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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

#281

Post by r7f7rhr »

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.

What's the real pool though? Most of the world's developers are either trash compared to the standard or working in a trash environment like Europe. It's basically SEA and the US in the leagues that matter which is a much smaller pool.

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

#282

Post by colinmhayes »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #233
benhurmarcel wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are wrong. The revenue impact of more manufacturing heavy and device heavy industries is lower for those engineers - that’s just how the overhead of other engineering and biotech companies work. Software is fundamentally different and the revenue impact can be multiples or even orders of magnitude higher, in really any industry or company type. Software engineers, even in Silicon valley, are underpaid relative to…

Employees aren't paid based off the value they provide, they're paid the least the company thinks they can pay to get an acceptable worker to fill he position.

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

#283

Post by michael1999 »

mdtusz wrote: post #213
Hamuko wrote: 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,…

All true, but don't underestimate the impact of the FLQ/PQ crisis. Several hundred thousand people moved from Montreal in the 90s, and immigration and money shifted to Toronto and Vancouver. Montreal was a renters market for 2 decades as a result, and Toronto experienced a boom that hasn't stopped since.

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

#284

Post by machiaweliczny »

burntoutfire wrote: post #269
machiaweliczny wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I also don't think degree means much but anyone with some curiosity gets one here as it's free, so it's still good estimate. Even if you add all outliers, physics and math students then you get max 3x my estimation.

> Anyone who expected hands-on grappling with hard CS problems will be disappointed.

Those people are above my lvl and I estimate them to be max 30 per year.

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

#285

Post by reader_mode »

alistairSH wrote: post #54
_-___________-_ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked in many EU countries, I've never once had salary quoted or discussed after tax.

“After tax” in the US means after the employee pays their own share of various income taxes. The portion of those taxes paid by the employer are not discussed (in salary discussions). Either way, the point stands - for cross-border salary discussions, you need to consider the “fully loaded” cost of an employee, not just net salary. You also have to consider non-cash benefits and costs (high US salaries offset by high…

Once you go fully remote you don't really need employment contracts either - in Europe opening some sort of legal entity and invoicing your salary as an independent contractor will be more profitable and more flexible.

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

#286

Post by chmod600 »

jb775 wrote: post #274
SomewhatLikely wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's people scattered all over the country making 2x-3x rates that could have been earning 6x, but moving to San Fran or NYC was never a feasible option. The 6x companies will offer them 4x, settle on 4.5x, and both parties are happy. It will inevitably drive down the 6x pay, but drive up the 1x-3x pay. However, the companies will be the real winners though unless there's some type of coordination between all empl…

What happens when that pattern repeats into highly-educated parts of Eastern Europe and Southern Asia?

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

#287

Post by jld »

jb775 wrote: post #274
SomewhatLikely wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's people scattered all over the country making 2x-3x rates that could have been earning 6x, but moving to San Fran or NYC was never a feasible option. The 6x companies will offer them 4x, settle on 4.5x, and both parties are happy. It will inevitably drive down the 6x pay, but drive up the 1x-3x pay. However, the companies will be the real winners though unless there's some type of coordination between all empl…

In a world where employees need to show up to 6X Co HQ everyday to work, the cost of living and the cost of hiring is directly linked (6x). But in a world where people can work anywhere, salaries will be disconnected from housing costs and we may see a lot of 6x companies happily slide lower. It will come down to how many employees meet the 6X Co's hiring bar and how good 6X Co is at turning new hires into productive employees. If there are enough available people above their current headcount, the floor will be closer to 1x. How close to 1x (2x? 4x? 5.5x?) is hard to know. I don't think it's simple to know where the market will fall after a remote work revolution.

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

#288

Post by jrochkind1 »

anm89 wrote: post #251
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.

I'm not stopping until we reach FANDANGO.

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

#289

Post by benhurmarcel »

steverb wrote: post #185
benhurmarcel wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And somehow terrestrial radio stations, which have no subscription base manage to make it work. As I said in the comment above, artists are free to NOT put their music on Spotify if they don't think it's a good deal, but regardless streaming services are only commercials for artists. Spotify is far from the worst offender. :-)

But on radio, 1 play is listened to by many people. That's equivalent to many streams.

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

#290

Post by 2W2 »

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…

I already only do 10 hours of work per week in this pandemic WFH. No one seems to notice. I’m L6 at google.

Why not double down and get two “full time” jobs. I’ve heard from my friend in BoA that he works less than 1 hour per day.

TC: 800k

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