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Spotify is letting employees work from anywhere while paying SF and NY salaries

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41–50 of 414 posts

Re: Spotify is letting employees work from anywhere while paying SF and NY salaries

#42
post #29

PSA: When comparing US and EU salaries (or anywhere, really), use total cost to employer (excluding fixed office costs), or total benefit to employee (incl. taxes paid in their name and health/retirement costs). US salaries are mostly discussed before taxes, while often for EU countries it's after taxes and/or after mandatory health insurance and retirement savings.

Which EU countries have net salary in their employment contracts?

Employment contracts in Germany have gross salary (Bruttogehalt), all the social security, healthcare and taxes will be deducted from that amount.

Estonian employment contracts are a bit of a mix: the amount listed is gross (brutopalk), but the employer pays an additional 33+% on top of that gross salary for social security etc.

Re: Spotify is letting employees work from anywhere while paying SF and NY salaries

#43
post #29

PSA: When comparing US and EU salaries (or anywhere, really), use total cost to employer (excluding fixed office costs), or total benefit to employee (incl. taxes paid in their name and health/retirement costs). US salaries are mostly discussed before taxes, while often for EU countries it's after taxes and/or after mandatory health insurance and retirement savings.

Having worked in many EU countries, I've never once had salary quoted or discussed after tax.

Less experienced, but I've never seen EU salaries quoted after tax, either.

Re: Spotify is letting employees work from anywhere while paying SF and NY salaries

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a classic #firstworldproblem that many wish they had. I certainly wouldn't blame the employer for that.

It could be a problem for the employer as well, if it results in having a bunch of employees doing minimum effort.

My experience has told me that as an employee with no direct stake in the company, you should do little more than the minimum it takes to do what you're hired to do, and put all extra energy into literally anything else, like reducing your responsibility per dollar earned and total allotment of work hours. Anything else is a bad deal for you, but a great deal for real stakeholders.

I say this, because most of the time your employer wouldn't give two shits about you, beyond what they're required to, and your widgets being produced is the only thing they really care about. There are exceptions of course, like companies that obviously will give you that raise as you work to improve your skills etc.. which you should be doing. But usually it's just a Jason Bateman movie waiting to happen.

Re: Spotify is letting employees work from anywhere while paying SF and NY salaries

#45
This is making finding people for our (large but non tech) company (not in a high tech area) very difficult; we never paid those kind of salaries (cost of living here is much lower) but now you no longer need to be local to work for us, so we have to compete with these high paying companies which our company cannot afford to. It takes the location requirements out of the picture entirely. This is going to kill SF and to a lesser extant, NY, to no longer have these high tax paying employees, but also ruin the work environment elsewhere with now super affluent employees living in low cost but desirable locations.

Re: Spotify is letting employees work from anywhere while paying SF and NY salaries

#46
post #2

Do they pay those salaries in Europe? Because European salaries are usually 1/3 of the US rate.

1/3 is too little No, a person making 120k$ in NY is not making 40kEUR in a western European city. Maybe half of that, sure. But not 40k (even if you account the EUR-USD diff)

130k$ is probably 60k€ or more in Europe. It's like that in Italy and IT wages are abysmal here.

Re: Spotify is letting employees work from anywhere while paying SF and NY salaries

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked in many EU countries, I've never once had salary quoted or discussed after tax.

Less experienced, but I've never seen EU salaries quoted after tax, either.

As one data point, people never discus before-tax salaries in my home country (Croatia), it's always after-taxes and all other mandatory deductions. I believe the same holds true for at least several other EU countries from the region.

Re: Spotify is letting employees work from anywhere while paying SF and NY salaries

#48
post #29

PSA: When comparing US and EU salaries (or anywhere, really), use total cost to employer (excluding fixed office costs), or total benefit to employee (incl. taxes paid in their name and health/retirement costs). US salaries are mostly discussed before taxes, while often for EU countries it's after taxes and/or after mandatory health insurance and retirement savings.

What you're saying is impossible. Prospective employers don't know what your exact after-tax income is as it depends on a lot of factors (dependents, marital status, etc)

Re: Spotify is letting employees work from anywhere while paying SF and NY salaries

#49

This is making finding people for our (large but non tech) company (not in a high tech area) very difficult; we never paid those kind of salaries (cost of living here is much lower) but now you no longer need to be local to work for us, so we have to compete with these high paying companies which our company cannot afford to. It takes the location requirements out of the picture entirely. This is going to kill SF and…

It sounds like you don't think people doing the same job you do don't deserve the same pay.

It comes across as classism to be honest, looking down your nose at people because they don't live in the most expensive areas of the country.

Re: Spotify is letting employees work from anywhere while paying SF and NY salaries

#50
post #29

PSA: When comparing US and EU salaries (or anywhere, really), use total cost to employer (excluding fixed office costs), or total benefit to employee (incl. taxes paid in their name and health/retirement costs). US salaries are mostly discussed before taxes, while often for EU countries it's after taxes and/or after mandatory health insurance and retirement savings.

My wages / wage offers are always listed as wage before tax. On top of that, the employer will pay an X amount for pension contributions and health insurance, but that doesn't show up on my wage slip because it's not coming out of my income.
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