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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

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about where you live. It's supply and demand. Those companies artificially limited their supply and provided a ton of demand within their narrow market. They are now opening up to new markets and spreading out the demand accordingly. Forced analogy time: It's like if I decide I'll only buy peaches from the organic farm down the road. They charge $20/lb. I calculate that I get $21/lb worth of utility. The Far…

The part that doesn't make sense though is keeping the employees that live in SF, or paying an employee more if they choose to relocate to SF. Tech companies typically do increase your salary if you move to a higher CoL area.

Lowering salaries all of a sudden for a large % of their workforce who are currently very productive, would be a bad move, destroy value instantly that would take long to recover. It makes sense to pay to keep that value, at least for a while, and let market dynamics slowly do their thing.

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

#92
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…

You are appealing to a concept of justice. Zuckerberg sees it a different way: how little can he get away with paying? If he can make a profit paying you $150K, he can make even more paying you $90K. He'll take it if he can. Whether he can depends on whether you have competing offers. If the economy tanks, maybe you won't.

If all their employees work from home, that's going to tend to equalize the salary levels across regions, and the number they settle to likely isn't going to be the SF Bay Area number.

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

#93
post #69
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the company was hemorrhaging money on employee salaries by being based in SF then why wouldn't they simply move the company somewhere else?

Because the Bay Area is one of the only places where the supply of potential employees is high enough to meet the company's demand.

You mean to tell me that companies in the Bay Area never pull employees from schools outside of the Bay Area? I get the feeling there is a much more valuable reason for being based in the Bay Area than that.

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

#94
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…

Counterpoint, it allowed me to be more productive and invest time into learning and career growth that otherwise wouldn't been spent in meetings or commuting.

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

#95
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is how thing should be. Let say I shop for a gadget. I pay for that gadget not because the value it deliver but the least amount required to get the value it deliver.

Sure, if you think human beings should be treated like disposable gadgets.

Is the price of a disposable gadget not based not the price of the labor that went into it? They're both subject to the same forces.

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

#96

Always two sides to the same story. As a software engineer, of course I think I should make the same regardless of I'm on-site or remote. As a founder, of course I'm not going to pay someone who works on-site vs. remote the same. It's a never ending debate.

> I'm not going to pay someone who works on-site vs. remote the same.

Sound like you'll be bringing lower quality remote engineers into a lower quality remote environment. Don't be surprised when that strategy blows up.

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

#97
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…

Having worked remotely for decades, and survived a few layoffs, I beg to differ.

If your job security rests on the boss seeing your face, many currently unemployed people will tell you, its not very secure.

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

#98
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…

Wages aren't set based on a calculation like "how much is this person worth?" — that just sets the max salary. Companies want to pay their workers as little as possible; they can just get away with lower salaries in other markets than they can in San Francisco.

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

#99
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is how thing should be. Let say I shop for a gadget. I pay for that gadget not because the value it deliver but the least amount required to get the value it deliver.

Sure, if you think human beings should be treated like disposable gadgets.

I think it is a mistake to conflate the intrinsic value of a human with their point-in-time value as labor in a business relationship. They are very different things.

In a business relationship both parties need to find a price point that is mutually satisfying. If there is no agreement that doesn't mean that either party is treating the other like "disposable gadgets".

And the system is not static, value from both parties perspective changes over time, which means the mutually satisfactory price point can also change or even evaporate.

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

#100
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The $150k is not what your work is directly valued at Indeed, presumably you are worth more than that to them. It's a pretty naked cash grab to cut salary in response to a location move, and somewhat illogical considering they moved their HQ to the bay area in the first place. If it's objectively bad and expensive, why not move your HQ to Austin or San Antonio or Portland? > if Facebook starts to hire remote worker…

All business decisions are cash grabs.

Not all, but businesses with that attitude are worth trusting about as far as you can throw them.
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