Zuckerberg says employees moving out of Silicon Valley may face pay cuts • Hacker News Board

Re: Zuckerberg says employees moving out of Silicon Valley may face pay cuts

#121

Post by mech422 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

wikibob wrote: post #111

brogrammernot wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AZ salaries, when factoring in COL, are more than most tech jobs in California. This is leaving the allure of non-valued startup options but on average the salaries I’ve seen (yes, n=1) are in the realm of the upper curve of Bay Area salaries .

Do you have some reliable data you can share on AZ salaries? Glassdoor is obviously not reliable.

I actually haven't looked for a job locally in 3-4 years. I'm currently working remotely for a SV company.

I did do a few interviews with AWS for a TAM/Engineering type role earlier this year. They had no quibbles with $175K. I actually lost interest when I found out it was a 25% on-premise role at client facilities. If I had known everyone would be working remotely now, it might have been different.

Re: Zuckerberg says employees moving out of Silicon Valley may face pay cuts

#122

Post by erik_seaberg » Thu, May 21, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

dudul wrote: post #108

j45 wrote: post #71

The thing about remote work is.. it could become a global marketplace now for talent. The big companies could get to off-shore again in a global remote-first re-jigging.

It will already take a while for companies to absorb the change of distributed organization in the US. Opening to the world brings yet another set of challenges: taxes, employment regulations in each country, timezone differences, cultural differences, etc. I know FANG are really good at propaganda, but I don't see them going overnight from "good work can only be done with everyone in the office" to "well sure, one g…

I keep remembering how we'd just meet over video rather than shlep all the way to the other end of Google's Mountain View campus.

Re: Zuckerberg says employees moving out of Silicon Valley may face pay cuts

#123

Post by sys_64738 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

Jemaclus wrote: post #2

This is one of the things that's always bothered me. Let's say you hire me for your company in San Francisco and pay me $150K. You've made a calculation: my value to the company is greater than $150K, and $150K is a price you're willing to pay to leverage that value. In other words, the company will (eventually) make more than $150K per year off my contributions to the company. But now if I decide to move to Tulsa, O…

These companies already have CoL adjustments based on whether you live in the Bay area, Boston or Austin.

Re: Zuckerberg says employees moving out of Silicon Valley may face pay cuts

#124

Post by pyuser583 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #23

Jemaclus wrote: post #2

This is one of the things that's always bothered me. Let's say you hire me for your company in San Francisco and pay me $150K. You've made a calculation: my value to the company is greater than $150K, and $150K is a price you're willing to pay to leverage that value. In other words, the company will (eventually) make more than $150K per year off my contributions to the company. But now if I decide to move to Tulsa, O…

The $150k is not what your work is directly valued at, but rather an agreement of what it'll take for you to drag your ass to San Francisco, which is objectively a bad place to live if you're a human that has to make budgets, and come to work at Facebook. Also yes, if Facebook starts to hire remote workers, then your value will drop because they now have the access to a pool of workers who don't want to drag their as…

It means you’re adding at least that much value to the company - or at least that’s what whoever is hiring you thinks.

Re: Zuckerberg says employees moving out of Silicon Valley may face pay cuts

#125

Post by mrkurt » Thu, May 21, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #82

volkk wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm kind of super interested (also scared) in the effects FAANG companies allowing remote workers will have. sure, maybe salaries at FAANG might decrease as supply/competition rises, but then all of the other companies that arent FAANG now have to sort of raise the lower boundaries of their pay since they cant just say "well you can go ahead to move to SF if you dont like it". Are we looking at lower high end of the…

It seems like the top end would drop a lot more than the median would rise. Given the poaching it seems clear SF has a scarcity of developers that satisfy FAANG, and scarcity drives price up radically. If remote work becomes more widespread, the scarcity condition would presumably evaporate. Socially speaking it could be a very good thing. Many of the big challenges we are facing (wealth disparity, political polariza…

Those companies already hire all over the world for the scarce, high dollar engineers. I don't think top end compensation will drop while those companies are monopolies. Most of those salaries balloon because they poach people from each other.

Re: Zuckerberg says employees moving out of Silicon Valley may face pay cuts

#126

Post by wikibob » Thu, May 21, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

mech422 wrote: post #121

wikibob wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have some reliable data you can share on AZ salaries? Glassdoor is obviously not reliable.

I actually haven't looked for a job locally in 3-4 years. I'm currently working remotely for a SV company. I did do a few interviews with AWS for a TAM/Engineering type role earlier this year. They had no quibbles with $175K. I actually lost interest when I found out it was a 25% on-premise role at client facilities. If I had known everyone would be working remotely now, it might have been different.

Based on Levels.fyi data for salary by level, how much would the level for that role have paid in the Bay Area?

Re: Zuckerberg says employees moving out of Silicon Valley may face pay cuts

#127

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, May 21, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

jpeg_hero wrote: post #41

Jemaclus wrote: post #2

This is one of the things that's always bothered me. Let's say you hire me for your company in San Francisco and pay me $150K. You've made a calculation: my value to the company is greater than $150K, and $150K is a price you're willing to pay to leverage that value. In other words, the company will (eventually) make more than $150K per year off my contributions to the company. But now if I decide to move to Tulsa, O…

I always see comments like this from individual contributors. I'll give you the managers perspective. You may be worth $150k, any one individual engineer could be worth multiples of that! Look at your entire engineering team, from best to worst. Is not there some inflation of salaries in the SF Bay area? The bootcamper that is making $110k out of bootcamp? Are they really 73% as effective as you? The marketing person…

> I always see comments like this from individual contributors.

Tangent, but did I miss some trend here? Over the recent months, I've started to see the phrase "individual contributor" being used pejoratively, at times almost like a swear word. Is it now a label that's assigned to bad employees or something?

Re: Zuckerberg says employees moving out of Silicon Valley may face pay cuts

#128

Post by kthxbye123 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 9:23 PM UTC

Jemaclus wrote: post #2

This is one of the things that's always bothered me. Let's say you hire me for your company in San Francisco and pay me $150K. You've made a calculation: my value to the company is greater than $150K, and $150K is a price you're willing to pay to leverage that value. In other words, the company will (eventually) make more than $150K per year off my contributions to the company. But now if I decide to move to Tulsa, O…

"Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks..."

Re: Zuckerberg says employees moving out of Silicon Valley may face pay cuts

#129

Post by gwright » Thu, May 21, 2020, 9:23 PM UTC

Klonoar wrote: post #31

This feels like a "welp we need to cut some pay, let's see who takes the bait". Cost of living should not dictate your value to the company. If you're an engineer supporting x number of users worth y dollars, it literally does not change what you bring to the table whether you do the job in SF or Birmingham. Yes, they could hire cheaper in Birmingham, but they can't hire _you_. If you have a proven track record of do…

> Cost of living should not dictate your value to the company.

Your "value" to the company depends a lot on your compensation and your compensation depends on the marketplace for other developers with similar skills.

Re: Zuckerberg says employees moving out of Silicon Valley may face pay cuts

#130

Post by umeshunni » Thu, May 21, 2020, 9:23 PM UTC

huangc10 wrote: post #32

Always two sides to the same story. As a software engineer, of course I think I should make the same regardless of I'm on-site or remote. As a founder, of course I'm not going to pay someone who works on-site vs. remote the same. It's a never ending debate.

> As a software engineer, of course I think I should make the same regardless of I'm on-site or remote.

Yup, this is super tricky.

Even if the company pays me the same, I don't make the same whether I live in SF BA vs in Denver (13% income tax in CA vs 5% in CO). Additionally, I don't need to make the same whether I live in SF or in Denver. I would spend 5% less purely because a similar house in a similar suburb with similar schools costs 25% less to rent in Denver than in SF Bay Area. In other words, with no discernible drop in quality of life, I could make 10-15% less than in SF BA and live a similar life in Denver.

This isn't even considering quality of life improvements (which are subjective) or the cost of buying (which is also more subjective but also has to factor in risk, appreciation etc)