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

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

#211

Post by bradlys »

whateveracct wrote: post #62
martythemaniak wrote: post #10

I've been mostly reading the WFH debates here on HN and this seems to have come as a shock to many advocates. You know, companies already had offices in different places you could already move out of SF to elsewhere and this was part of the deal. This isn't anything new, there was never the option of taking your Bay Area salary and living it up in Laos.

It was an option to live wherever in the United States though. Every place I've worked remotely based in SV/SF has paid accordingly despite me and the other engineers not living there. Startups & BigCos alike.

You were getting $400k+/yr living in BFE? I'm surprised. How did you manage that? I've never really seen that happen with companies I've interacted with but I've heard of things like it here and there...

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

#212

Post by gwright »

throwawaythekey wrote: post #208
gwright wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I struggle to see the mental leap many are making here. Are you stating that cost of living impacts your skill level? In some cases that may be true but I think for what most are discussing here the causation would be the other way. Growing up in a poor area may effect your skill level but moving as an adult from a high COL to low COL area should have minimal impact. To me it makes more sense that each developer woul…

> Are you stating that cost of living impacts your skill level?

Not at all. If all things are equal except the cost of living difference then a company can get X units of value at a discount by hiring the person with the lower cost of living at a lower salary. The discount is equal to the cost-of-living difference.

Of course in the real world things are rarely "equal" except for cost-of-living and so the effect is only going to be seen in the aggregate.

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

#213

Post by TeMPOraL »

perl4ever wrote: post #187
TeMPOraL wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, not everyone wants to progress all the way to the top in their careers. The higher you go, the more your job changes into helping people help people help people do the actual work, which isn't all that appealing if you chosen a particular career because of the lower-level work being done. It's like in Star Trek, with this common advice to given to captains on the show by their friends/colleagues: never let you…

"never let yourself be promoted to admiral" This makes me think of Eisenhower, who I only found out recently apparently never saw combat, yet pretty much went to the top in his career and then became President. Whether paperwork is boring or meaningless is a subjective value judgment. What if it's the paperwork for planning D-Day? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower

The paperwork isn't necessarily meaningless. But for someone who feels best being "out there", where interesting things happen, being dragged back all the way to HQ to forever watch the things they loved from the distance - that's soul-breaking.

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

#214

Post by moljac024 »

nmfisher wrote: post #206
mrkurt wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Single and married folks with families get paid differently. We pay ~3-4x more for healthcare for people with families than individuals. You've sort of dismissed my point, though. The dilemma is that salary choices create friction within companies. It's not as simple as "pay what it takes to get someone" and "it's none of your business" because it does, in fact, have repercussions on how well a company works.

> Single and married folks with families get paid differently. We pay ~3-4x more for healthcare for people with families than individuals. They get paid differently, or they cost their employer differently?

What's the difference?

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

#215

Post by NotSammyHagar »

I have a job in a tech center and I make a great salary because of competition for my services, in NY or Seattle or SF or where ever. Right now I'm working from home entirely. If I'm in Seattle and I work from my cabin 100 miles from Seattle, no one will know assuming I have internet. Taxes are the same too afaik (no local or state taxes). Presumably this is okay with everyone.

How much working away from my supposed seattle job (that doesn't even exist right now) do I get before I am not working in Seattle?

Suppose I saved so much money from my seattle job that I bought a weekend condo in another state, in Oregon. If I go there many weekends, I think I can still keep my seattle lifestyle (there's some matter for the oregon tax court to decide I guess). But am I still "working in Seattle"? Now suppose I go from my cabin near Seattle to a cabin on the other side of Washington state. Or I go spend 40% of my time in my Idaho cabin (boy, I have a lot of cabins, they are so cheap with my Seattle salary ;-)). When do I stop being a Seattle employee and become a whatever employee?

If I have 3 houses in states with the same "no income tax" like in Seattle can I live 51% in Seattle and split time in the other places and still be a seattle employee? Obviously I'm trying to point out the arbitrariness of these policies.

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

#217

Post by nmfisher »

moljac024 wrote: post #214
nmfisher wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Single and married folks with families get paid differently. We pay ~3-4x more for healthcare for people with families than individuals. They get paid differently, or they cost their employer differently?

What's the difference?

“Gets paid more” means single employee makes $100k, employee with a family makes $150k.

“Costs the company more” means they are both paid a salary of $100k, but the healthcare insurance for the employer with a family costs $50k extra.

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

#218

Post by jejeyyy77 »

nostromo wrote: post #7

People should be warned that working remotely has been career suicide for as long as I've been in tech. Being "out of sight, out of mind" from management generally means you're passed over for promotions, and often the first to get cut during layoffs. It's just human nature. It's easier to layoff the person that's been working from across the country (or another country) than it is to layoff the person at the desk ne…

Truth. Funny that so many people are disagreeing with this.

I’ve worked at many companies with remote employees as well as being remote myself, as well as companies that were fully remote.

Unless everyone is remote , and there is no office then it is career suicide.

You will forever be the “remote guy”. You won’t be involved in discussions involving direction of the company, product, etc because those happen in person - let alone considered for any kind of promotion.

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

#219

Post by Vysero »

nmfisher wrote: post #217
moljac024 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the difference?

“Gets paid more” means single employee makes $100k, employee with a family makes $150k. “Costs the company more” means they are both paid a salary of $100k, but the healthcare insurance for the employer with a family costs $50k extra.

An important distinction.

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

#220

Post by hartator »

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…

> my value to the company is greater than $150K, and $150K is a price you're willing to pay to leverage that value.

It's more about competition than value you're providing. In SF, you'll find another 6 figures very easily not so much in the middle of nowhere.

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