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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

#241

Post by onion2k »

nassycheezy wrote: post #231

Please take note that Spotify pays sub-market salaries for these cities. The reason being that they do not offer RSUs but instead public stock options without any discount. - Typical FAANG compensation: X base pay + Y RSUs + Z signing bonus - Spotify: X base pay + Y stock options (public, so equivalent to you purchasing stocks really) + no signing bonus

The pay isn't particularly attractive compared to other tech companies in those cities, but it's still massively better than 99% of other places in the world.

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

#242

Post by cccc4alll »

This is the right move. All FAANG companies will have to fall in line quick.

All the nonsense about location based COL salary adjustments are based on pure HR fantasy.

High performance engineers are valuable and rare.

All this talk about more talent being available remote to companies and companies can demand salaries lower miss out on the other aspect.

More companies are now available to high performance engineers. High performers can now negotiate higher salary with multiple companies for remote positions.

It will be upward feedback loop, pushing higher salary offers for higher performers.

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

#243

Post by ornornor »

frongpik wrote: post #224
ornornor wrote: post #146

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.

I’m not sure. I was referred by an employee several times at Shopify for instance and it did nothing for me. A referral in a lot of places is just so that the company knows who to give the referral bonus to if you’re hired but it doesn’t give you any kind of edge.

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

#244

Post by 88840-8855 »

nassycheezy wrote: post #231

Please take note that Spotify pays sub-market salaries for these cities. The reason being that they do not offer RSUs but instead public stock options without any discount. - Typical FAANG compensation: X base pay + Y RSUs + Z signing bonus - Spotify: X base pay + Y stock options (public, so equivalent to you purchasing stocks really) + no signing bonus

This is ridiculous. I find well paid devs super arrogant. Some of them made 150k, 200k, 250k - while other people, also qualified, make salaries that are not enough to start a family and have a decent life.

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

#245

Post by harrydehal »

pault wrote: post #206
pjc50 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where would people go? Underpopulated cities? Rapidly expand towns?

There is a massive population outflow from high COL coastal cities to smaller interior cities happening right now. SF, NY, LA, and Seattle are all shrinking.

Here's a great, interactive map based on Redfin data:

https://www.redfin.com/news/data-center/migration/

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

#246

Post by onion2k »

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 don't think any company can afford to employ a significant percentage of the world's tech workers. Google has 150,000 staff, and even if half of them are developers that's only about 0.25% of the number of developers globally. Employing people as a moat only works within a large city (or a few dozen large cities). It can't be done if people can work from anywhere.

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

#247

Post by bfung »

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.

To be a little bit picky, Amazon & Microsoft pay about 1/2 in total compensation than the Bay Area companies.

using data from https://www.levels.fyi/

It’s been true since 2014, as I check salaries around the web to see how my hiring goes, and also for my own opportunities. My own records: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BoMvtY_mICEYygy0jXVG...

Point being - Amazon&MS salaries aren’t likely to change, while Bay Area tech companies, the outflux happening, will have to adjust.

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

#248

Post by spunker540 »

ornornor wrote: post #146

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…

Try reaching out to recruiters directly on linkedin to enter the system instead of just submitting your resume to be auto-screened. You'll probably have to have a short screen call with them first, during which you can make the case that despite the lack of CS degree you know what you're doing, talk about your passion for that company's work etc, and it should be pretty feasible to get a true coding screen from there.

These recruiters are so used to cold-calling via email/linkedin and getting no reply, I feel they'd be pretty happy to have someone actually interested (and qualified) fall in their lap.

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

#249

Post by whiddershins »

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…

How many people on average hear a single radio play? Without that number this isn’t a reasonable comparison point.

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

#250

Post by petercooper »

908B64B197 wrote: post #227
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…

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.

And that's the reason why UK rates are so low. Relatively few people meet the conditions of both wanting to move (for cultural or family reasons, say) and being able to move (visas being the main impediment here - as someone who considered it 15 years ago, moving to the US to work is no walk in the park).
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