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Would be great for Googlers ... kinda horrible for locals in KC who would still be making the same amount, and housing costs skyrocket.... funding sudden needed school expansions ... and so on... The economic and political messes of sudden expansion can be an absolute mess.
As someone who has experienced this happen to my home city I can vouch. It does suck.
The author made a blind guess that 80% of Google would quit If they moved HQ without any actual evidence. If Google opened up a new large office in a place like Kansas City with no salary cut and a strong internet presence and some other tech companies (ICE exchange for example), I bet enough Google employees would want to move there to make it worthwhile. Cheaper cost of living, better schools, better for families e…
Would be great for Googlers ... kinda horrible for locals in KC who would still be making the same amount, and housing costs skyrocket.... funding sudden needed school expansions ... and so on... The economic and political messes of sudden expansion can be an absolute mess.
https://about.google/locations/?region=asia-pacific&office=s...
Does anyone know what proportion of their workforce is not in California?
A question to Googlers and those who have worked there, is it possible to move to say Boulder within Google easily?
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As someone who has experienced this happen to my home city I can vouch. It does suck.
Which city?
The author made a blind guess that 80% of Google would quit If they moved HQ without any actual evidence. If Google opened up a new large office in a place like Kansas City with no salary cut and a strong internet presence and some other tech companies (ICE exchange for example), I bet enough Google employees would want to move there to make it worthwhile. Cheaper cost of living, better schools, better for families e…
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> no salary cut Unlikely. A lot of the reason the pay here is so good is because of the high cost of living.
Hasn't this been proven false by googlers living in other high cost cities yet earning significantly less than those in SF?
If a large company was doing a mass-migration of employees to a new, lower-cost city, it might make sense to keep salaries consistent. But let’s not kid ourselves and think that new hires at that new location would still be hired at the SF rate.
And as others have pointed out, if the salary did remain that high and you left, it’s almost guaranteed that your next job would not have that kind of salary.
Personal anecdote: when I moved from NYC to Seattle, I didn’t take a pay cut (I was switching industries), but the recruiter knew my Seattle market-rate was lower than my NYC market-rate. She tried to console me with promises of lower-cost of living (in fact, I pay more in rent now, but in fairness my equivalent apartment in Seattle would be 25% higher in NYC) — which wasn’t really true. But the tax difference was/is so massive, that it really does offset the salary difference, even at market rate. And if I were to transfer from Seattle to NYC, I would insist on getting a pay increase to offset those higher costs.
I don’t like employers lowering salaries if an employee moves to another lower-cost city (mostly because in many cases they are already paying hire taxes in those expensive markets and it feels punitive to get to pay less taxes and a lower salary for the same work/person), but it’s very common. That said, I don’t think it’s possible for very large companies to follow the Basecamp approach of universal salary structure based on being in the top X% of SF median or mean salaries (I forget which). As nice as that is for a smaller company, if you’ve got 100,000 employees (not counting contractors) potentially paying people 4x market rate doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t scale.
That said, there are always exceptions. If a person is valuable enough to the business, that person can get whatever salary they want regardless of location.
I'll be running away from the major cities as fast as possible as soon as possible.
Yuck. You actually lose money working in DC, the salaries aren't even worth.
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The more interesting question might be what percent of senior employees would quit Google if ordered to move. I have no direct evidence, but my sense is potentially much higher than the average: they could care less about living costs, don't want to uproot their families, love CA weather, love living in such a tech heavy area, have access to better schools than in Kansas, etc. FWIW, my old company added a Seattle off…
I think there's a real possibility that the new Google employees and their kids would "make" the schools in their Kansas town better, through a bunch of different mechanisms. I live in an excellent school district in the rural middle of nowhere, and it's 100% because of the large state university that happens to be here.
For most of us here, there's no reason to move anywhere at all. Programmers can work from anywhere in the world. We need to let go of the idea that "work" means 2 hours of commute and sitting in an open plan under constant barrage of interruptions for 40 hours a week. We need to let go of _all_ the components of this definition, from "40 hours" to "office" to "commute". There are jobs which have to be done in the off…
I've had periods of working from home in my life and they've been lonely and unproductive in comparison.
My only point is that there _are_ some people who genuinely prefer working at an office.
The author made a blind guess that 80% of Google would quit If they moved HQ without any actual evidence. If Google opened up a new large office in a place like Kansas City with no salary cut and a strong internet presence and some other tech companies (ICE exchange for example), I bet enough Google employees would want to move there to make it worthwhile. Cheaper cost of living, better schools, better for families e…