651–660 of 699 posts
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Not OP, but at a former gig I was in a position to know the salaries of an engineering team spread out between North America and the UK. The UK engineers were doing the same work but paid salaries that would be considered insulting to most US engineers. And frankly, the UK team was coding circles around much of the US engineers. It was incredibly eye opening, and humbling.
Terrifying
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Barring specific states or specific circumstances (e.g. negotiated terms with a union), yes that is the way it works in most of the US. Your employer cannot retroactively change your compensation for work already performed, but they can, at any time, tell you that your compensation is changing and all future work will be paid at a new (usually lower) rate. Depending on jurisdiction, if you were to quit in the face of…
If employers have the right to make arbitrary compensation changes for future work, they they should lose any rights to enforce non-competition clauses in employee agreements. Non-competition introduces asymmetric decision-making since the employee cannot arbitrarily decide to leave for a matter as straightforward as a compensation change because they will no longer be able to work in their desired industry or market…
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But would you do it for 4? I thought when people said they had an X hour commute they typically meant that they traveled for X hours to work and X hours from work
Good point. Where I am, people usually use "X hour commute" to mean the full amount in a day. I wonder what percentage of people interpret it to mean one way vs. both ways.
The hard part to swallow if you're on the losing end of this equation is that people in high inflation areas have long term assets that inflate as well, like homes. If they receive more long-term appreciating income like RSUs rather than cash then it compounds this problem.
A general rule to retirement that I've constructed is that where you retire will be at least less than the cost of living of where you made your money. So, if you choose remote work early on in your career and live in Oklahoma, the choices of places to retire in are slimmed as compared to someone who does exactly what you do in San Francisco.
The emotional toll of this is equally burdensome when you figure out that in tech we sell a product in large geographies for an equal price; so effectively someone is making more than you just by their very existence in a geography, whether that be a city, county, state, or nation.
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So the higher you climb in management the more strategic your role -should- be. Long time horizons, collecting enough data to make organizational decisions, set priorities and direction, etc. The problem is too many upper managers think their role should be tactical. They want frequent status reports to know if their long term vision is going to be met, and then any area it doesn't match up, rather than modify the vi…
One thing I learned when climbing up that ladder. Not only do you not get to start making strategic decisions, the person above you is also not doing that, nor is the person above them. Everyone, no matter how many "executives" or "vices" in their title, is simply reacting to what the person above them is on about that day. Everyone is reacting. No one is planning, unless they've just been asked for a plan to present…
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> Hence the company should have one uniform rate for full time work at home employees, high enough so that they can get fill all their openings. There’s a common misconception that engineers are paid for the value they provide or according to how expensive their cost of living is. It’s not true, though. We’re paid market rate, which is a balance of supply and demand that determines whether or not someone is incentivi…
Wages are sticky and employers have gotten used to paying a certain rate for employees and employees have gotten used to be paid that rate. If Google wants to try to cut that rate, its likely that someone else who is hungry for Google engineers (like Facebook which is going full-time WFH) will be willing to pay that rate (also understanding that they have some terrible PR issues and will need to pay a bit higher due…
Alternatively, this might just be a morale thing and remote workers in the Bay Area don't actually make financial sense due to productivity losses. Google will placate existing employees, but they won't hire new remote workers at Bay Area rates.
Companies were never paying based on value provided. They pay market rate which, until recently, was artificially limited to a few expensive markets. With remote, these companies are now able to do what every other large labor driven industry has done and lower their costs by finding labor in cheaper markets.
> Companies were never paying based on value provided. They pay market rate Trying to negotiate salary based on value provided is one of the biggest misconceptions I see online and with in-person mentoring groups. Compensation is not about value provided. It’s only about market rate and convincing the person to stay at the company. I encounter a lot of people, especially juniors, who are disgruntled because they thin…
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Building costs are relatively small vs productivity costs. If the mass of employess is 30% less productive from home, it is way more expensive than the buildings.
Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if the data behind large tech companies becoming remote friendly is that it is largely a wash. You'll have people who are more productive working from home and some of them will even do more work for the company [as opposed to quietly working half as many hours while getting just as much done]. You'll have others who are less productive. Some of them will also work more hours to make…
It must be something like 50 or 60% of productivity, and at 70% of the speed.