Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

open.buffer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 169 posts

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#141

Post by ghaff »

kylestlb wrote: post #99
pc86 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of skilled software developers in rural and suburban parts of nearly every country. I find it hard to believe the folks in San Francisco are that much better than the folks in Atlanta that it warrants ~2-3x the salary (using the Gitlab calculator as I can't see the Buffers apps since Drive is blocked at work) for an identical role.

Cost of living in the bay area is insane right now. You won't find a single family home under 1 million dollars on the peninsula or the entire south bay with the exception of deep east san jose and east palo alto (but even that is changing rapidly). I would bet that most of the salary adjustment is due to the housing crisis.

In general, CoL differences at relatively high salary levels are absolutely dominated by housing prices.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#142

Post by sidlls »

hajile wrote: post #131
lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true in theory, but rarely in practice. Committing to enabling remote work is nontrivial and doesn't suite every team nor every employee. And that still doesn't solve the talent issues; highly skilled professionals congregate in areas with amenities (culture, like minded people, access to top notch medical care, access to schools, access to public transportation, etc) so even if you're remote you're still comp…

That may be true to some degree, but if a dev makes 150K in Tennessee, they'd have to make 450K+ in SF to keep the same standard of living. Are SF medicine or schools 3x better? Is public transportation 3x better? Is the culture 3x better? I think not. You can get comparable things in cities with a fraction of the living cost which self-evidently shows that people are paying too much for what they are getting. Finall…

> 3x better?

Yes, and more, with the possible exception of schools (it's hit and miss here, same as anywhere).

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#143

Post by RickS »

School-Cotton wrote: post #10
ontoillogical wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're talking about the triplebyte data ( https://triplebyte.com/software-engineer-salary ), Buffer's SF salaries seem comparable.

That only reports base salary, making it worse than useless.

Many people, myself included, find base salary the most meaningful indicator.

For every company that uses perks as a cash replacement in a healthy way, there's another that expects you to overlook poor absolute numbers in favor of wishy washy things like illiquid equity and coldbrew kegs.

Unless your stock is very liquid, cash is king. Everything else is a distant second.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#144

Post by amyjess »

chrisan wrote: post #76
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they should be afraid of this negative analysis. You don't get a pass on bad decisions just because you're making them openly. From my cursory glance, I have a bunch of problems here: 1) Most egregiously, it looks like they're slashing a bunch of salaries. Not the CEO, of course, but a lot of others seem to be going down. I would be immediately headed for the door in that scenario. Talk about a way to keep only…

> 3) Large COL adjustments make no sense to me. So I work for a remote company and choose to live somewhere cheaper and they think that the value I'm providing is less? The end result of this is that remote devs get screwed on average, while the best remote devs avoid companies like this, rightfully so. Ya I don't get this logic. High COL areas are high because there are _lots_ of perks living there. It is much more…

> living in SF with all of the glorious food and such or living somewhere cheaper and saving money to retire earlier but having to pick between Applebees or Fridays (vomits)

Come to Dallas. You get to enjoy low COL (while it lasts) and have your pick of Sichuan, Thai, Indian, Vietnamese, Mexican, barbecue, etc. restaurants.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#145

Post by conanbatt »

nsxwolf wrote: post #94
carlmcqueen wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

STLtoday keeps a database of how much the teachers make in the Missouri school systems, while its not entirely accurate when you talk to teachers (sometimes the data is super stale, sometimes they have other 'responsibilities/commmities' that offer more money) I always felt wrong being able to look at it when they could not look at mine.

They're public employees, paid with everyone else's tax dollars. That's why you get to know their salaries.

That has not made it hard for the government to take employees tho.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#146

Post by conanbatt »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #93
carlmcqueen wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

STLtoday keeps a database of how much the teachers make in the Missouri school systems, while its not entirely accurate when you talk to teachers (sometimes the data is super stale, sometimes they have other 'responsibilities/commmities' that offer more money) I always felt wrong being able to look at it when they could not look at mine.

Agree. I get the need for public accountability for government salaries, but I feel like having the data be anonymized would be better. The public needs to know the salary distribution, but not what Susan Baker made last year.

I disagree at this point. Anonymization is not perfect and it introduces less accountability while also increasing the costs of maintenance and auditability.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#147

Post by conanbatt »

jatsign wrote: post #2

I like the idea of transparent salaries, but does a "transparent" formula ever become so convoluted, and open to gaming, that the company may as well just not bother? It can be argued that not disclosing salaries is a way to suppress wages; an asymmetry of information. Is open salary information where "everyone at the same level gets the same salary, but there's some gotchas" another way to do the same thing?

I think the formula makes very little sense. If someone comes and says " i want more than that" will Buffer turn away a candidate they like because it doesnt fit? They are unlikely to do it, and they should definitely not do it.

What it does do is attract all the people that find those salaries public to be higher than the ones they have now. Im sure they get plenty of applicants on this measure alone.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#148

Post by conanbatt »

falsedan wrote: post #38
wyager wrote: post #17

I strongly disagree with cost-of-living-adjustments when employees have the choice of where to live. People shouldn’t be punished for living in less expensive places. If your company is willing to pay you more for living somewhere else even if they don’t gain anything from it, it means they’re underpaying you right now.

Salaries don't reflect the worth you're providing to the company (unless you're part of a worker-owned collective that disperses annual profit). Salaries are the lowest amount the company thinks it can pay you . If they had a higher budget and you failed to negotiate effectively for a higher salary, then I feel it is not the company's fault if you think they should have offered more. Vote with your feet. If you think…

Yes, but COL is not a great measure of it. My experience is that people us COL as a way to prevent envy and disgruntling.

I say let people be envious.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#149

Post by kayoone »

tychver wrote: post #82
kayoone wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah thought the same. 100k USD is next to impossible for a web developer in Berlin for example, and salaries for devs in Barcelona are considerably lower than here, maybe a max of 80k USD. That guy is living like a king.

Berlin is a bit odd because of the huge changes in the last few years in companies starting offices here and the influx of VC funding. SoundCloud for example, had a bunch of engineers earning around that. Probably all laid off now, though. There are companies on StackOverflow jobs openly advertising €80-90k for senior developers now, and occasionally over 100k for specialist roles like ML or performance sensitive dev…

yes i am sure those salaries are possible for certain specialties in high demand, but in this case we are talking about Senior Web Developers. I think for pure devs without a lead or other management role, it's hard to get more than 75k EUR or 90k USD, and in BCN i have the feeling it is at least 10k less.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#150

Post by kayoone »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #84
eagletusk wrote: post #40

Whoa $121k in Spain that's a superstar salary for a programmer there. Average for programmer according to glassdoor is 35,000 euro = ~42,000 usd.

European software developers seem to be insultingly underpaid. I suspect it's more cultural than economic, and relates to the relative status of the profession in the EU. I know the total costs of an employee are higher in the EU, but are they really 2x - 4x? Top companies in the US offer pretty robust (expensive) benefits, including healthcare. What would make the total cost of a dev in the EU getting paid $42k equa…

In Germany employee costs are roughly 1.5x of gross, i would guess it's similar in Spain.
Post reply on HN