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

businessinsider.com

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

#251

Post by anm89 »

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…

ok, I think we can all agree not to add any more letters to that acronym at this point and just call it big tech.

Although I really would like to get a job at GAFNDMRASDGAMGICZ soon.

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

#252

Post by nassycheezy »

88840-8855 wrote: post #244
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.

Fully agree, this is why I didn't put numbers and only mentioned pay structure and market rate.

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

#253

Post by auiya »

cccc4alll wrote: post #242

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.…

It will be both. The higher performers will have higher employer pool availability driving demand up, the entry-level performers will have higher competition barriers to entry from peers.

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

#254

Post by isbvhodnvemrwvn »

rightbyte wrote: post #16
nivenkos wrote: post #2

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

"Most of our offices are in large cities like New York, London and Stockholm" I looked out my window and laugthed abit reading that. They can't compare Stockholm with London amd NY like that ... Spotify in Stockholm does not pay NY wages today atleast.

Are their glassdoor salaries accurate? 58000 kr/mo for senior developers? You could find similar jobs in Warsaw with half the cost of living.

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

#255

Post by iso1210 »

doctorbaum wrote: post #232
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

What's the difference, for the laymen

Say Spotify's share price is $100, and as part of your compensation you are given an option to buy 100 shares at $100 in 5 years time

If Spotify in 5 years time is $500, you buy 100 shares for $10k, and immediately sell them for $50k, making a $40k profit (or you keep them).

If Spotify in 5 years time is $102, you buy 100 shares for $10k and sell for $10,200, making $200

If Spotify shares in 5 years times is $90, you don't bother buying the shares, but your options are worthless.

Now imagine you were given 100 shares instead, but couldn't sell them for 5 years (an RSU - or restricted stock unit)

In 5 years time, if Spotify is $500/share, your shares are worth $50k

In 5 years time, if Spotify is $102/share, your shares are worth $10,200

In 5 years time, if Spotify is $90/share, your shares are worth $9,000

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

#256

Post by auiya »

coldcode wrote: post #45

This is making finding people for our (large but non tech) company (not in a high tech area) very difficult; we never paid those kind of salaries (cost of living here is much lower) but now you no longer need to be local to work for us, so we have to compete with these high paying companies which our company cannot afford to. It takes the location requirements out of the picture entirely. This is going to kill SF and…

> This is going to kill SF and to a lesser extant, NY, to no longer have these high tax paying employees.

Sounds like a simple market correction, since those two cities have been extreme outliers for quite some time.

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

#257

Post by SomewhatLikely »

headcanon wrote: post #230
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…

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.

I'm not sure sure about that. The 6x places can pay that because of high revenue per employee. It's not like the 1x places will suddenly see a higher revenue per employee to pay higher compensation.

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

#258

Post by sedachv »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #107
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. They are so high because cost of living is very high and competition with other companies too You have it backwards. Silicon Valley salaries are not “inflated” nor are they unreasonably high. In fact even at large FAANG companies, engineers are underpaid relative to actual revenue contribution, it’s just that competition drives those companie…

> Silicon Valley salaries are not “inflated” nor are they unreasonably high.

More people need to understand this. Even here on HN most people appear innumerate. A round number like a $100,000 salary might have seemed like a large amount of money in the year 2000. There has been 55% inflation in the meantime.

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

#259

Post by dehrmann »

ornornor wrote: post #243
frongpik wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Usually a referral guarantees someone at least looks at the resume.

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

#260

Post by vecter »

brailsafe wrote: post #44
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be a problem for the employer as well, if it results in having a bunch of employees doing minimum effort.

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…

Or you could work hard and advance your career.
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