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

3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 147 posts

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#101

Post by Mashimo »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #89
Mashimo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of my team wants to come to the office and is always super happy when they find a reason to do so. "Oh, I have to test this mobile device which only works in the office, can I come in today @ $manager?" And currently I am at the office together with one other person. Beats being alone at home. At least a few days per week. It's always so fun to be at the office with my coworkers and I am looking forward to them…

I think it is age based: younger workers crave the social interaction they get at the office, older workers see a huge advantage in getting more family time (and handling things like taking the kid to school) by working remote. Not universal of course, but I bet there is at least a correlation.

After covid the kids being in Kindergarten / school again. I could imagine the parents want to be at the office some days.

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#102

Post by Mashimo »

cblconfederate wrote: post #86
Mashimo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of my team wants to come to the office and is always super happy when they find a reason to do so. "Oh, I have to test this mobile device which only works in the office, can I come in today @ $manager?" And currently I am at the office together with one other person. Beats being alone at home. At least a few days per week. It's always so fun to be at the office with my coworkers and I am looking forward to them…

> Beats being alone at home. That's because they live alone at home, probably because they moved recently / immigrated / forced to live in bad cities. Post-pandemic, they will be able to move to a place where they are not alone. I think they'll take that option rather than alone at home/only social in the office.

How does moving get me a flatmate?

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#104

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Mashimo wrote: post #101
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is age based: younger workers crave the social interaction they get at the office, older workers see a huge advantage in getting more family time (and handling things like taking the kid to school) by working remote. Not universal of course, but I bet there is at least a correlation.

After covid the kids being in Kindergarten / school again. I could imagine the parents want to be at the office some days.

My kid’s daycare was interrupted for just a month. But being WFH has made it super simple to get him to and from daycare, whereas with a 40 minute commute, I wouldn’t be able to do it without getting the kid up fairly early.

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#105

Post by amatic »

crandycodes wrote: post #5

I work at Microsoft and in Azure Cosmos DB, the same org as Steve. Leadership believing in remote makes all the difference. We'd been doing more and more remote hiring in the years before COVID, especially when remote made a specific skillset's talent pool larger. This led to some remote-friendly, bordering on remote-first culture. When COVID hit, we adapted really fast. I had taken a short break from Cosmos DB befor…

How is the international remote scene? Does it exist in big (top paying?) companies in the US? To clarify, can people outside the US be hired to do remote work for US companies?

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#106

Post by Plasmoid2000ad »

NeverFade wrote: post #88
Plasmoid2000ad wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But are they top paying? Microsoft hasn't been top paying in a lot of markets outside US for years, let alone competitive with I'd imagine most people on hackernews consider "top paying" Wouldn't a role in UK be essentially paid nearly 50% less in total compensation?

It's incredibly easy to compete with "top paying" companies once you offer remote work, due to huge gaps in taxation and cost-of-living. Let's do the math: $400k salary in SFBay is $238k net. $300k in any state that doesn't have an income tax (like Texas, Florida, Washington) is $211k net. Factor in cost-of-living differences, and as an employee, I'd be much better off earning $300k remotely than $400k in SFBay. From…

So that's the catch though.

A $400k wage in SFBay for Microsoft (which I've never heard of for a regular position) won't just translate to anywhere else in the world. When starting salary in SF for Microsoft new college hire might be $120k+, in the UK it's £40k.

I realize you are specifcally talking about relocating to work remotely only within the US, but what I'm getting is that today Microsoft pays wildly differently based on location, and proposes to continue to pay wildly differently based on location with people relocating to work remotely.

I don't know if there will some special exception for United States, but the poster I replied to specifically brought up International.

Will Microsoft pay 1:1 for SF employee relocating to Texas while paying a UK employee 1/4 the wage? If so, why... it doesn't make good business sense.

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#107

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #99
angarg12 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to beat that dead horse, but I agree. During COVID I transferred to a team based in the US west coast. My manager was happy with me working remotely from England, which has been great since I was able to move to the countryside where cost of living is much cheaper. However I'm still getting paid about half the comparable salary of my colleagues over there just because of the location. Yes, I know, in the US healt…

Salaries in the UK are less than the USA, or even China. I remember a friend moving from Beijing to Cambridge (for a well known big Corp) had to put up a decent struggle to keep his salary from being cut to local levels. I don’t get why UK salaries are less than most other major dev sites.

Because devs don't tend to have PPE degrees from Oxford, and as such, are merely peons. \s

Seriously, it's super weird and I don't understand it either.

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#108

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #100
r_c_a_d wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. When I worked in London for Nokia I tried to keep to Finland time where possible, as it made things a lot easier. Then they added teams in India and China and it became a nightmare.

Try organizing a meeting with attendees from Beijing, Redmond, and Cambridge. Ya...it doesn’t work. India is the absolute worst for the USA because they are almost 12 hours off.

From my experience working with global teams, as soon as you have Asia & EMEA, you need to go to two meetings if you actually want to retain said staff.

This is annoying, but it's much better than people taking meetings at midnight, which is what happens otherwise.

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#109

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

NeverFade wrote: post #98
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You heard wrong, it's just an internet myth. Difficulty of firing people or high taxes are not the main cause of low pay in Europe. The main causes are: lack of VC funding, lack of innovative disruption and entrenchment of traditional businesses with old-fashioned boomer MBA mentality that consider tech as an expensive cost center and devs as replaceable factory floor cogs that should be offshored whenever possible,…

I know people who worked in Europe, and Germany specifically, and they all said it's much harder to fire employees in Germany (and Western Europe generally) compared to the US.

That's true, but in general, if you need to fire employees regularly, then your hiring process is broken.

The way I look at it is that it's far too easy to fire people in the US, and this also leads to pathologies.

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#110

Post by phaemon »

Mashimo wrote: post #102
cblconfederate wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Beats being alone at home. That's because they live alone at home, probably because they moved recently / immigrated / forced to live in bad cities. Post-pandemic, they will be able to move to a place where they are not alone. I think they'll take that option rather than alone at home/only social in the office.

How does moving get me a flatmate?

You move to a shared flat?
Post reply on HN