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Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

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Re: Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

#41

Post by rlpb »

MichaelGG wrote: post #32
foobarbazetc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not messed up. Otherwise you're overpaying by 4x compared to local positions. Which means the person will probably never leave if they're unhappy etc.

If it's more than just a cost-of-living bonus for high-rent areas, then yes it is. You're saying "Hey engineer A, you're just as good as B, but we're going to pay you less because people that live near you aren't getting paid as much. If you'd like a raise, move somewhere where engineers get more money." Again, if it's just the cost-of-living bonus (like, all our engineers get $80K, plus $X/month where X is average r…

> "Hey engineer A, you're just as good as B, but we're going to pay you less..."

Let's face it. As an employee, you want to earn as much as you can. As a company, you want to make as much profit as you can, which means that you base your target pay on market rate (be it above or below market rate).

Market rate is set by the competition. Really it's "we're going to pay you enough that you don't leave to work for someone else", and that's it.

If an employer gives you a cost-of-living bonus for high-rent areas, the reason is that they're competing for you against other companies who do the same thing. The same applies to any pay difference based on locality, whether local or remote. It simply depends on who they're competing with for your services.

This isn't evil. It's how the market works.

Re: Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

#42

Post by ohstopitu »

MichaelGG wrote: post #32
foobarbazetc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not messed up. Otherwise you're overpaying by 4x compared to local positions. Which means the person will probably never leave if they're unhappy etc.

If it's more than just a cost-of-living bonus for high-rent areas, then yes it is. You're saying "Hey engineer A, you're just as good as B, but we're going to pay you less because people that live near you aren't getting paid as much. If you'd like a raise, move somewhere where engineers get more money." Again, if it's just the cost-of-living bonus (like, all our engineers get $80K, plus $X/month where X is average r…

While I can't comment on Travis CI, Gitlab from what I understand, used to hire a 3rd party company that would perform research (based on cost of living, taxes etc.) to gauge your salary (across different regions).

That said, what's stopping remote engineers starting to work in expensive regions (say Vancover/Toronto) and then moving to cheaper regions (Saskatchewan/Manitoba/Alberta) for example - would salaries be adjusted every time someone moves around?

In my opinion, one of the biggest benefits of working remotely would be the ability to travel the world!

Re: Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

#43

Post by EduardoBautista »

viljar wrote: post #27
fragmede wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...yes? Cost of living between Mexico to San Francisco probably in the neighborhood of 4x, depending on which part of Mexico. 500000 MXN rounds to $25k, which is 1/4 of $100k.

Cost of surviving(food, shelter, boose) - yes. What about cost of having trip around the world for vacation, building your retirement fund, price of the iphone, car?

iPhones and car loans are more expensive here in Mexico.

Re: Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

#44

Post by pkaye »

snarfy wrote: post #19

I've seen it done onsite. There was a guy who worked an 8-5 job in my building and the building next door simultaneously. He would show up, look busy, then run next door and do the same thing. He did this for about 8 months before one of his managers caught on and told his other manager. He ended up losing both jobs at the same time.

There was an engineering director at one of my previous workplaces that was a little hard to reach. People though he was attending high level meetings including his reports. One of them called him once during work and he answered by the name of another company unintentionally. They spoke with HR and through some investigations found out the guy was coming to work and during the middle of the day going to his other job at a startup where he was the CTO. They fired him of course.

Re: Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

#45

Post by logfromblammo »

rubidium wrote: post #36
moduspol wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to be "that guy," but... If it's a salaried position, you're presumably not filling in an hours sheet dishonestly. Is it truly cheating if both companies are happy with your work and you're not breaking either company's rules? Even if you don't explicitly tell them you're doing it?

Most salaried positions require you don't have any other paying jobs.

Most of my salaried positions have been "at will" with no employment contract in place, so the only thing that corporate policy tells me in the employee manual is that I may be fired if they find out. But as an "at will", I could also be fired for any reason, or no reason at all.

As an "at will" employee, the one and only consequence I have to fear is being fired. There is no contract to breach. And in that situation, I would feel a lot more comfortable about going from two jobs to one than from one to zero. The incentive is overwhelmingly in favor of doing it and hiding the evidence, rather than not doing it at all.

If you do everything that is expected at both jobs, neither has any reason to investigate.

Re: Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

#46

Post by IanDrake »

Double dipping is the wrong phrase here.

Having two jobs or two gigs is not double dipping.

Double dipping is typically a form of cheating by getting paid 2x for 1x amount of work.

Say I was being paid to create a website for two clients and it took me 100 hours to finish it. Then I used the same codebase for another client, spent 5 hours modifying it, and then delivered it to them billing another 100 hours.

That would be double dipping.

Re: Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

#47

Post by MichaelGG »

rlpb wrote: post #41
MichaelGG wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's more than just a cost-of-living bonus for high-rent areas, then yes it is. You're saying "Hey engineer A, you're just as good as B, but we're going to pay you less because people that live near you aren't getting paid as much. If you'd like a raise, move somewhere where engineers get more money." Again, if it's just the cost-of-living bonus (like, all our engineers get $80K, plus $X/month where X is average r…

> "Hey engineer A, you're just as good as B, but we're going to pay you less..." Let's face it. As an employee, you want to earn as much as you can. As a company, you want to make as much profit as you can, which means that you base your target pay on market rate (be it above or below market rate). Market rate is set by the competition. Really it's "we're going to pay you enough that you don't leave to work for someo…

Don't think I said it's evil, just wrong. Obviously it's how the market works, and I've taken advantage of this myself.

Just saying that, aside from "well, we can get away with it", it's not that defensible.

Re: Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

#48

Post by MichaelGG »

eloisant wrote: post #38
MichaelGG wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's messed up. Unless there's a separate component like local-cost-of-living-adjustment where you get extra for living in a high-rent area.

It's not messed up, it's supply and demand. Someone living in SF will have many high-paid opportunities so they have to match that. On the other hand they know someone not willing to relocate won't have the same opportunities locally or with remote jobs, so they can afford to pay them less.

That doesn't make it right. You can get away with ("afford") lots of things that aren't correct to do.

Re: Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

#50

Post by candiodari »

watwut wrote: post #40
acconrad wrote: post #14

Since when is working two jobs a bad thing? Plenty of people work two or three jobs to make ends meet. If you can make both work, and you aren't violating any contracts or NDAs, I don't see why you should feel bad about that.

It is ok when you don't lie in the process. It is not ok when you pretend to work full time while actually working only equivalent of part time in each workplace (does not matter all that much whether drop in productivity is due to burnout or cheating on time spent by working). The productivity of programmers is often hard to measure, if you don't take advantage of it then it is fine. There are jobs that dont require…

Isn't it wrong for a company to lie about things like remuneration and money too ? Is it okay for companies to pay people they claim internally have the same pay (for the same work), but pay them differently based on things like location ?
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