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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

#61

Post by yhoneycomb »

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…

If you want to maximize earnings, I almost wonder if it would be cheaper to rent the cheapest possible place in a remote area with a higher COL/salary, and then just live in a cheap area.

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

#62

Post by vidarh »

javajosh wrote: post #55
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 inex…

You really can't just make blanket statements about EU taxation effect on take home salary. There are massive differences in rates, and you also need to consider specific income levels as the profile of taxation by income band and dependents varies greatly.

Germany and (especially) Belgium tends to top the OECD lists over taxation, so for Germany you may well be right, while e.g. Denmark, Ireland and Poland (may be true for others too, but those are the ones I happened to be aware of) has tax rates that in several of the categories the OECD tracks are below US tax levels.

(Source: OECD Taxing Wages 2020)

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

#63

Post by Cthulhu_ »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #3

This could create a "golden chains" situation for employees, whereby they don't leave their job only because of the money, despite not being happy or as productive as they could be.

Or to rephrase, the employer gets long term commitment and loyalty from their employees because they get the best reward. The alternative is job hoppers, and I don't think you can create a business out of people who skip town whenever they get a better offer.

Mind you, the insane wage difference in SF is partly caused by job hoppers and scalping between the big and highly funded companies.

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

#64

Post by senko »

egman_ekki wrote: post #58
senko wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Both.

Officially, on the employment contract, the salary is shown before-tax, but after mandatory pension and healthcare deductions.

However, in the negotiations, in casual conversation, and when you're hearing someone talking about their salary in the media, it's always discussed after taxes. Most people have no idea how much tax (or health insurance) they're actually paying.

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

#65

Post by steverb »

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

It is pretty straightforward to get your music on Spotify and all the other streaming platforms. No record label needed. There are very inexpensive services that will do all the leg work for you, but it take approximately 230 streaming plays on spotify to earn a dollar.

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

#66

Post by tpetry »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #49
coldcode wrote: post #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…

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.

You do understand this wrong! The message is that any startup/company not in the valley will have a hard time finding employees. Until now every company paid a salary fitted for the locale the company is in: You are in an area with a low cost of living you are paid a lower salary than elsewhere.

But from now on you can get the inflated valley salaries from everywhere. They are so high because cost of living is very high and competition with other companies too.

But from now on your potential new employees can choose to work for your local company or some fang company for a much higher salary. And many companies will not be able to pay these high salaries.

There is a world outside of investor money burning valley startups and the most profitable software companies on the world. And they may have a big problem now.

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

#67

Post by vidarh »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #51
_-___________-_ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd never discuss that with a recruiter, because that would involve a discussion about how I conduct my personal finances well beyond just the salary and other benefits... E.g. additional pension contributions I make, or investments I make would affect it.

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

#68

Post by senko »

andrewingram wrote: post #59
senko wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good catch, thanks for pointing it out.

The way this works here in practice is the employer assumes "standard" level of taxes based on your location. So for example, you'd negotiate €2k net salary, and you'd get a some € extra if you have a dependant, mortgage, etc.

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

#69

Post by goldcd »

brailsafe wrote: post #44
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tim…

Way I see it, is that 'just doing the minimum' is utterly soul-destroying. And if you're doing that, then just you need to focus on everything else to stay sane. Work is never going to feel better.

However, if you can find at least a bit of interest in something that you do, then it's rewarding to focus on it. You take pride in that 5%, you polish it, read up on it, stay a bit late to add that shiny new feature, you tell others about it etc. If others agree with you, it grows and then becomes 10, 20% etc of your time.

Basically you're still stuck at work, when you'd rather be asleep under a duvet - but you've made that time more tolerable.

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

#70

Post by Hamuko »

senko wrote: post #64
egman_ekki wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Both. Officially, on the employment contract, the salary is shown before-tax, but after mandatory pension and healthcare deductions. However, in the negotiations, in casual conversation, and when you're hearing someone talking about their salary in the media, it's always discussed after taxes. Most people have no idea how much tax (or health insurance) they're actually paying.

In Finland, I usually hear people talk about salaries before taxes and less often after taxes. For example my union has a yearly salary survey and publish results in before taxes salaries. But since it's so confusing, you usually see "brutto" ("gross", before taxes) and "netto" ("net", after taxes) being discussed when talking about salaries.
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