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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

#351

Post by screye »

I find it absurd that wealthy Tech people are making decisions on where to live based on the financial value proposition.

People in Tech are rich enough to comfortably live anywhere. Surely, the lifestyle and character of a town/city/country plays a much larger role in where you choose to stay. Life in cheaper cities in the interior is very different from that in massive cities like SF/NY/London/etc. No amount of money can fix life in the wrong location.

On HN, the Remote vs Local argument often ignores critical advantages of a local setup. Over 1 year of remote work, I haven't been able to replicate the magic of physical work a single time. This is while having an social workplace that has really tried to make people feel included.

This may sound like heresy to some but, if I am going to be spending 50% of my waking time with a dozen people, then I would want to be good friends with them, and remote work certainly doesn't make that easy.

____________

I also don't buy the flexibility argument of remote work. It requires a lot of discipline and deliberate action. All of my acquaintances (all single, wealthy and in tech) have increased their working hours during Covid, due to unclear expectations around remote work. None have used this freedom to travel or fulfill their 'live in a cabin' or 'digital nomad' dreams. (ofc, it is challenging to fulfill these during covid).

Now let be clear. I love the idea of companies letting their employees choose what's best from themselves. But, there is a feeling in the air that remote work will be the norm for effective teams after Covid. I have feeling these people will be in for a rude awakening.

Offices are most effectively leveraged by the 90-99th. Those who are doing productive work that needs focus, but not deliberately effective enough to make in the '1' Percentile. (don't read too strongly into the numbers). The structures lent by the office are most useful to these people. Those who are smart enough to use structures to improve, but not smart enough to not need them at all. The bottom 0-90 percentile are often in jobs that 'require' a physical presence (chefs) or ones that are mundane enough to be done from any location. (excel table filling)

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

#352

Post by cletus »

sgerenser wrote: post #322
cletus wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OMG I hate this kind of dishonesty by governments (and companies). There should be no "employer taxes". That's money that otherwise could be going to the employer so all taxes and the like should be reported coming out of the employee's salary. Example: the US has 6.2% Social Security taxes levied on both the employer and employee. This should be reported as 12.4/106.2 = 11.7% of the employee's income. BTW companies…

Agreed up until the last part. The standard deduction is progressive , it provides a much bigger benefit to lower income earners than it does to mid/high income earners.

Consider a simplified tax system:

- 10% of the first $100,000

- 20% of the remaining

- The standard deduction is $20,000

Now consider three incomes: $40,000, $80,000 and $200,000.

1. $40,000 is $4,000 (10%) tax to $2,000 (5%)

2. $80,000 is $8,000 (10%) tax to $6,000 (7.5%)

3. $200,000 is $30,000 (15%) tax to $26,000 (13%)

So on the face of it it seems progressive and would be if it wasn't for the fact that it offsets itemized deductions. Imagine each person above could deduct 25% of their income:

1. No change.

2. No change.

3. $50,000 deduction, which is an additional $30,000 of $6,000 in savings.

So the highest income earners still get itemized deductions and both the standard and itemized deductions are offsetting a marginal higher tax rate.

The point is that the "standard deduction" is (IMHO) dishonest. You can achieve a progressive tax system by... just having a progressive tax system.

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

#353

Post by mrkstu »

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!

Good for the engineers, not much incentive for the government to lose their best and brightest to the US.

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

#354

Post by cletus »

bogomipz wrote: post #346
barrkel wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience of London: - There's little difference, time-wise, between being located in a town on commuter rail, vs somewhere three connections away on the tube. If you're inside the M25 but outside the North / South Circular, you need to be very close to a station or you're practically worse off than someone living in a town on the railway. - Motorcycles and scooters, and increasingly, electric bicycles, are the b…

>"Of course, with Brexit, I'm headed for Zurich." I would be curious what the tech job market is like like in Zurich. Can you elaborate on that are you EU resident or have taken a job offer with a company based there?

I worked for a time in Zurich years ago so this may not be current but there are some tech jobs in Switzerland (eg Google has a decently sized office there). It's less than in, say, London.

Switzerland is actually a dream for car-free living. You only need a car if you live in a rural area. Taxes are pretty low. There a bunch of mandatory insurances you need but my experience was your net income position was substantially better than being a salaried employee in London (although food in particular is MUCH more expensive in Switzerland such that people will drive an hour to Aldi across the border in Germany to go shopping).

Fun fact #1: there are limits to how many groceries you can bring into Switzerland. Meat in particular. You can get checked for this at the border.

Fun fact #2: IIRC years ago the supermarket just across the border in Germany had the highest revenue of any supermarket in Germany.

As for work authorization, it is relatively easy for EU citizens to get and somewhat harder for non-EU citizens. It generally takes 5 years on a B permit (work visa) to get a C permit (permanent residence) if you're EU, 10 if you're not.

I imagine with Brexit, UK citizens are now in the harder category.

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

#355

Post by adamcstephens »

jhpriestley wrote: post #181
adamcstephens wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per capita, rural and suburban are much less efficient and more costly. Infrastructure is orders of magnitude more expensive and resource demanding to build as distances spread. Water, sewer, electricity, internet, roads, etc. That’s without even looking at the supplies and movement of people. Sure, if you can afford to build yourself a self sufficient off grid home, you may perceive it as more efficient in day to da…

Walnut creek (suburban city near San Francisco) budget is about $1500 per resident, Contra Costa county, which contains Walnut Creek, spends about $3500 per resident. San Francisco is like $14000 per resident.

What are these numbers comparing? Property taxes?

Don’t discount the many sources of funding in America. The state and federal governments can and do pay for infrastructure, along with long term bonds paid using sales and other taxes. The suburbs benefit from the highways to the suburbs, but the suburbs don’t fund them.

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

#356

Post by ChrisLomont »

cletus wrote: post #352
sgerenser wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed up until the last part. The standard deduction is progressive , it provides a much bigger benefit to lower income earners than it does to mid/high income earners.

Consider a simplified tax system: - 10% of the first $100,000 - 20% of the remaining - The standard deduction is $20,000 Now consider three incomes: $40,000, $80,000 and $200,000. 1. $40,000 is $4,000 (10%) tax to $2,000 (5%) 2. $80,000 is $8,000 (10%) tax to $6,000 (7.5%) 3. $200,000 is $30,000 (15%) tax to $26,000 (13%) So on the face of it it seems progressive and would be if it wasn't for the fact that it offsets…

The US does have a progressive tax system. Here's effective federal tax rates. Throw on inheritance tax on top of these and it gets extremely progressive.

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/110th-congress-2007-...

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

#357

Post by colinmhayes »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #333
colinmhayes wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That goes without saying and is already accounted for implicitly in anything I already wrote. You’re pointing this out like it’s a surprise or somehow contradicts what I wrote, but it doesn’t at all. The “least they can pay” floor is just being moved up closer to the fair level indicated by the actual contribution to revenue. Remote work just strips exploitative regional employers from their many decades of greedy fr…

I mean it also opens up the entire Indian subcontinent and anyone who doesn't want to move to the headquarters. Workers compete with each other for jobs, they can't really just demand their marginal value of labor unless they're truly unique. Remote work seems likely to lower the floor even more, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

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

#358

Post by TheCoelacanth »

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

Stock options aren't equivalent to just buying stock.

They are equivalent to letting you travel back in time to the date when the strike price was set to buy stock based on your future knowledge (and using your future money).

That's obviously not worthless. It's much harder to determine the value of than RSUs, but it's potentially very valuable.

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

#359

Post by TheCoelacanth »

dominotw wrote: post #337
tomerico wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only earn money if the stock price appreciate

so its like call options where employer eats the option fee?

Yes, except I think they usually just issue new stock when you exercise and dilute the existing owners instead of actually paying someone else for an option.

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

#360

Post by tiew9Vii »

solosoyokaze wrote: post #165
benhurmarcel wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (e.g. £100k+ for mid level devs) You wish. In London's fintech maybe.

I’m talking about global dev salaries. Those London based devs can now easily get SV remote jobs and the matching salaries. It’s not that SV salaries are unusually high, it’s that most places artificially depress dev salaries. I think we’ll see the elimination of layers of over paid management with all that money being captured by developers.

> Those London based devs can now easily get SV remote jobs

Is this really the case?

I have seen an increase in remote jobs. Most of these remote jobs I've seen have a requirement you are in a similar timezone to the company's offices.

Being in a similar timezone to your team is reasonable. Even though you are remote, sending a message then waiting until you start work the next day for the response, or not being able to schedule calls at convenient hours due to timezone massively impacts delivery. You can live with it, but it's not ideal.

Being stuck on the other side of the world in Australia, this is currently my problem, timezones.

There's an increasing number of remote jobs available which I'd love to do because the work no longer exists in Australia but booming in the Europe/US. However, the timezone means that companies are not interested, they want Europe/US based staff to match with there current team locations.

On the plus side, as it looks like I will leave Australia because my career has stopped and going backwards even if getting paid more, I'll have much more freedom where I can move to if this trend continues, or I hope anyway.

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