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Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

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Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#231

Post by goobynight »

balfirevic wrote: post #221
luminati wrote: post #166

Million dollar question - how are the remote stripes going to be compensated? Are they going to be compensated pegged on their geo-locale (which then just makes it like international offices without the office)? I'm pretty sure the dublin and singapore stripes are paid much lower than their sf counterparts. How are they going to resolve this for the remotes? Not poking at stripe, but generally as I think of remote wo…

Salary scales are based on equilibrium between several forces: 1) Value that employee brings to the company 2) Value that company brings to the employee (mostly, but not exclusively, salary) 3) Alternatives available for both the company and employee I don't see a good reason to expect this (admittedly simplified) model to change with remote work arrangement.

"Having to live in the bay area" could be seen as negative value that the company was formerly "providing".

Is it equivalent to a 30% pay cut? Probably not. Is it worth at least 15k a year (post tax, so more like 20k minimum) at the absolute minimum? Yes.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#232

Post by pkaye »

robocat wrote: post #204
throwaway4721 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are compensated according to locale. Our Google sheet of offer anecdata contains a few entries for Stripe, some remote and some SF. I’ve seen a salary difference of 30%. I don’t know the people who entered them personally so I can’t speak to how well they performed during the interview, so take that with a grain of salt.

I just don't understand this. If a company knows how to get choose a USD200k engineer in SF and get a good return for the company off that engineer, then why wouldn't you pay USD200k in all areas? USD200k is a good carrot where I live, so you would be able to attract the best engineers living here (with far less competition and far less churn). I get it that SF has network effects, but good remote engineers also tap…

Would you pay for any services in your locale at San Francisco rates?

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#233

Post by pkaye »

bevacqua wrote: post #186
sparkpy724 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name a single company that pays Remote Employees SF/Bay Area salaries? Edit: Fair enough. There are companies that pay everyone SF level salaries but you can also find companies like Gitlab - 100% Remote but they explicitly downscale from SF salaries based on location. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c...

Elastic https://elastic.co Some stats: - Not just "Remote but in the US" - 1,000+ employees - 40+ countries - Local holidays - Co-working Space stipend, if you want it - Almost nobody goes to the offices we do have - Everything is written down and x/referenced: GH, email, Slack - Zoom for face to face - Engineering All Hands: Usually twice a year, once EU, once US - You work on your own Timezone, expecting otherwise…

So they pay everyone at San Francisco rates?

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#234

Post by kaikai »

jaryd wrote: post #156
kaikai wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a former Mapbox employee, and the effort that you put in to making it a remote-friendly culture showed in huge ways. I've carried those lessons to other companies, and I'm really grateful for your work <3

What were some of the key lessons or most impactful things?

Some of my key lessons were:

- remote-first meetings; is someone is remote / in another office, everyone takes the call from their laptops. That way no one ends up being forgotten on a screen in a room full of people.

- habitually reverting to written communication, so that information doesn't get lost in 1:1 conversations. That means writing thought processes into tickets, so folks can search for things later. We worked across 3 timezones (including PT to IST, ~12 hours off) so async communication was key.

- not having a central office. "Everyone is remote" wasn't perfect, but there wasn't a true home office in the same way as my current company. For example, it was considered rude to "@here" in the general chat channel for things like donuts, because hey, many folks are in other states/countries, and don't need to hear about y'alls treats. Little things like that make a big difference in employee experience.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#235

Post by abj »

0xDEFC0DE wrote: post #227
kossae wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then why wouldn't you pay USD200k in all areas? Because they don't have to. Peoples' expectations of salary are likely in line with their local job markets, so even great developers living in a rural area will likely either accept the average base salary for their locale, or move to SF for the larger payday (and all of the expenses that come with it).

This should be reversing because the internet grants us easy access to this data, so market signals should be forming, but it isn't reversing, which is suspicious. Getting the data is harder, but we do already have data sets to compare to (and can apply inflation, CoL, other adjustments as time goes on). The only real reason for zip-code adjustments would be some labor-related, CONUS, or state laws that I'd be unfami…

I agree, if we're getting paid differently based on zip code but producing the same business value we're getting arbitrage'd. The question is; how do we as developers make money off this market inefficiency?

We have a few options. 1. Negotiate better salaries. This is only possible when the purchasing price of the next best developer also increases. This already happens in the Bay area market. It is happening slower outside the Bay. 2. Start own our business. We hire the best developers at a higher rate which raises the market rate for a developer. This is happening in the Bay but much more slowly outside. 3. Move to a better geographic market. A lot of people who can chose this.

Developers probably can't exploit/correct this market because we have no way of directly/quickly making profit from the price difference.

I would love for developers to capture a larger share of the value they create. Does anyone have any ideas on how to restructure the incentives of the market to make this happen? (Cooperatives?)

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#236

Post by stallmanite »

matchagaucho wrote: post #183
Draiken wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, not really remote. More like a "work from home" style. A good remote culture allows someone in any timezone to be part of it or it loses the greatest advantage of remote working. If working together is the only social activity the person has, he's not cut out for remote work.

Work from home, but primarily accountable to teams in other timezones. The regional teams coordinate their own in-person activities. Culturally, the concept of remote work is not well understood in countries like the Philippines and India. The occasional social "meeting" is more to convince their family members they have a "real job" with physical place of business.

I would think skeptical families would be convinced by the (hopefully) fat checks in the mail.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#237

Post by rifung »

robocat wrote: post #204
throwaway4721 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are compensated according to locale. Our Google sheet of offer anecdata contains a few entries for Stripe, some remote and some SF. I’ve seen a salary difference of 30%. I don’t know the people who entered them personally so I can’t speak to how well they performed during the interview, so take that with a grain of salt.

I just don't understand this. If a company knows how to get choose a USD200k engineer in SF and get a good return for the company off that engineer, then why wouldn't you pay USD200k in all areas? USD200k is a good carrot where I live, so you would be able to attract the best engineers living here (with far less competition and far less churn). I get it that SF has network effects, but good remote engineers also tap…

> If a company knows how to get choose a USD200k engineer in SF and get a good return for the company off that engineer, then why wouldn't you pay USD200k in all areas?

If they can get those other people to join paying 100k, why wouldn't they want to save 100k per engineer?

Companies pay you what they need to in order to get you to join and unfortunately, market rates are still largely decided by location.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#238

Post by sethhochberg »

ticmasta wrote: post #224
sethhochberg wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen 3 general schools of thought on remote pay: - its a global talent pool, so in raw dollars everyone should be on a level playing field (ie, compete for SF Bay wages no matter where you are in the world since that is generally the top wage market) - market rate for your current location (ie, whenever you choose to reside, you get paid an amount that provides a comfortable standard of living there, somewhat in…

Remote as a cost-cutting measure is the same as offshore, with the same poor results. There is no emphasis on quality; you've traded that dimension for some balance of cost & functionality. As soon as you move beyond trivial software projects the true effort is in the domain which depends on visibility and communication. You can do this with remote but I think it actually costs more outside of all but the highest tie…

For sure - if you make all of the same mistakes with remote teams that companies are so prone to making with offshoring companies (little to no integration into the rest of the business, little vetting of individual contributors, using metrics to incentivize all of the wrong kinds of behavior, chasing low costs instead of skill and business value) you'll get all of the same typically-horrible results.

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#239

Post by deathanatos »

goobynight wrote: post #231
balfirevic wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salary scales are based on equilibrium between several forces: 1) Value that employee brings to the company 2) Value that company brings to the employee (mostly, but not exclusively, salary) 3) Alternatives available for both the company and employee I don't see a good reason to expect this (admittedly simplified) model to change with remote work arrangement.

"Having to live in the bay area" could be seen as negative value that the company was formerly "providing". Is it equivalent to a 30% pay cut? Probably not. Is it worth at least 15k a year (post tax, so more like 20k minimum) at the absolute minimum? Yes.

Median US 1 bedroom rent: $1,209 / mo [1]

Median SF 1 bedroom rent: $3,690 / mo [2]

That's a difference of $29,772 / yr. Post-tax.

[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/rental-prices-are-soaring-ar...

[2]: https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/03/05/median-1-bedroo...

Re: Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

#240

Post by aantix »

sciurus wrote: post #198
aantix wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the cost of living factor into salary at all? I write the code. I offer architectural decisions. I'm working on the most demanded features by the customers, bringing more value to the product. What if I pair program on a feature from a person in SF? My efforts are still paid less. Who cares if I wrote the code from SF or Vietnam. I wish more remote workers would stand up to these businesses looking for a wa…

Stand up to them by doing what? Moving to SF? Turning down the job and working for a local company that pays even less?

Put multiple offers against each other?

If you're already in a remote engineering position, show that you bring more value than Tom in SF, even though he's paid more.

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