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New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

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Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#161

Post by lordCarbonFiber »

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…

Having grew up in the south, I'd say 3x is a drastic under sell of how much better going west or to the north east.

Unfortunately for people in your position, companies know that your options are limited. Large supply of people that want to live away from jobs and pocket the difference compared to the number of jobs available => lower prices.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#162

Post by ryanwaggoner »

fogetti wrote: post #154
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because subjectivity in favour of someone, is to the detriment of another employee (because the budget is limited) This is not how salaries work. Companies don't have a pool of $x for y employees. They try to hire every employee at as low a cost as possible. If you accept a salary at $10,000 below what they were willing to pay for that role, it's not like you can rest easy knowing that the other employees will get th…

Sorry but I beg to differ. That's exactly how it works. The financial officer/controller simply allocates $x for y employees. And they do this calculation in every quarter, adjusting it if necessary. I don't even understand how can you think it works differently???

They may set the upper bound like that (although you greatly exaggerate how common and simple it is), but you’re insane if you think that they won’t hire anyone for less if they can, and that they’ll then redistribute those savings across all the other employees. Ha!

Hiring is supply / demand like anything else, and companies are trying to minimize their labor expenses and maximize profit, not spend a certain fixes amount (and no less!) on labor.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#163

Post by TheCoelacanth »

hajile wrote: post #16
jjeaff wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most likely, they have found that some really good developers want to live in specific places with really high standards of living and since they are good, they could easily get a job somewhere else and stay in the city they want to. Not everyone is willing to just move for a job if not necessary.

It takes quite a good dev to generate 50K more valuable than another dev in another area. There are cases where that is true, but it's not universally true. In this particular case, there's a baked-in assumption that a beginner dev in SF is worth more than a senior dev in a low-cost area.

They aren't more valuable, they just have a better bargaining position due to availability of other high paying jobs near them. The value an employee generates doesn't directly determine their salary; it is more of an upper-bound. Their salary is mostly determined by what the employer's next best option of employee is and what the employee's next best option of employer is.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#164

Post by TheCoelacanth »

sidlls wrote: post #137
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all like to tell ourselves that we are impactful and in the top 1%, but most of us could not land a job for $300k total comp. It would also be a mistake to pay us that much. Negative growth of your runway chart is a quick way to get into the fatal pinch. Those Buffer salaries are quite reasonable for engineers. If you're not looking at them hungrily, then may I suggest you're probably not the customer here? And by…

I don't think $300k is "top 1%". Maybe top 20%. I'd rate myself no better than being at the lower end of the 60th to 80th percentile: I'm slightly better than average, at best and on a good day. My all-in compensation is around (but more than) $200k, and I work at a relatively unknown public company with ~300 employees. I can easily get ~$50k-$100k more if I wanted to play the "code monkey interview" game simply by r…

$300k isn't even top 1% nationwide for all jobs (that's $390k).

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#165

Post by kayoone »

tychver wrote: post #157
kayoone wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you check stack overflow jobs? What people are currently earning and what people are openly offering now has diverged quite a bit just in 18 months or so. It’s hurting the smaller companies with less budget and it’ll only get worse when Google opens their big office.

I have recently talked to some HR people and been looking myself, so that is just the feeling that i got. You mean the Google Campus in Kreuzberg ? Will they really employ a lot of people there ? Sounded more like something similar to the Factory

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#166

Post by kayoone »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #151
hajile wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other considerations. Most countries in Europe have lots of government services that offer non-monetary advantages. You have to buy most of those things in the US. There's no free lunch. Instead of giving the employee the money, much of it is handed directly over to the Government (then a bunch more directly from personal income taxes). If you choose to forgo those things while in the US, there is a monetar…

Serious question: I'm curious what you're talking about for high-income professionals? If I'm making six figures as a dev in the US, I probably have fairly generous benefits, including healthcare, vacation, parental leave, retirement plan contributions, disability insurance, etc. And I'm probably paying less in overall taxes than most Europeans (though it really depends). Of course, I don't have the safety net things…

> Of course, I don't have the safety net things that lower-income Europeans do, but I almost certainly don't need them.

You say that now while everything is up. Imagine getting run over by a car and not being able to work anymore, i bet you would be better off in a european country in that case, but of course it makes no sense to consider a worst case scenario like that.

However, many things are not great for high income people. Let's say you earn 6k EUR/month in Germany, that leaves you with 3.4k net (if you quit Church tax). A considerable amount (500 EUR) goes to state pension which everyone expects will be almost nothing when our generation reaches that age and the healthcare is pretty basic, but you could change to private insurance and save some money as long as you are young.

I believe competition between the Tech giants is just so much bigger in the US, that everyone in their vicinity has to match those crazy salaries to even have a chance. That is not really the case in Europe. Spotify, Soundcloud, Zalando etc. all lie in the 50-90k EUR range i would assume. I don't really know what can be earned at Facebook/Google/MSFT in Europe though.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#167

Post by fogetti »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #162
fogetti wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but I beg to differ. That's exactly how it works. The financial officer/controller simply allocates $x for y employees. And they do this calculation in every quarter, adjusting it if necessary. I don't even understand how can you think it works differently???

They may set the upper bound like that (although you greatly exaggerate how common and simple it is), but you’re insane if you think that they won’t hire anyone for less if they can, and that they’ll then redistribute those savings across all the other employees. Ha! Hiring is supply / demand like anything else, and companies are trying to minimize their labor expenses and maximize profit, not spend a certain fixes a…

Noone said that they won't hire anyone for less if they can.

Don't put words in my mouth, because that's sg that only YOU said.

And, no, it's not exaggeration. It's common sense.

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#168

Post by rdslw »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #159
Shaanie wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 6 weeks of vacation a year (2 years out of uni) and 240 days of paid (75% of normal pay) parental leave (480 days in total for both parents). How's your vacation and parental leave in comparison?

A lot of white collar professionals get 3-6 weeks of vacation. That parental leave is eye-popping though. I know a bunch of professional women who got 3-6 months, which I think is regarded here as pretty generous. But my larger point stands: the average cost per worker for those benefits is only maybe 10% higher than the cost in the US for our reduced benefits. So why are salaries 50% lower?

I think it does not stand.

in US 6 weeks of paid vacation is still rare in professionals. 3 is common. So you're using 3-6 while in europe there is guaranteed 6. This is apples and oranges.

Besides: this is in addition to the sick time. Sick time is paid and you don't use vacation time for that in europe. How is that in US? Can you get additional 4 weeks paid sick time? Can you get 8?

Then in addition you have this perks in US as long as you work as professional in top companies. While the real difference in terms of health care is after this work. Last I check, average age at FANG is below 30 yrs in USA! Wow! So imagine you're 45, you dont work at google/etc: then at low impact events or maybe even medium events if you dont have family healthcare is comparable (your savings cover it). But at high cost/high impact situations or medium ones if you have full family, you're not covered (add to this highest in the western world cost of healthcare in US). While it's state funded in europe also at the high cost level (read cancer therapies and all the things like). This is big difference for last 40 years of live.

And then you have mentioned maternity: that alone (and most of people have families in any place of world) from family perspective is a huge difference financially AND child development.

p.s. and there is cost of living. in US alone you can easily have it in SanFran at 1.77x of US average - you can imagine how it scale to the other parts of world? Sauce: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+living+index+S...

Re: New Remote-First Formula and Updated Salary Calculator

#169

Post by kowdermeister »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #159
Shaanie wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 6 weeks of vacation a year (2 years out of uni) and 240 days of paid (75% of normal pay) parental leave (480 days in total for both parents). How's your vacation and parental leave in comparison?

A lot of white collar professionals get 3-6 weeks of vacation. That parental leave is eye-popping though. I know a bunch of professional women who got 3-6 months, which I think is regarded here as pretty generous. But my larger point stands: the average cost per worker for those benefits is only maybe 10% higher than the cost in the US for our reduced benefits. So why are salaries 50% lower?

Because EU tech companies are not really comparable to SV companies, capital is not that easily available just for the sake of growth. I guess there is a significant difference in business mindset. SV companies are in the game since the 70s.

There are simply much more well funded companies in the US, desperate to find good candidates, thus driving up salaries.

What's also interesting to consider is that developers here seems to be fine with earning close to non tech jobs employees. You can do really well in many industry sectors. As a bus driver in Germany you can earn $31,435 which already buys you an ok level of living.

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