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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

#131

Post by rorykoehler »

h0l0cube wrote: post #84
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…

> A true shift to remote work, should it happen, spells the eventual end of insanely high SF FANMAG salaries. ... and the beginning of a new wave of entrepreneurship. The best talent goes towards companies that are too big to take risks. If you're ultra-competent, and the fat juicy wages aren't there to tie your resources on maintaining the status quo at some giant tech firm, maybe taking a punt on your own product (…

This is why it will always be worth paying inflated salaries for FAANG companies. Taking all the top talent is a moat.

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

#132

Post by brianwawok »

eptcyka wrote: post #93
marvin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the US have significant employer tax? A data point from Norway: Employer tax of 14% of pre-tax salary is paid by employer. Employer also has to pay 2-13% (dependent on individual negotiation) of pre-tax salary for retirement savings. These are both part of the cost to the employer, and are rarely considered part of "total compensation". So employers have to pay an extra 16-27% of each person's salary in addition…

I've never understood why there's a split between what taxes get paid by your employer and what taxes get paid by the employee - in the end, the employer pays all of them anyway. I'd like to know exactly how much money an employer would have to pay for a given amount of money landing in my bank account in a given time period.

You can figure it out with a basic Algebra calculation. Not that hard.

But I doubt any employee is comparing your offer on that. They are going on the top line number.

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

#133

Post by adamcstephens »

syshum wrote: post #81
0_____0 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Per capita, rural and suburban are much less efficient and more costly. Infrastructure is orders of magnitude more expensive and resource demanding to build as distances spread. Water, sewer, electricity, internet, roads, etc. That’s without even looking at the supplies and movement of people.

Sure, if you can afford to build yourself a self sufficient off grid home, you may perceive it as more efficient in day to day costs.

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

#134

Post by marvin »

cletus wrote: post #111
marvin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the US have significant employer tax? A data point from Norway: Employer tax of 14% of pre-tax salary is paid by employer. Employer also has to pay 2-13% (dependent on individual negotiation) of pre-tax salary for retirement savings. These are both part of the cost to the employer, and are rarely considered part of "total compensation". So employers have to pay an extra 16-27% of each person's salary in addition…

OMG I hate this kind of dishonesty by governments (and companies). There should be no "employer taxes". That's money that otherwise could be going to the employer so all taxes and the like should be reported coming out of the employee's salary. Example: the US has 6.2% Social Security taxes levied on both the employer and employee. This should be reported as 12.4/106.2 = 11.7% of the employee's income. BTW companies…

Agreed. Try to make an argument up here that our tax burden is debilitating, and all you get in return is «our taxes are the same as every other country, 30% on average».

Can be refuted in a debate, but of course the dishonest rhetoric reflects what people actually believe and vote.

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

#135

Post by EvilEy3 »

Smaug123 wrote: post #22
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.

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?"

For you definitely no. But for employer they would rather have new excited person working for a bowl of rice than old and tired "just doing my work".

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

#136

Post by nhance »

rorykoehler wrote: post #131
h0l0cube wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A true shift to remote work, should it happen, spells the eventual end of insanely high SF FANMAG salaries. ... and the beginning of a new wave of entrepreneurship. The best talent goes towards companies that are too big to take risks. If you're ultra-competent, and the fat juicy wages aren't there to tie your resources on maintaining the status quo at some giant tech firm, maybe taking a punt on your own product (…

This is why it will always be worth paying inflated salaries for FAANG companies. Taking all the top talent is a moat.

I've run a smart consulting business for 16 years now. I've watched over the years as many I've worked with have gone to FAANG.

There may be opportunity costs involved, but there is no way FAANG can grab all of the top talent. Some of it is going to make its own way simply because they want to write their own rules.

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

#137

Post by EvilEy3 »

JackPoach wrote: post #118
brailsafe wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I get what you are saying, but the fact that your company doesn't give a shit, shouldn't mean that you automatically don't give a shit about a company. Giving a shit is a great trait IMO. If your country doesn't give a shit about you, should you not give a shit about your country? Or your relatives? Or parents? Or children. I am perfectly fine not giving a shit about many things, but I do care about other things pass…

Yes, unless giving shit makes you happy you shouldn't give any.

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

#138

Post by m4tthumphrey »

Recruiting is proving insanely difficult right now. We are based just outside of London and have been offering "local remote" (1 day in week office generally) for about 4 years now. Candidates were always hard to attract (salary and office location) but offering remote work 4 days a week really helped. Now, that perk is now a norm so access to even remotely (no pun intended) skilled candidates is next to impossible.

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

#139

Post by ghaff »

superbcarrot wrote: post #98
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…

> But from now on you can get the inflated valley salaries from everywhere. You can't. Spotify are an exception and I doubt that they'll keep this up long term or that many companies will follow. And I think that that people overestimate these effects in general - the most likely outcome is that the salary distribution gets smoothed over to some extent i.e. big-city salaries go down a bit (or don't rise as high and a…

To the degree that true remote becomes more prevalent (a lot of people will be more in the 1-2 days/week commute camp), you probably see a new equilibrium over time as you say. Even if companies are hesitant to actually cut salaries, given how contentious that is, new hire offers in high CoL areas start coming in a bit lower and raises get skinnier while offers to people living in Little Rock are very generous for the area. You still have disparities but there's more of a nationwide equilibrium.

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

#140

Post by solosoyokaze »

m4tthumphrey wrote: post #138

Recruiting is proving insanely difficult right now. We are based just outside of London and have been offering "local remote" (1 day in week office generally) for about 4 years now. Candidates were always hard to attract (salary and office location) but offering remote work 4 days a week really helped. Now, that perk is now a norm so access to even remotely (no pun intended) skilled candidates is next to impossible.

It shouldn’t be that hard. I’d drop the one day a week in office requirement and make sure you’re paying market rates (e.g. £100k+ for mid level devs). Lots of good people looking to go fully remote right now.
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