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

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

#51

Post by Cthulhu_ »

_-___________-_ wrote: post #38
senko wrote: 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.

I have; last time when I was looking for a job, some employers (and mostly recruiters) asked me what I'd like to earn per month after taxes.

I'm sure there's some shuffling they would end up doing when it comes to wages, stock options (not really a thing), transportation, and other benefits.

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

#52

Post by senko »

ulfw wrote: post #48
senko wrote: 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)

As an employer in an EU country (Croatia), I know exactly how much each of my employees' after tax income is, including everything you've said (and adding stuff like some debt payments if there are any, etc).

It's all withheld by employer - employee never sees a penny out of it. Although they always get full documentation of exactly what's wihhheld, in my experience almost nobody ever reads it.

Note that there are some adjustments employees can make a return for at the end of the year, which takes into accounts stuff like dividend income, tax deduction on mortgages and similar.

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

#53

Post by vidarh »

saiya-jin wrote: post #37
raverbashing wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Citation? I think pretty much all salaries discussed in Europe was before tax (Stock option on the other hand are usually not counted)

This is country specific but in many European countries there are employer's and employee's social deductions. Usually salaries discussed are already without employer's part, but with employee's ones. Taxes should be taken away only once AFAIK. So salaries discussed/negotiated will still have in them 1) tax; 2) employee social deductions; 3) health insurance. This is deducted, and result goes to employee's account. I…

Employer payroll taxes exists in a number (all?) of US states too.

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

#54

Post by alistairSH »

_-___________-_ wrote: post #38
senko wrote: 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.

“After tax” in the US means after the employee pays their own share of various income taxes. The portion of those taxes paid by the employer are not discussed (in salary discussions).

Either way, the point stands - for cross-border salary discussions, you need to consider the “fully loaded” cost of an employee, not just net salary. You also have to consider non-cash benefits and costs (high US salaries offset by high health care costs, etc).

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

#55

Post by javajosh »

nivenkos wrote: post #2

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

My experience in Germany may not be typical. But with the EU's higher taxes, 80% indeed goes down to 50%. However if you have kids, the numbers climb up again because, at least in Germany, you get "Kindergeld" and "Elterngeld" and state-sponsored day-care (Kita) for your kid(s). Plus, 30-days a year vacation standard, you get walkable cities, very good public transportation (so, no car costs) AND you get to take inexpensive weekend trips to Greece, London, Prague, or wherever you want to go. It's up to you to compute that value.

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

#56

Post by garbagetime »

peteretep wrote: post #41
timvisee wrote: post #35

Maybe they should pay their artists more, instead of their employees.

Who are Spotify’s artists? I thought the artists contracted with record labels

The people who make the music. Some don't have record labels, so it would be weird to not just talk about the artists.

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

#57

Post by 0_____0 »

lanevorockz wrote: post #24
nly wrote: post #20

Make hay while the sun shines. A true shift to remote work, should it happen, spells the eventual end of insanely high SF FANMAG salaries. Market forces will soon close these opportunities. My limited experience tells me people aren't prepared for homogenization of salaries across geographies: South East England, outside London: 1x London: 2x New York: 3x San Francisco: 6x On making hay: A friend of mine is currently…

That is true, it might be the end of the sustainability of overpopulated cities ...

Funny because cities are more efficient from an energy and carbon footprint perspective. The only thing that makes it unsustainable is that some cities haven't figured out how to make it so everyone who should abbe able to live there can afford it

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

#58

Post by egman_ekki »

senko wrote: post #47
javajosh wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

by "people never discuss" you mean the negotiation between the employee and employer is based on after tax salary, or do you mean casual conversations with friends? I haven't seen discussing after tax salary at all during interviewing process in the 4 countries I applied for jobs and got offers (Slovakia, Czechia, Switzerland, Denmark).

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

#59

Post by andrewingram »

senko wrote: post #52
ulfw wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

As an employer in an EU country (Croatia), I know exactly how much each of my employees' after tax income is, including everything you've said (and adding stuff like some debt payments if there are any, etc). It's all withheld by employer - employee never sees a penny out of it. Although they always get full documentation of exactly what's wihhheld, in my experience almost nobody ever reads it. Note that there are so…

Note the comment you're replying to said "prospective employers". Until you're entered into the payroll system, your employer likely won't know what all the applicable deductions are, so can't give you a net income figure as part of an offer, just a pre-deductions figure.

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

#60

Post by peteretep »

garbagetime wrote: post #56
peteretep wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are Spotify’s artists? I thought the artists contracted with record labels

The people who make the music. Some don't have record labels, so it would be weird to not just talk about the artists.

I thought Spotify didn’t contract directly with any artists?
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