

It could have a serious impact on the job market - what is poor in USA is upper 1% income worldwide, so an ability to get a remote job at USA prices can make local jobs uncompetitive by huge factors.

What sort of effects would this have on the world? Or is it meaningless speculation anyway, since the legal restrictions aren't going away in any plausible futures?

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#118

Post by johnward »

legohead wrote: post #47

I happened to be in Russia when the Who's Hiring thread showed up. I have family there, so I was entertaining the thought of possibly moving there, or maybe staying for a year or two. However, I noticed most of the remote locations were "US-only", and even the ones in other countries were usually local to that country -- "germany only", etc. I was wondering how many of the "US-only" ones would accept me, since I am a…

I'm in the US and find that even within the country many of those jobs are listed as "remote" but then I will hear something like "we're not looking for people in your area". Do they understand what remote means?

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#119

Post by lostlogin »

rco8786 wrote: post #112
source99 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for fun: $300K pre tax. Tax rate of 40% $180K after taxes High Quality Child Care for 2 Children = $6K per month or $72K / year 108K after childcare 3Br house in SF - http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/hhh?search_distance=4&pos... Call it $6K / month or $72K per year $36K left after housing + Childcare + taxes. $3K / month for transportation, food, clothing, vacations. Good luck...

Effective tax rate would come out to about $100k, not 180. Income tax brackets are marginal... https://www.taxact.com/tools/tax-bracket-calculator.asp and https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator#CZ1Kw... You also just kinda snuck in a random 72k/year for something that was never discussed. How about a spouse who also works? Would likely cover that 72k right there. 300k was a single person's income in t…

I've just been chewing that over. That childcare cost is phenomenal and illustrates Bay Area prices to me better than housing cost examples. Unless that cost is completely misleading...

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#120

Post by xiaoma »

source99 wrote: post #99
rco8786 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do a lot better then a 1Br on a 300k salary in the Bay Area. Even in the most expensive parts.

Just for fun: $300K pre tax. Tax rate of 40% $180K after taxes High Quality Child Care for 2 Children = $6K per month or $72K / year 108K after childcare 3Br house in SF - http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/hhh?search_distance=4&pos... Call it $6K / month or $72K per year $36K left after housing + Childcare + taxes. $3K / month for transportation, food, clothing, vacations. Good luck...

You do not need to spend more on childcare than the average Silicon Valley family earns in a year. Look at the census data and you'll realize you're a bit out of touch with the reality most of those you share a city with live in.
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