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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

#121

Post by Smaug123 »

wooger wrote: post #104
Smaug123 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this an age-old story? Choosing whether or not to take a pay cut to get work you prefer? My initial reaction to "oh woe, my employer pays me so much that I don't want to leave!" is "… and this is a problem?"

I think 99% of the population would quit today if they didn't need the money.

Certainly. But the alternative action that anybody can unilaterally take is…?

My comment was in response to someone noting that Spotify could be constructing golden chains by paying people far above the market rates for where they live. The people involved are given the means to retire strictly faster in the world where Spotify does that, vs the world in which they don't.

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

#122

Post by eloisant »

nivenkos wrote: post #2

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

There are many countries in Europe, and many cities, and salaries differ wildy.

You'll get a higher salary in northern Europe (Germany, UK, Netherlands, etc.) than in southern Europe (Spain, Italy, France).

Also you'll get a higher salary in a tech hub like London or Berlin and a lower one in the country side.

There are variations in US too, although probably not as big as between European countries.

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

#123

Post by dbbk »

peteretep wrote: post #60
garbagetime wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They don't

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

#124

Post by brianwawok »

pnutjam wrote: post #108
syshum wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is only true in a non-remote work environment where people would have to commute into office building for work if everyone is commuting 5 feet to a home office then the efficiency of rural vs urban becomes less disparate Add in Solar power and it becomes even less so of course there still is some in the delivery of supplies, but even these can be some what mitigated to where the differences are minor

Utilities, deliveries, etc... Urban areas are way better in many ways.

Heck just roads. At a certain level of rural you are paving and patching 10 miles of road per person. In the city you are paving like a few feet per person.

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

#125

Post by nivenkos »

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.

EU salaries are also given before taxes.

Have you worked in the EU?

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

#126

Post by jobvandervoort »

tsss wrote: post #114
jobvandervoort wrote: post #13

FWIW we [0] employ a lot of people in the EU working remotely and a large part of them earns SF/NY salaries. Probably a strong selection bias to the types of companies that choose to work with us. [0]: I'm the CEO of remote.com

Sure because remote.com is so outrageously expensive that only people earning 100k and more can afford it.

We tend to be the most affordable employer of record with quite some margin.

Paying contractors is free through us.

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

#127

Post by peteretep »

steverb wrote: post #117
cabbageoverload wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many plays should it take to earn a dollar? I don't know anything about the music industry.

A radio play is around 9.5 cents per play. Assuming there are no royalty splits, then that would be 11 plays to earn a dollar. I think royalties of 1 to 3 cents per stream are completely reasonable. Subcent royalties are just platforms taking advantage of the content creators. Which is why most artists see all the streaming platforms as merely a way to advertise for live shows and merch. That's the only way to really…

Going from your original numbers (which I didn’t check), a play current pays out just under half a cent (1/230), and you’d like Spotify to pay around 5 times that (avg 2c). Spotify distributes about 70% of revenue to rights holders so you’re asking Spotify to pay out ... 350% of revenue to rights holders?

Spotify could almost certainly be charging more, but it’s already incentivised to maximise revenue, and it has competitors, so it seems like it’s probably found the market value of a play?

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

#128

Post by Smaug123 »

sokoloff wrote: post #91
Smaug123 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this an age-old story? Choosing whether or not to take a pay cut to get work you prefer? My initial reaction to "oh woe, my employer pays me so much that I don't want to leave!" is "… and this is a problem?"

If you find the work tedious or unethical and have arranged your finances such that you’re trapped into the bi-weekly drip of cash, I’d find that to be a problem.

I can't help thinking that in that case this really is your fault. Remember, we're talking about SF tech salaries being given to employees who aren't in SF here; many people get by comfortably on far less.

(Obviously there are orders of magnitude more people who get paid much less than the sums we're talking about, and don't have enough to get by comfortably. But the question is specifically about people who have been golden-chained to a job in the top 5%-ish of income.)

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

#129

Post by komuW »

I wonder what the mood was like when homo sapiens was transitioning - unbeknownst to many - from a hunter gathering nomadic lifestyle to a sedentary agricultural one.

I know the scales are different but sapiens is in another transition, again unbeknownst to many.

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

#130

Post by mensetmanusman »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #112
tpetry wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

The idea of a company paying based on the cost of the locale is just another way of saying “what’s the lowest we can pay people for these skills compared to what else they can get locally?” and divorced from how much value they bring to the company. Sadly, for these companies, local just got a whole lot broader and they will need to pay more to get the talent they need to stay competitive.

In your life, I’m sure you try to pay as low as you can for things. Have you ever said ‘no, I will pay more for this car because its value to my life is higher than $10k’ ?

Remote work is great, because it’s making a more free-market. It’s almost like we immediately recovered the mobility that the population used to have overnight.

This will also mean that you are competing with 10x more people, so wages may go down because of that fact.

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