Live data from Hacker News

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

businessinsider.com

291–300 of 414 posts

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

#291

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…

A radio play is also tens of thousands of listeners. Compared to that, Spotify pays many orders of magnitude more than radio.

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

#292
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, I have seen a lot of US cities that used rent control to do nothing except reduce accountability. You can build a decently functional housing market without rent control. But with rent control you don't need to build a functional housing market so the suffering continues.

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

#293

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.

What are you trying to say? Anyone can demand a greater salary if their qualifications are in demand. If they are not - they should consider working on learning new skills which are in demand.

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

#294
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.

>There won't be equivalent investment in services, recreation, leisure facilities to cope, so they'll degrade.

That's what happens in suburbia. You build a lot of infrastructure for very few people. That infrastructure was partly funded by private companies or federal government incentives. Once you have to collect property taxes and maintain the infrastructure you've overburdened yourself and can no longer meet your obligations precisely because there are not enough people living in that area.

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

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm in Europe (geographically anyway, technically the UK isn't in Europe right now). It isn't trash but I'd gladly swap my job for a remote one that pays NY wages.

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

#296
post #93
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the US have significant employer tax? A data point from Norway: Employer tax of 14% of pre-tax salary is paid by employer. Employer also has to pay 2-13% (dependent on individual negotiation) of pre-tax salary for retirement savings. These are both part of the cost to the employer, and are rarely considered part of "total compensation". So employers have to pay an extra 16-27% of each person's salary in addition…

I've never understood why there's a split between what taxes get paid by your employer and what taxes get paid by the employee - in the end, the employer pays all of them anyway. I'd like to know exactly how much money an employer would have to pay for a given amount of money landing in my bank account in a given time period.

If you just look at the present state of things, the split doesn't make much sense. Instead, consider the choice of legislators that are about to change taxes on already existing employment agreements. There are two sides to each employment and affecting one is not the same as affecting the other.

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

#297
post #290
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

Wait until you find out how many people work less than 1 hour per day in the office!

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

#298
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not enough tax base to support infrastructure like installing broadband, repairing and winter upkeep of roads and electric grid, fire stations, hospitals. Even businesses like nursing homes which one expects would benefit from lower property costs do not prosper due to lack of population and supportive medical services. Lower COL areas are net users of tax revenue from the country due to inefficiency, cities…

That's only a result of the resources made available by the inhabitation of rural lands being under-valued on the market due to subsidies. Say goodbye to affordable food prices if we don't subsidize rural locales.

If you have to subsidize something, you only want to subsidize as much as necessary. Farmers can get their subsidies. A remote worker moving out of SF with a fat paycheck doesn't need the subsidy.

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

#299
post #209

I wonder if this will make non-techies' life even harder. Right now, thanks to the relatively higher pay, techies are concentated in cities/urban areas. With rermote work possible on a permanent basis, all these relatively well-off techies moving to rural areas; and with their spending power, wouldn't they drive up prices?

Maybe the firefighters, nurses and restaurant staff who work in cities will be able to afford a shorter commute if city housing prices fall?

Rent will fall, I doubt home prices will fall that much though.

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

#300

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.

A strong referral can get you hired even if you fail the interview.
Post reply on HN