Well done. Personally, as a remote developer, I always make a point of billing at my "Bay Area Rate", even though I've never lived there. There was a point, early in my guy-on-the-beach-with-a-laptop era where I would cut my bill rate in half while working from the beach with a laptop. Clients were happy about that, and it more than paid for beers and thatch huts. Then one time I tried not cutting my bill rate in hal…
But your cost of living isn’t Bay Area cost of living. It makes no sense.
This is a good way to ensure unhappy employees stick around due to being paid a lot more than what they’d earn otherwise.
May want to browse the countless compensation discussions in the app Blind. Lots of Bay Area offer info there. Note that salary is a misnomer. The term now is "total compensation" which has a significant RSU portion.
The words "total compensation" should just be banned from these discussions. It conflates a principle measure (base salary) with intangibles such as RSUs (a future value) and benefits. Without comparing specific companies it is impossible to say which is better (unless there is an extreme variance).
RSUs for public companies are effectively cash, as you can generally sell them immediately at the time when they vest. The value isn't fixed, but if the company is doing well that's a benefit to employees.
Of course it does but the impact on your life is minimal in comparison. Compare "I need to pay this financial adviser thousands a year to handle my medium and long term financial goals" with "I need to make $500 for a car repair appear out of thin air or I'll be forced to walk to work in the middle of the winter, and if I miss work I'll be fired in which case the money problems will increase tenfold." While I've neve…
Relationships (both romantic and otherwise) can become incredibly complicated when your wealth goes beyond comfortable. I'd say that's more than a minimal impact. Human nature tends to show its ugly side when you have a lot of something others want or feel like they deserve more than you. That's another reason why I don't really understand the instagram bragging thing. It's like these people are actively trying to cr…
> That's another reason why I don't really understand the instagram bragging thing. It's like these people are
actively trying to create bullshit for themselves.
There's a pretty fascinating British doco on the phenomenon that I saw on a recent plane trip. In some cases they are actually that vain. In other cases it seems kind-of ironic, like they are doing it just to troll online haters.
I live in the SF Bay. My "onsite" day rate is much higher than my "remote" rate. All of my local clients accept a compromise; meet in-person once per sprint (every 2-4 weeks). Otherwise all work is done remotely. My remote employees and contractors are not required to commute or work onsite, therefore the remote rate applies. Kudos to Basecamp for committing to standard salary levels, but I believe geographic cost-of…
What kind of dev work are you doing? (if you don't mind my asking) How many employees/subs do you have?
150k sounds way low for the Bay Area you can get that in other much less expensive metro areas.
No way on this earth, $150,000 is anywhere near normal in the Bay Area, let alone in other less expensive metros. Most people are absolutely not making that much money writing code. People have serious tunnel vision on HN.
I guess that explains why tech companies always complain about having a tough time recruiting talent then. Relative to other locals their salaries aren't competitive.
> You pay your developers, or any staff come to that, what they're worth to you. It's not that easy. What they are worth to you is your upper limit. What they are willing to work for is the lower bound. It's composed of many things, mostly supply and demand, but not an insignificant portion is living expenses. Most employers would gravitate towards the lower bound. And for a dev in India, it might be reasonable to pa…
Sure, given a dev in India and a dev in SF with the same skill set, then the one in India will be willing to work for less. But when you offer a SF salary in India, then you might get a much better dev. So, theoretically, in case of remote work and a global pool of talent, it is a less optimal use of your dollars to adjust salaries to the cost of living (all other things being equal, e.g. skill set level, culture).
The biggest problem would be identifying and contacting the good devs in India. By and large they don't have access to Bay Area hiring managers, and vice versa. There's a lot of money to be made arbitraging this, hence the body shop phenomenon. It could definitely be an interesting problem to solve, but given how scummy recruiting and freelancing sites tend to be, I don't know how you would avoid an ugly race to the bottom.
Basecamp is selling all over the world. What should their salary level be like? Bay Area because that’s where a lot of the larger tech companies are situated? Washington State (Microsoft, Amazon)? Copenhagen (where one founder, DHH is from)? Sudney where one major competitor, Jira, is from? I’d say whatever the market is that they hire in. If you wanna pay above market rate, by all means do that. If you can attract e…
>What I don’t see is why all companies should follow Bay Area salaries. Did anyone suggest they should?
Allow me: I think just about all companies engaged in the business of technology and marketing to the same market segments Bay Area technology companies market to ought to pay the same as their Bay Area counterparts.
Well done. Personally, as a remote developer, I always make a point of billing at my "Bay Area Rate", even though I've never lived there. There was a point, early in my guy-on-the-beach-with-a-laptop era where I would cut my bill rate in half while working from the beach with a laptop. Clients were happy about that, and it more than paid for beers and thatch huts. Then one time I tried not cutting my bill rate in hal…
I live in the SF Bay. My "onsite" day rate is much higher than my "remote" rate. All of my local clients accept a compromise; meet in-person once per sprint (every 2-4 weeks). Otherwise all work is done remotely. My remote employees and contractors are not required to commute or work onsite, therefore the remote rate applies. Kudos to Basecamp for committing to standard salary levels, but I believe geographic cost-of…
Why should a bonus be dependent on cost of living?
DHH has the coolest desk and home office I've ever seen: https://www.instagram.com/p/BcnPtAwlAKe/?hl=en&taken-by=dhh7... Check out the rest of the house too, amazing. I think some people have this image that Basecamp and DHH is some scrappy bootstrapper fighting the establishment. But really he is living the life that even most successful "exited" venture fueled founders wouldn't be able to attain, and he's just sayi…
Does anyone know what keyboard that is?
That is the special, black keyboard that comes with the iMac Pro machines. The only way to get one is to order an iMac Pro, at least for now.
Thanks for the response, like you said, you're very selective, and this is for only senior roles. Of course everyone is not a senior, the vast majority I suspect.
Senior in this context often means >5 years. So if you are 30 you typically count as senior. I believe ~50% of my >10k coworkers are senior or above.
So, if you hit Senior at 5 years, what’s after that?