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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

#221
post #99
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

They're already more efficient though, and there's no benefit to the current residents (tech rich or not) from massive incoming population growth. There won't be equivalent investment in services, recreation, leisure facilities to cope, so they'll degrade.

The scope of what I'm talking about is bigger than yours. Cities are more efficient, and we need to move more people into them (not just the ones that are big right now, just to cities in general) to give ourselves a better shot at keeping our planet habitable in the long run.

To your second point - degradation of infrastructure is not an issues with cities, it's an issue with management and investment. On a practical level, with additional people should come additional industry and tax revenue which should in turn allow metropolitan areas to keep pace infra-wise.

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

#222
post #213
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not that complicated. On paper.

It really isn't all that complicated though, and just takes money to fix the urban planning mistakes that have been made in many metropolitan cities. Montreal is probably the most livable "big" city in North America, and it's mostly because of three things: 1. Excellent transportation. The metro is for the most part consistent, extremely affordable (it's ~$85/month, and about half that for students and youth), safe,…

I have to point out here the co-existence of permissive zoning AND rent protection. This is the way.

I'm not sure if rent control exists in Montreal, but advocacy organizations in US metros often push rent control as a standalone solution to various housing crises. But rent control requires the existence of a decently functional housing market to do its job correctly.

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

#223
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

> some cities haven't figured out how to make it so everyone who should abbe able to live there can afford it Barcelona comes close. Perhaps not so much these days, but its a city that was really built with that in mind. And some of that persists.

Japan doesn't do too badly either. Some brief research is showing me that the configuration of apartment we would recognize as a 2BR would rent for something like $1200 or less in a lot of the Tokyo metro.

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

#224

What does it take to work for this kind of company though? I have about ten years experience, been focusing on frontend for the last few years. I have never worked at any of the big names and I have a bachelor degree that’s not in CS or mathematics but I’m a decent developer in my opinion: I write clean, testable code. And yet the major tech players always reject me before even a screening call. Which makes me think…

You're missing a referral.

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

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much were you hitting? I haven’t seen contracts that go that high, I’m on 140K base + car allowance now (8K), in total I make around 220-215K cash w/ bonuses. employer pension is about another 20K or so a year. IR35 made contracting complicated but even before that I’ve never seen anything that gets you to SV levels of total comp.

I've heard of contracts of 250K-300K GBP for senior architects positions.

That’s around what my role is, but I’ve never seen anything close to 300K p/a contracts for those, at least not actually 300K bailable since you don’t get that many days on those daily rate.

I’ve seen short term contracts with £1500-2000 day rates but you’ll be hard pressed to bill 200-250 days on that rate a year.

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

#226

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.

Until their competitors are providing the same products for less, or they are forcibly broken up by the government.

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

#227
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…

Folks from the UK should simply vote with their feet instead of whining and move to SV.

It's the only way it will change.

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

#228
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.

For software engineers, keep in mind healthcare is typically taken care of via private (high quality) insurance and that pre-tax retirement contributions (401k) are matched as well.

So these aren't really issues.

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

#229
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

On what grounds? People said the same thing about outsourcing. It didn't really change anything. Engineer salary has already been bimodal for quite some time. Trying to recruit for the upper tier hasn't gotten any easier.

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

#230
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 works both ways though. The 6x places might move to, say, 4x over time, but the 1x and 2x places will salary upwards to compete.

As someone who works in the Midwest USA, I don't see anything but upside for people like myself.

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