Very fair and progressive strategy. This is the future imho.
If you want good / the best, pay them accordingly, no matter where they live - because someone else might do it and pocket your talent.
Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did
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Re: Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did
#12Well done. Personally, as a remote developer, I always make a point of billing at my "Bay Area Rate", even though I've never lived there. There was a point, early in my guy-on-the-beach-with-a-laptop era where I would cut my bill rate in half while working from the beach with a laptop. Clients were happy about that, and it more than paid for beers and thatch huts. Then one time I tried not cutting my bill rate in hal…
I've always wondered what kind of development work you can do with a laptop chilling at the beach...
Imagine the work currently being done in a cubicle. Now remove the two external monitors and fill the bottom third of the cube with sand.
That's pretty much the only difference. Lots of guys try dividing their bill rate by four, but as I said above, that's just personal preference. (And also diminshes the perceived value of what you do.)
Re: Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did
#13Good to see this. I think that hiring remotely and paying Bay Area salaries (or very close to it) does indeed open up access to talent that might be harder to reach otherwise. Especially, if hiring globally remote.
Win-win for everyone involved.
Re: Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did
#14Well done. Personally, as a remote developer, I always make a point of billing at my "Bay Area Rate", even though I've never lived there. There was a point, early in my guy-on-the-beach-with-a-laptop era where I would cut my bill rate in half while working from the beach with a laptop. Clients were happy about that, and it more than paid for beers and thatch huts. Then one time I tried not cutting my bill rate in hal…
> the work you're doing is exactly the same regardless of where you do it from
But the "bay pay" isn't for your work. It's so you can work - i.e. cover your expenses associated with working at that particular place.
Re: Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did
#15Well done. Personally, as a remote developer, I always make a point of billing at my "Bay Area Rate", even though I've never lived there. There was a point, early in my guy-on-the-beach-with-a-laptop era where I would cut my bill rate in half while working from the beach with a laptop. Clients were happy about that, and it more than paid for beers and thatch huts. Then one time I tried not cutting my bill rate in hal…
> the work you're doing is exactly the same regardless of where you do it from But the "bay pay" isn't for your work. It's so you can work - i.e. cover your expenses associated with working at that particular place.
They are willing to pay up to what the work is worth for them.
The work is not worth more just because you happen to live in the bay area.
Re: Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did
#16Well done. Personally, as a remote developer, I always make a point of billing at my "Bay Area Rate", even though I've never lived there. There was a point, early in my guy-on-the-beach-with-a-laptop era where I would cut my bill rate in half while working from the beach with a laptop. Clients were happy about that, and it more than paid for beers and thatch huts. Then one time I tried not cutting my bill rate in hal…
> the work you're doing is exactly the same regardless of where you do it from But the "bay pay" isn't for your work. It's so you can work - i.e. cover your expenses associated with working at that particular place.
Janitors, receptionists nor cooks get such high salaries, altrough the place is the same.
Re: Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did
#17Well done. Personally, as a remote developer, I always make a point of billing at my "Bay Area Rate", even though I've never lived there. There was a point, early in my guy-on-the-beach-with-a-laptop era where I would cut my bill rate in half while working from the beach with a laptop. Clients were happy about that, and it more than paid for beers and thatch huts. Then one time I tried not cutting my bill rate in hal…
I've always wondered what kind of development work you can do with a laptop chilling at the beach...
It goes like this -- as you are waiting for webpack to rebuild your modules, you gaze into the crystal blue water, see someone getting a massage for five bucks, and realize that you're the only one without a beer. Webpack finally finishes up, but you don't notice, and for good reason. Nothing else gets done the whole day.
Re: Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did
#18Well done. Personally, as a remote developer, I always make a point of billing at my "Bay Area Rate", even though I've never lived there. There was a point, early in my guy-on-the-beach-with-a-laptop era where I would cut my bill rate in half while working from the beach with a laptop. Clients were happy about that, and it more than paid for beers and thatch huts. Then one time I tried not cutting my bill rate in hal…
> the work you're doing is exactly the same regardless of where you do it from But the "bay pay" isn't for your work. It's so you can work - i.e. cover your expenses associated with working at that particular place.
Just up the beach from my $6/night bungalow in Thailand there was a resort that costs $1,500/night. The work I'd do from there would be functionally equivalent from my employers' perspective.
So as long as we're covering expenses, I'd prefer they cover mine at that second place. The fact that I might actually be living cheaper is none of their concern.
Re: Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did
#19> It started to increasingly seem like an arbitrary choice, and if we were going to make one such, why not go for the best and the top?
So you picked San Francisco? Not London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, etc? Why not pay everybody as if they live in Manhattan?
Re: Basecamp doesn’t employ anyone in SF, but now we pay everyone as though all did
#20> It started to increasingly seem like an arbitrary choice, and if we were going to make one such, why not go for the best and the top? So you picked San Francisco? Not London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, etc? Why not pay everybody as if they live in Manhattan?
SF pay rates are usually cited as the highest in the world. It’s shorthand for “we aren’t going to use locality as a way of getting outbid”