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

businessinsider.com

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

#151

Post by superbcarrot »

solosoyokaze wrote: post #143
superbcarrot wrote: post #105

I still think that remote in general won't be that prevalent after covid. Remote with SF/NY salaries? I seriously doubt that they will keep this up long term or that many companies will do the same.

Access to world class talent, not paying for office space and greatly improved corporate culture all seem like things that are going to stick. Every new startup I’ve seen in the past year has been 100% remote since day one.

You're right about the reduced cost but I can't agree that remote leads to improved corporate culture (that's largely personal preference though).

> Every new startup I’ve seen in the past year has been 100% remote since day one.

Any reasonable company that had the option to work remotely has done so over the past year, it's hardly a trend that you can project into the future.

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

#152

Post by benhurmarcel »

samvher wrote: post #94
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.

For many of the sibling comments discussing before/after tax: part of the confusion arises here because many European countries essentially have two steps of taxation. I work for an American organization as a Dutch person and have had to figure some of this out for my own contract situation. For the Netherlands, your contract will state a wage "before taxes". But the employer will play "employer's taxes" over this wa…

To give some numbers to play with, here's an official simulator for France: https://mon-entreprise.fr/simulateurs/salaire-brut-net

Sorry it's in French, but very simple. Choose by month or year, and you have in order: total cost (what the company pays), before tax salary (what's on the contract), "net" salary (ignore that), after tax salary (what they employee actually gets).

You can see that the employee gets about half of the total employer cost.

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

#153

Post by thedufer »

samvher wrote: post #94
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.

For many of the sibling comments discussing before/after tax: part of the confusion arises here because many European countries essentially have two steps of taxation. I work for an American organization as a Dutch person and have had to figure some of this out for my own contract situation. For the Netherlands, your contract will state a wage "before taxes". But the employer will play "employer's taxes" over this wa…

The US has this as well, albeit to a lesser degree. The employer-side FICA is around 7%, and is paid directly by the employer, rather than deducted from your paycheck.

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

#154

Post by solosoyokaze »

superbcarrot wrote: post #151
solosoyokaze wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Access to world class talent, not paying for office space and greatly improved corporate culture all seem like things that are going to stick. Every new startup I’ve seen in the past year has been 100% remote since day one.

You're right about the reduced cost but I can't agree that remote leads to improved corporate culture (that's largely personal preference though). > Every new startup I’ve seen in the past year has been 100% remote since day one. Any reasonable company that had the option to work remotely has done so over the past year, it's hardly a trend that you can project into the future.

I’m saying that new companies that were remote from day one will never be non-remote. They’re not going to go buy a bunch of office space and force their disparate workforce to relocate. All hiring has been remote the past year, that’s not really reversible.

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

#155

Post by benhurmarcel »

eptcyka wrote: post #93
marvin wrote: 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.

The reason is politics. It's easier to raise taxes that are invisible to voters.

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

#156

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#157

Post by nly »

ironmagma wrote: post #148
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…

Except that employers aren’t going to become less picky when switching to remote; likely, they will become even more picky and will want to improve their employee base since the supply has increased and that will be possible where it wasn’t before.

It doesn't matter. The top 1% of a large pool is still bigger than the top 1% of a small pool, so competition increases for the same number of jobs.

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

#158

Post by interlocutor2 »

ornornor wrote: post #146

What does it take to work for this kind of company though? I have about ten years experience, been focusing on frontend for the last few years. I have never worked at any of the big names and I have a bachelor degree that’s not in CS or mathematics but I’m a decent developer in my opinion: I write clean, testable code. And yet the major tech players always reject me before even a screening call. Which makes me think…

I'm was a full stack dev with a similar self-taught background but only 5 years experience and I just started as a Google SRE last year. Maybe it helped that I attended a lot of meetups and conferences.

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

#159

Post by benhurmarcel »

nivenkos wrote: post #125
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.

EU salaries are also given before taxes. Have you worked in the EU?

Before the employee's taxes, but after the employer's taxes. That adds a good 15-30% depending on the country.

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

#160

Post by cumwolf »

throw14082020 wrote: post #88
dd_roger wrote: post #36

I just hope the home office trend doesn't lead to an urbanization of the countryside. I'm from a charming village that was overtaken by ugly and expensive developements during the past 20 years because people from the nearest city realised it was within commutable distance. I die a little inside every time I see someone oneline saying "I can't wait 'till X area has better internet so I can move there", understand "I…

Please embrace the visitors. You share this planet with them. Your fear of losing your resources is natural, but they weren't yours to begin with. If you still want your special benefits on Earth, well thats what politics is for.

sounds like visitors aren't the problem it's visitors who come and force an area to change to their liking, being disruptive to existing culture.
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