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A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#221

Post by stale2002 »

phamilton wrote: post #220
stale2002 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bonuses are quite high, is the reason. Amazon pays competitive salaries. They are probably a bit below Google or Facebook salaries, but compared to an average SF startup, they pay literally 50-100% more. (the offer I just got from them was 80% more than my SF startup salary). Some of their behavior is indeed "annoying" ie they have a weird stock options vesting schedule, but if you actually do the math, and think…

> 80% more than my SF startup salary Were you making 100k or something? Or are you looking at total comp?

I was looking at total comp. Total compensation is way high at big companies. And total compensation is the only thing that really matters.

You get RSU stocks that are actually worth a bunch. You get huge signing bonuses, you get great benefits as well as 401K matching.

All that adds up to something like 70k+ a year in "not salary" benefits, even though it just as good as cash (on top of a much higher base salary ).

Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#222

Post by pascalxus »

I'm guessing this offer is going to be extremely popular. The second you leave the bay area, it's like getting a million dollar signing bonus for a place to live.

I'm a little surprised more workers aren't leaving SF and the bay area peninsula. Even if you take 50% pay cut, your still getting paid a lot more, relative to you cost of living. I'm guessing the reason is: us engineers have a hard time understanding and thinking about compensation in terms of living costs, hence only the absolute $ value of a salary is taken into account.

Also, I think a lot of people don't want to move away from friends and family.

Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#223

Post by Graziano_M »

So you're getting paid to relocate to somewhere farther away from the bay. Maybe your salary will go farther, but you're giving up the whole reason people move to the bay area in the first place: It's where the jobs are.

The bay area is what it is because there's a feedback loop. People setup here because there are jobs. There are jobs here because there are people to fill them. By relocating away you're giving up your mobility to other bay area jobs. That might be great while you keep that job, but then you're at a disadvantage (again) when you decide to move again.

Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#224

Post by simonebrunozzi »

rifung wrote: post #38
phamilton wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$10k is usually the signing bonus I get for just changing companies. Is this in addition to the signing bonus?

Yes it is separate. At Amazon the signing bonus you owe if you leave within one year but the relocation bonus you owe if you leave within two; both are prorated

Or two years, which sometimes happen at Amazon.

Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#225

Post by autotune »

ryandrake wrote: post #93
luckydata wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, it's very true. If you're not happy somewhere you can walk out without a backup plan and have a job in a couple weeks if you're picky.

Maybe you can get a job in a couple of weeks if you're not picky, but if you actually don't want one of the many "dog" jobs in tech, you're going to be searching for much longer than that. I think this idea that great tech jobs are growing on trees out here is largely a myth.

Just go to AngelList and you can find a ton of startup companies and a decent amount of those that are interesting and offer various levels of pay, interesting work, and life balance. It's not overly hard to find a match though it could take a couple months if you're not "senior" level in your career.

Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#226

Post by celdon25 »

chrissnell wrote: post #190
sidlls wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you paid Bay Area wages and offered something more than at-will style job security you'd probably see more people wanting to get out. For me I've yet to see a remote position that wasn't fraught with the same risk as any other company, or that pays anything like a reasonable salary.

I can't speak for other companies but we make salary offers based on the candidate's experience and role, not their location. However, the job security is an interesting point. I suspect that Zapier gains huge leverage over it's relocated employees because they're now dependent on their Zapier job, another hard-to-find remote gig elsewhere, or funding their own move back to a tech hub. I don't know what Zapier's pay…

With that in mind, it makes one wonder why more bay area companies aren't making use of remote resources.

Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#227

Post by icelancer »

chrissnell wrote: post #143

As someone who works remotely and who posts remote-friendly openings for his team in the Who's Hiring HN thread, it's kind of amazing to me that more people aren't actively looking to get out. I live and work in a small midwestern town because my wife's military job has us here. If I was single, however, I would make the most of my remoteness and try working from a variety of towns. Here's some places that I would tr…

>Costa Rica

I worked on site in San Jose for a time and also remotely in the US while my office was there. Internet is a real, real issue in a lot of Central American and other "nice" foreign places to visit that aren't fully developed. Became a real problem for me as a remote worker.

Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#228

Post by icelancer »

Dobbs wrote: post #175
bsder wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At Amazon the signing bonus you owe if you leave within one year but the relocation bonus you owe if you leave within two; both are prorated Um, wow. Yet another reason not to work at Amazon. How does Amazon still get employees when they just seem to pile these kinds of irritating, anti-employee behaviors up one after another?

They also clawback their contribution to the 401k if you leave before (iirc) three years.

This is common in the normal business world. Most 401k vests over a period of three years with a prorated clawback mechanism.

Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#229

Post by Buldak »

danans wrote: post #183
myrandomcomment wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in Menlo Park for 8 years with my family. When I moved there the startup I went to work for was a 5 minute walk from my house. My current startup is also in Menlo. A year ago my wife and wanted a larger place. We looked in Menlo and PA. $3M for a teardown / needs tons of work. After thinking about it we started to look outside of the area. School district was a key factor of course. We ending up going as far…

> I agree there is something unique about being able to have everyone around you in the same line of business (tech) and it is great for making contacts, etc. However the cost are really starting to outweigh the benefits. There is also a cost to having everyone around you in the same line of business, both in terms of correlated economic risk, and also in terms of loss of perspective.

I feel the same way. Maybe this just points to an ambivalence on my part about my career, but when I hear about the density of tech workers in the Bay Area, it makes me feel claustrophobic.

Re: A CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate from the Bay

#230

Post by tonyedgecombe »

ringaroundthetx wrote: post #202
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax isn't stealing, that is a rather silly argument.

I used inflammatory wording to get attention. But either way you should be able to perceive the relative morality of it whether "due process" is involved or not.

I used inflammatory wording to get attention.

Why would you even do that, it adds nothing to the discussion, it just polarizes views. There are interesting questions to be asked about taxation and welfare but we aren't going to get that now are we.

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