Earlier quoted context omitted.
Zurich and London top out at $100k, any more and we're talking managerial responsibilities. Compared to SF or SEA they are only paying ~25% market rate. The safety net argument has no legs. Australia and Canada both have social benefits that far exceed the majority of EU nations, yet pre-pandemic there was no shortage of $150k+ dev roles.
I had an offer in London as a dev in finance at ~300k GBP total comp and a Series B startup offer over 100k GBP and that was more than 4 years ago. Ended up going with a much smaller seed-stage company in Berlin because I couldn't stomach the finance people and liked Berlin.
Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce
751–760 of 936 posts
Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce
#752Earlier quoted context omitted.
I first misread it as "14 months" (as usually you count in months), but it was way out of bounds.
It's really strange to me that companies in the US can just determine how much severance they're "willing" to pay. Why is it even up to them?
Just like, for example, there's no legal requirement to pay employees bonuses, so bonus pay is at the employer's sole discretion. In fact, salary itself is at the employer's sole discretion other than complying with minimum wage and overtime laws.
It's been my experience that severance for rank-and-file employees is rarely offered and is very miniscule if it is paid.
Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce
#753Earlier quoted context omitted.
that's true. Not everyone. Even people who are employed can go broke, declare bankruptcy, and not being able to pay for their previously-enjoyed lifestyle anymore. The financial security ladder has many steps. Hard to imagine that programmers, product managers, SREs that had successfully passed AirBnB interviews would be so close to the bottom of that ladder, that their children will go hungry within months of stoppi…
Something that scares me is that tech interviews are so fickle. You could pass the Google interview one day but be rejected by everywhere else the next.
Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce
#754Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce
#755Earlier quoted context omitted.
A very small percentage of US workers have any sort of contract
Moreover, as a condition of employment, many (most?) US workers must sign an “employment agreement” which is essentially a legal document written by the company, for the company. It’s like an employment contract except with terms that only benefit the company.
You even have a contract when you are buying a piece of candy at the newsstand.
(At least in the common law world. In eg German law technically you have one contract for the piece of candy, and one contract for each individual coin you are handing over. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction_principle_(law) Germans are a bit crazy.)
Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce
#756Earlier quoted context omitted.
It can seem expensive if you ignored the compensation your employer was paying while you were employed.
I think I've only had one job where the employer funded $ amount of my health plan was actually spelled out. My expected contribution was always made known at enrollment time but the employer contribution was left to blind speculation.
Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce
#757Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had an offer in London as a dev in finance at ~300k GBP total comp and a Series B startup offer over 100k GBP and that was more than 4 years ago. Ended up going with a much smaller seed-stage company in Berlin because I couldn't stomach the finance people and liked Berlin.
£300k, how much would that be in base salary?
London finance attracts a crowd that I had very little in common with. To be honest I only interviewed to see what it was like. It wasn't for me.
Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce
#758Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah but do you trust someone to sanitize their home properly after the previous guest or would you trust a hotel to do that correctly? Thats the question my friend circle has been thinking about...
They're probably about the same in my mind, but I have nothing other than my gut instinct to back this up. Family-owned restaurants can be clean or dirty, and a corporate chain can be clean or dirty too.
Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce
#759Earlier quoted context omitted.
You own a factory. Your employees don't. There's a power imbalance in the employment relationship. Most people (who don't own things like factories) need a regular, predictable, stable income to survive, and finding new employment is not always easy. Therefore, people in most developed countries have agreed that by taking on an employee, it is contingent on the employer to provide some guarantee of stability. This is…
> even the workers seem to value the rights of the employers far above the rights of the employees. I'm not sure why this is. To paraphrase a famous quote, in the USA the workers don't see themselves as workers, but as temporarily down-on-their-luck owners.
It's hilarious applying it here, given the situation described was reversed. Your position is that the worker who doesn't own the factory should dictate what the factory owner should pay because of a power imbalance.
Weird.
Perhaps the issue is having difficulty telling the difference between workers and factory owners in general.
Re: Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 25% of workforce
#760Earlier quoted context omitted.
You own a factory. Your employees don't. There's a power imbalance in the employment relationship. Most people (who don't own things like factories) need a regular, predictable, stable income to survive, and finding new employment is not always easy. Therefore, people in most developed countries have agreed that by taking on an employee, it is contingent on the employer to provide some guarantee of stability. This is…
In return for these employee benefits, the employees make less money, and are less likely to be hired, since every mis-hire is a potentially fatal error for the business. The laws of economics are not magic and the costs have to go somewhere.
Is getting hired in Germany more difficult, compared to the USA? And if so, can you attribute that to employee benefits?