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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

#111

Post by cletus »

marvin wrote: post #33
senko wrote: post #29

PSA: When comparing US and EU salaries (or anywhere, really), use total cost to employer (excluding fixed office costs), or total benefit to employee (incl. taxes paid in their name and health/retirement costs). US salaries are mostly discussed before taxes, while often for EU countries it's after taxes and/or after mandatory health insurance and retirement savings.

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…

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 do this too. Airlines charge fuel surcharges (there's no such thing; the fares are just more expensive). US ISPs are famous for things like "Infrastructure Surcharges" and other charges you can't avoid. The FTC/FCC should step in and make it illegal to underreport true costs with mandatory charges like these.

Another beef with the US government I have in particular is the "standard deduction". This is actually a way of hiding a regressive tax on lower income people. Think about it: you're eroding the value of itemized deductions but lower income people are disproportionately affected.

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

#112

Post by simonbarker87 »

tpetry wrote: post #66
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you don't think people doing the same job you do don't deserve the same pay. It comes across as classism to be honest, looking down your nose at people because they don't live in the most expensive areas of the country.

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…

The idea of a company paying based on the cost of the locale is just another way of saying “what’s the lowest we can pay people for these skills compared to what else they can get locally?” and divorced from how much value they bring to the company. Sadly, for these companies, local just got a whole lot broader and they will need to pay more to get the talent they need to stay competitive.

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

#113

Post by eloisant »

_-___________-_ wrote: post #38
senko wrote: post #29

PSA: When comparing US and EU salaries (or anywhere, really), use total cost to employer (excluding fixed office costs), or total benefit to employee (incl. taxes paid in their name and health/retirement costs). US salaries are mostly discussed before taxes, while often for EU countries it's after taxes and/or after mandatory health insurance and retirement savings.

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

In France there is employee taxes and employer taxes. You discuss before employee taxes, but after employer taxes (which is about 50% of the salary before employee taxes). If you're on a French payroll the amount is written on your payslip, but most people don't even notice it.

At the end of the day it doesn't really matter if it's an employer tax or an employee tax, the employer spends some amount of money and the employee gets a portion home. But the discussion never includes employer taxes.

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

#114

Post by tsss »

jobvandervoort wrote: post #13

FWIW we [0] employ a lot of people in the EU working remotely and a large part of them earns SF/NY salaries. Probably a strong selection bias to the types of companies that choose to work with us. [0]: I'm the CEO of remote.com

Sure because remote.com is so outrageously expensive that only people earning 100k and more can afford it.

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

#115

Post by actuator »

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…

Umm.. FANMAG pay the same comp for NY and SF. Roughly the same for Seattle too.

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

#117

Post by steverb »

cabbageoverload wrote: post #102
steverb wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pretty straightforward to get your music on Spotify and all the other streaming platforms. No record label needed. There are very inexpensive services that will do all the leg work for you, but it take approximately 230 streaming plays on spotify to earn a dollar.

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 make money without hitting Taylor Swift levels of streams.

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

#118

Post by JackPoach »

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…

I get what you are saying, but the fact that your company doesn't give a shit, shouldn't mean that you automatically don't give a shit about a company. Giving a shit is a great trait IMO. If your country doesn't give a shit about you, should you not give a shit about your country? Or your relatives? Or parents? Or children. I am perfectly fine not giving a shit about many things, but I do care about other things passionately, even if they don't reciprocate. Work is one of those things that I really would rather care about than not. When I don't - it usually makes me unhappy.

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

#119

Post by sokoloff »

nly wrote: post #82
yhoneycomb wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to maximize earnings, I almost wonder if it would be cheaper to rent the cheapest possible place in a remote area with a higher COL/salary, and then just live in a cheap area.

Yes, but until remote work is the norm it's a quality of life trade-off. Living in low COL area around London for instance is complicated by the fact that the entire commuter zone, for certain classes of housing, is basically priced at central prices less cost of commuting. If you want a comfortable family life, with a bunch of kids, then you're looking at a long commute. Housing in the UK is severely messed up thoug…

I think GP means “rent an address” somewhere expensive, claim you live there, and actually live someplace cheap, working remotely.

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

#120

Post by pnutjam »

alistairSH wrote: post #89
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wages / wage offers are always listed as wage before tax. On top of that, the employer will pay an X amount for pension contributions and health insurance, but that doesn't show up on my wage slip because it's not coming out of my income.

What country? In the US, my wage slip shows the portion of my salary that was withheld to pay federal/state income taxes on my behalf, plus my personal pre-tax retirement account contribution, plus health insurance fees. It does NOT show the taxes paid by my employer in my name (workman's comp, employer share of FICA, employer share of health insurance, etc).

I've had paystubs that enumerate what the employer is paying for different benefits, like health insurance or short term disability (US midwest). There is no standard in the US.

When I worked at a university, they made a big deal about how they contributed 10% of your income into a retirement plan. Unfortunately it had a cliff vesting cycle that I never got close to meeting. (another scam that employers use to pay you less)

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