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

261–270 of 414 posts

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

#261

Post by machiaweliczny »

burntoutfire wrote: post #218
machiaweliczny wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are overestimating suply of talented ppl. On my lvl there's 100 ppl per year in Poland. So it's 100 per 40M. Guess in other countries it's similar or less and here programming is quite popular.

> On my lvl there's 100 ppl per year in Poland. How do you figure that?

There's only 2/3 top universities (if you are being generous, 1 if honest) that are match worldwide here (have people doing substantial research, funding valuable companies or just working in FANGs) producing around 100 graduates per year (combined). This gives me some ballpark estimate.

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

#262

Post by wan23 »

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

Spotify gives you the choice of RSUs or options or straight cash. https://hrblog.spotify.com/2019/06/13/show-me-the-incentive/

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

#263

Post by pkaye »

senko wrote: post #52
ulfw wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is impossible. Prospective employers don't know what your exact after-tax income is as it depends on a lot of factors (dependents, marital status, etc)

As an employer in an EU country (Croatia), I know exactly how much each of my employees' after tax income is, including everything you've said (and adding stuff like some debt payments if there are any, etc). It's all withheld by employer - employee never sees a penny out of it. Although they always get full documentation of exactly what's wihhheld, in my experience almost nobody ever reads it. Note that there are so…

In the US, the employer withholds taxes based on filing status. Like if you are single or married, have kids, spouse is also working, second job. There is a short form called W4 that the employee fills out to help determine this.

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

#264

Post by 908B64B197 »

petercooper wrote: post #250
908B64B197 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Time to negotiate better visa options for UK engineers!

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

#265

Post by lostcolony »

onion2k wrote: post #246
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 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.

They don't need to. They just need to set the market rate so that start ups can't easily hire or retain the best; they're all competing to get into FAANGs, or failing that, companies that have the coffers to be second tier. The startup is left with the people willing to take a pay cut.

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

#266

Post by therealdrag0 »

SomewhatLikely wrote: post #257
headcanon wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If the company comes to you it might. It’s like how a Cuban can move to Miami and have their “productivity go up”, but with remote work the employee can stay where they are and the company can “move to them”. Of course the flip side of this is offshoring where the company can raise someone else’s productivity more cheaply than someone making US wages already.

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

#267

Post by petercooper »

908B64B197 wrote: post #264
petercooper wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Time to negotiate better visa options for UK engineers!

I'm not optimistic, but if the UK and US ever do a trade deal, an Australian or Canadian style deal that allows more freedom of labor would certainly be interesting.

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

#268

Post by dustinmoris »

That’s the only right way.

Talent is still scarce, even remote. There is not nearly enough good developers out there to fill all the demand. Employers who try to tell you differently in order to cut pay for going remote cheat you out of the salary which a good dev deserves.

I’ve explained it in great detail here:

https://dusted.codes/equal-pay-for-equal-work

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

#269

Post by burntoutfire »

machiaweliczny wrote: post #261
burntoutfire wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On my lvl there's 100 ppl per year in Poland. How do you figure that?

There's only 2/3 top universities (if you are being generous, 1 if honest) that are match worldwide here (have people doing substantial research, funding valuable companies or just working in FANGs) producing around 100 graduates per year (combined). This gives me some ballpark estimate.

I myself have a CS degree from a Polish university that's regularly in top1-top3 of the rankings. I don't think it means that much. We've had a fair share of people who didn't enjoy the work that much and did bare minimum. On the other hand, I've worked with plenty of people from lower ranked universities who didn't graduate in CS (but, for example in Maths or Physics) who are very strong contributors. The truth is that university pedigree is not a definitive indicator of on the job performance.

BTW (unrelated) - I think all Polish universities are a joke when it comes to CS. I've never heard of either one of them making you write a compiler or an OS or a database engine from scratch as a part of taking a course, while it seems fairly standard on top US universities. Instead, the workload is superficial and skews towards semester-long BS projects that prepare you for run-of-the-mill jobs in industry (web dev, big data etc.). Anyone who expected hands-on grappling with hard CS problems will be disappointed. The reason for that is because none of the professors, barring maybe a few exceptions, are doing any meaningful research, so they have no understanding of the state of the art.

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

#270

Post by ubercow13 »

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…

What will happen to all the employees at companies who are not able to leverage them to create as much value as FAANG companies can? ie. every other company that isn't a global tech behemoth?
Post reply on HN