Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 414 posts

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

#161

Post by benhurmarcel »

solosoyokaze wrote: post #140
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.

> (e.g. £100k+ for mid level devs)

You wish. In London's fintech maybe.

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

#162

Post by nly »

cletus wrote: post #103
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…

You'd be surprised at how few people can do these jobs. An eye opening exercise is doing interviews and seeing how many people with years of college and/or experience can't code a for loop. Demand exceeds supply and it's market forces not location that is the key driving factor here. Want a data point: London is roughly as expensive as NYC or SF yet the Big Tech total compensation is 30-40% less than SF/NYC. I don't…

> London is roughly as expensive as NYC or SF yet the Big Tech total compensation is 30-40% less than SF/NYC.

I don't know. NY seems to be consistently more expensive judging by [0], particularly rent. Overall NY taxes are only 1-3% lower from my calculations, so I think overall NY'ers don't have it much better. The UK is also particularly generous when it comes to tax-advantaged investment and has state healthcare.

[0] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

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

#163

Post by nly »

actuator wrote: post #115
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…

Umm.. FANMAG pay the same comp for NY and SF. Roughly the same for Seattle too.

The multiples I cited are what I tend to observe in the industry generally. There aren't really any FANMAGs outside of London.

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

#164

Post by benhurmarcel »

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…

Assuming your number of 1 cent/stream, and considering that 7$ out of the 10$ subscription pays for the music, that gives an average of 23 streams/day for a subscriber.

That's about 80 minutes of music per day, down to 50 minutes or less if you're sharing the subscription.

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

#165

Post by solosoyokaze »

benhurmarcel wrote: post #161
solosoyokaze wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> (e.g. £100k+ for mid level devs) You wish. In London's fintech maybe.

I’m talking about global dev salaries. Those London based devs can now easily get SV remote jobs and the matching salaries.

It’s not that SV salaries are unusually high, it’s that most places artificially depress dev salaries. I think we’ll see the elimination of layers of over paid management with all that money being captured by developers.

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

#166

Post by benhurmarcel »

solosoyokaze wrote: post #165
benhurmarcel wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (e.g. £100k+ for mid level devs) You wish. In London's fintech maybe.

I’m talking about global dev salaries. Those London based devs can now easily get SV remote jobs and the matching salaries. It’s not that SV salaries are unusually high, it’s that most places artificially depress dev salaries. I think we’ll see the elimination of layers of over paid management with all that money being captured by developers.

In my opinion the artificial bubble is more the SV-type salaries.

Compare developers salaries with similarly educated/skilled engineers in other disciplines (mechanical, electrical, aerospace, civil…), you'll see that SV developers are the outlier.

The reality is that on the global market you can get a good mid-level dev from a first-world country for half that price. And it's not artificial, it's just the market at play.

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

#167

Post by actuator »

nly wrote: post #163
actuator wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm.. FANMAG pay the same comp for NY and SF. Roughly the same for Seattle too.

The multiples I cited are what I tend to observe in the industry generally. There aren't really any FANMAGs outside of London.

Ah, your comment referred to FANMAG hence my reply.

> There aren't really any FANMAGs outside of London.

There are. For example, AWS has a development center in Cambridge.

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

#168

Post by solosoyokaze »

benhurmarcel wrote: post #166
solosoyokaze wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m talking about global dev salaries. Those London based devs can now easily get SV remote jobs and the matching salaries. It’s not that SV salaries are unusually high, it’s that most places artificially depress dev salaries. I think we’ll see the elimination of layers of over paid management with all that money being captured by developers.

In my opinion the artificial bubble is more the SV-type salaries. Compare developers salaries with similarly educated/skilled engineers in other disciplines (mechanical, electrical, aerospace, civil…), you'll see that SV developers are the outlier. The reality is that on the global market you can get a good mid-level dev from a first-world country for half that price. And it's not artificial, it's just the market at…

I think you're underestimating the amount of investment flowing in to tech companies right now. There's massive VC overhang with billions of dollars more to invest than there are opportunities. Devs are going to capture a lot of that money. It's the tech industry that's the future, the rest have just yet to catch up.

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

#169

Post by mywittyname »

nhance wrote: post #136
rorykoehler wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don't need to grab all of the top talent, just enough to keep them from coalescing into a threat.

The few that slip by get acquir-hired in a few years.

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

#170

Post by mywittyname »

Hamuko wrote: post #73
humanrebar wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that complicated. Build more housing and better transportation options. If particular kinds of businesses have a hard time thriving (like grocers), actually pay attention to what kills those businesses and fix it. It's often some sort of overboard regulation like zoning.

> It's not that complicated. On paper.

How dare you make housing affordable. I just spent 20x the median annual American salary on this house, and now you want to make it affordable?

/s

Post reply on HN