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De-Location Package: Keep Your Career and Live Beyond the Bay Area
- bryanh 10y agoZapier CTO & co-founder here. Much like Stripe's "hire a team" experiment - this is an experiment to pay people to "de-locate" from the Bay Area. Don't get us wrong, we absolutely love the Bay Area (I live here) but the cost of living is just outrageous for so many. We're seeing a lot of candidates talking to Zapier (we're fully remote) about leaving the Bay Area to go "home" (some to start a family, some for other reasons) but want to stay in their tech career. Happy to answer any questions, and I am sure there are a lot of Zapiens in the thread that could answer questions too.
- blackguardx 10y agoI think this is a very creative program. It would be better if it was a blanket relocation package that wasn't tied to moving away from the bay area. You are 100% remote, so why not move from anywhere to anywhere? EDIT: My question is why it is hinged on moving away from a city. I think it is a legitimate question. Someone living in NYC or Seattle might have similar issues with the cost of housing.
- bryanh 10y agoDefinitely a legitimate question - we often see people moving from various locations (I think like 60% of Zapiens have moved during their tenure, or something like that). As an experiment, we wanted to start with the obvious high cost of living center - the Bay Area. In the future, we may open it up to more cities, maybe even a blanket package as you describe.
- artursapek 10y agoDo you pay people less if they decide to leave the expensive area?
- Wizek 10y agoThere is a response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13896328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13896328 > We do not adjust salaries when employees move. We try to pay similarly regardless of location.
- iagooar 10y agoAre you thinking about adjusting the salaries as well? I mean, it sounds like a win-win situation to me. If a family can save, say, $3,000 a month on rent, and the company can save, say, $1,500 on an engineers salary, both are actually better off. I guess the risk of moving out of the Bay Area is that you somehow are betting your future on a single company. If you decide to get a new job, you might be too far away from a decent tech hub. Another issue for families is moving both working partners. If the partner works at a company that might not be as flexible or open, moving somewhere else is going to be a tough decision, as it's always going to be better to have 2 jobs in the Bay Area, than just one outside of it.
- mikeknoop 10y agoOther Zapier co-founder here. Are we competitive with Google engineering salaries? Probably not. But most Bay Area startups can't complete with Google on comp anyway. Are we competitive with other Bay Area startup salaries? Likely. Six-figure engineering salaries, healthcare, retirement package, etc is the norm. We saw several great teammates move away from the Bay Area and thought there might be others. This experiment is primarily to find people who already want to leave (for good reasons) but feel stuck because they like working for growing tech companies.
- dsacco 10y agoSo do you adjust the salaries when they move? Your response didn't answer the commenter's question.
- hbosch 10y agoDoes the employee's chosen "de-location" need to be approved? E.g. would Zapier prefer Pittsburgh to Moab?
- bryanh 10y agoWe haven't fleshed out all the nitty gritty details - but no - we wouldn't prefer Pittsburgh to Moab.
- melonhack 10y agoThis is an interesting experiment. How about de-location outside US? Say Toronto or Waterloo, Canada? There is obviously a good tech scene there. So I like many others are curious how salaries are adjusted to COL? Would someone who de-located be making similar Bay Area salaries or would it be similar to what's offered by the local tech companies there?
- sulam 10y agoAre you big enough that you have employees in most states now? The reason I ask is because some states have a pretty high bar for the first employee, since it comes with a lot of associated costs that aren't based on salary.
- bryanh 10y agoWe consider this as just part of running a remote business - eventually it'll plateau as we are present in all the locations. For example, we have way more employees in Texas alone than in Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, etc. combined.
- iaw 10y agoI think this is a pretty prescient move. I am having a harder time every year having a normal life in the Bay Area. One thing I wish is that {insert current employer} would do the same thing and then subsidize Fiber in the new area to ensure high quality VC.
- ttcbj 10y agoI really love this idea! There are so many great places to live, if only you could find a good programming job there. I left Seattle for St. Louis to be close to family, and it was the best decision I ever made. Glad to see that Zapier is willing to try to innovate in this area! I hope it will spread.
- jdavis703 10y agoDoesn't this make it easier for you to retain people by restricting their options in the future? For example if someone moves back to central Missouri, they're probably not going to find a lot of similar jobs, especially at the level of pay I'm imaging Zapier provides.
- tobz 10y agoBy the same token, moving to an area with a high CoL could be restricting if you lost your employment and had to scramble to find a new job. It cuts both ways.
- pmiller2 10y agoI wouldn't have moved to the Bay Area if there weren't as many jobs as there are. If you have the choice to relocate, you might as well go where the jobs are, right?
- mateo411 10y agoIn today's economy it's usually easier to find a new job in a high CoL area.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- laughfactory 10y agoNot in San Diego! High CoL area, relatively low wages, and tech jobs are relatively scarce. We moved to the Greater Salt Lake City area three months ago because CoL is much lower here, and there's a plethora of opportunity.
- meddlepal 10y agoYou make it seem like that's a bad thing? It's a trade-off. You're getting location flexibility at the cost of employment mobility. For some this will be a fine trade-off.
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- Glyptodon 10y agoThere are also a lot of people who've never located to the Bay Area for lifestyle reasons and may be interested.
- derptron 10y agoDo we have to be referred to as Zapiens to work at Zapier?
- kirillzubovsky 10y agoI have to admin, I have a bit of a crush on how you guys go about doing business. Fully remote, good salaries, honest focus on life outside of work, sounds utopian. It's a crazy world out there and very few people are willing to take a stand for what's actually important. high-five
- bryanh 10y agoWe're certainly not perfect - but we try very hard. Thanks for the kind words Kirill!
- yawz 10y agoFirst of all, I'd like to applaud this initiative. I worked remotely for 4 years (just switched to a local startup) and it was great for work-life balance (among other things). I wholeheartedly wish that it would be very successful. This may not be something new for you guys, as you've been running remote agile teams, but how are you planning to deal with time differences? Are you reserving the right to ask remote employees to start their day at a particular time? Are you going to take time zones into consideration when building your teams?
- bryanh 10y agoWe are already 100% remote and have been for the entire life of the company. Time differences haven't been a big issue - it can be tricky to get everyone on a call when they need to be - but usually a little flexibility by all parties go a long way. Also, you can arbitrage time differences to knock down annoyance from on-call rotations and the like. We ask employees to have their own "consistent" hours so that the rest of the team knows when they'll be available or not. We do consider time zones when hiring - for example, we might explicitly hire Asian/Pacific for support scheduling reasons.
- e40 10y agoAlso, you can arbitrage time differences to knock down annoyance from on-call rotations and the like. I have no idea what that means.
- detaro 10y agoIf you have people all over the world, nobody (or at least fewer people, depending on how the distribution works out) has to be on-call in the middle of the night, you can hand off close to the end of your normal working day.
- itstriz 10y agoHas there been any response from Bay Area local governments? I would imagine it might not be their favorite idea that businesses are trying to incentivize employees to leave. If this sort of idea takes off, would local gov try to counter these incentives to leave in some way?
- closeparen 10y agoGetting tech workers to leave (or at least stemming the flow) is an explicit policy goal of the progressives controlling SF. They might want the jobs if they were going to the local poor. Not jobs that outsiders move in for.
- afarrell 10y agoIf they try to counter these incentives by letting more housing get built, that would be a positive outcome, no?
- eldavido 10y agoNot a chance. This is one of the richest areas in the US and the overwhelming sentiment is, "we need people to stop moving here". You can actually get votes here by making it harder for companies to hire, on the theory that traffic, pollution, etc. won't be that bad. It's unlike any other place in the US. Truly one-of-a-kind.
- twblalock 10y agoSeattle, and to some extent Portland, are trending in the same direction.
- bryanh 10y agoWe've certainly not heard of any.
- acchow 10y agoThe small cities in the Bay Area actually work against each other for a worse outcome for the whole. See Kim-Mai Cutler's brilliant article. https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/
- amorphid 10y agoCool idea! I hope the experiment produces positive results. A few random thoughts: - offering a perk to some employees that you don't offer to other employees could get you in trouble - say all delocated employees are from SF are young white males, and an older black woman want a delocation bonus to move from a non-SF city to somewhere else (hint: I bet your lawyer is gonna say you need to cancel the perk, or offer it to everyone, and I would agree with that lawyer) - as an new employee eligible for your delocation reimbursement, I'd rather it just be a bonus, as I don't wanna have to explain to the company exactly what I spent the money on (why is it any of your business that I spent $8,000 at Kink Movers to relocate my 50 Shades Of Grey Inspired BDSM Dungeon?)
- closeparen 10y agoQualifying relocation expenses can be reimbursed tax free. A bonus is subject to income taxes. As a perk, you'd only get $4-5k back (30% marginal federal income tax, 9% marginal CA income tax, 6.5% Medicare and social security tax).
- amorphid 10y agoMy company gave me a relocation bonus and used a third party service to handle it. I got all of the money upfront, and had to sign a document saying I'd pay back a prorated amount if I left the company within a year. I was asked to submit reimbursements directly to the third party, so I didn't have to give the receipts for my fictional BDSM dungeon to the company directly. The taxable portion was the total bonus minus any moving expenses. I liked this model.
- simonebrunozzi 10y agoHey Bryan, I'd like to meet you over coffee and tell you a bit about something that could be very helpful for Zapier. Can't share too much here. Please ping me at simone.brunozzi @ gmail
- yitchelle 10y agoI find it extremely interesting for this to be viewed as an "experiement". If the experiment fails, how would you recover? Move all your talent back to the bay area? Not trying to be a dick here, but genuinely interested on what your mitigation strategy is.
- bryanh 10y agoWe're fully remote - always have been and plan on staying that way. If the experiment "fails" - we'll just stop offering this for new employees.
- brfox 10y agoI really like this idea! No one else mentioned it on the comments (and I saw this post too late for too many others to notice), but if we got more companies to do this, then it could have an impact on bringing more tech jobs to red states to "share the wealth" and change the electoral map, as well! It could help red state folks and blue state folks spend more time together and understand each other a little better. I would be very pleased if you could mention this aspect in your blog post and also try to convince other companies to do the same. This is so awesome!
- pmiller2 10y agoSounds like a neat way for Zapier to take advantage of Bay Area talent without paying Bay Area salaries. This isn't really for me, because I don't like remote work and I like living in the Bay Area, but I think this is a brilliant move. However, I'd want to know what the pay scale was like before making this kind of move.
- sidlls 10y agoIf pay were the only factor I'd take a 20%-30% pay cut to be able to move closer to my wife's family and we as a family would end up being able to save more while actually owning a huge home.
- pmiller2 10y agoYeah, if cost of were the only factor, I could buy 2 or 3 houses in my home town for what I pay in rent. :/
- lvh 10y agoZapier has stated elsewhere in the comments that they don't adjust salaries.
- bryanh 10y agoCorrect. We won't be able to compete purely on compensation with Google no matter where you are located. However, you can expect an experienced engineer in St. Louis proper to be paid similarly well (6 figures, healthcare, retirement) -- equivalent for us to an engineer in small-town-Kansas, Chicago-area, etc.
- djb_hackernews 10y agoObvious question, do they get to keep their Bay Area salary?
- encoderer 10y agoOr, were they paid one to begin with? I've hired people locally whose last gig was working remote for companies not based in SFBA and not making SFBA level wages.
- jorblumesea 10y agoWhich I think is fine, imo salary is most of cost of living adjustments.
- zeamaize 10y agoI did, in fact I've vastly improved my salary by leaving the Bay Area. I can tell you my team just hired a bunch of new engineers and we mad offers 10% above Bay Area offers very much on purpose.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- hapless 10y agoIt benefits them to have you leave the bay area, because they know it will be much more difficult for you to find your next job. They are paying $10k now to minimize future raises and equity grants. I can think of less risky ways to squeeze $10k out of a new employer.
- saturdayplace 10y agoEh, iono. There are plenty of places with tech work outside of the bay area. And having a proven "works well remotely" on the resume seems likely to help find _other_ remote gigs down the road.
- hapless 10y ago100% remote gigs are intrinsically riskier and lower paying. You compete with every worldwide Tom, Dick, or Harry who is capable of remaining awake during business hours. Low visibility in a mixed office makes you the first fired and last promoted. Limiting your job search to 100% remote is a great way to unexpectedly find yourself earning eastern European wages while paying midwestern U.S. living costs. Or, worse, being forced to change geography when the work dries up. We all know "that guy" who moved his family cross-country, put the kids into new schools etc only to come back to the city a couple years later, when the "perfect" remote gig ended, or the single employer in Nowhere, KS eliminated their local technology group.
- munificent 10y ago> 100% remote gigs are intrinsically riskier and lower paying. You compete with every worldwide Tom, Dick, or Harry who is capable of remaining awake during business hours. How does that claim not apply equally to moving to a city with a large employee pool like the Bay Area?
- hapless 10y agoYou are competing with other people in the Bay Area, who have similar costs of living and, consequently, similar wage demands. There is no guarantee that your competitors on a global market will face the same cost structure. Quite to the contrary -- they are very likely to have lower costs of living.
- deanclatworthy 10y agoWhat a refreshing idea. I'd love to hear the results after a year of this experiment. I think the idea can apply to many cities, even outside the US. Some European cities are in the midst of a housing (availability) crisis forcing rent prices up and leaving young families to live in small apartments to be within a commutable distance to work.
- amyjess 10y agoI wish more companies did this, not just Bay Area companies. I'm in Texas and looking to relocate to SoCal (specifically Torrance) in the second half of this year, and while I'm hoping my employer will let me either go remote or relocate me to their LA office, I'm terrified that they won't and I'll have to find a new job (I really like my employer, so I'll only leave if I absolutely have to).
- sjg007 10y agoThere are lots of jobs around Torrance in tech.
- coding123 10y agoThe Bay Area needs to re-think traffic. Perhaps the hyperloop isn't so much needed between two already congested cities, but between lots of rural areas that can feed into congested cities. Live 5 hours (by car) from the BA and get there by hyperloop in 25 minutes.
- chinathrow 10y ago> Live 5 hours (by car) from the BA and get there by hyperloop in 25 minutes. And after n years, the place where you start your voyage within the hyperloop is becoming another huge city of its own.
- Cerium 10y agoSounds great, we can have lots of popular, busy, prosperous, well connected cities?
- hapless 10y agoCost and congestion are driven by the commuting time to job centers. If Bakersfield becomes a bedroom community for San Francisco with a 25 minute commute, you can count on Bakersfield housing prices converging on Bay Area costs. This is probably a net win for the community of Bakersfield, but it may not change things very much for you as a pre-existing worker in San Francisco.
- hyperbovine 10y agoHow much time have you spent in Bakersfield?
- dragonwriter 10y agoIncreasing the effective commute radius into the Bay Area such that property ownership and rental prices were driven up in the new commuter towns would also reduce the upward pressure on prices in the Bay Area and it's existing commuter towns.
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- nunez 10y agoInteresting. Does one salary stay the same with this agreement?
- exolymph 10y agoI got to interview the team about this decision, so here are more details if you're curious: http://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/zapier-remote-work-de-location.html http://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/zapier-remote-work-de-location...
- throwaway40483 10y agoNo offense, but how could you avoid addressing the elephant in the room? "Will my salary be COL adjusted?"
- exolymph 10y agoThey offer you the job before they know if you're going to move or not, so it wouldn't make sense for that to affect the salary, unless you mentioned upfront that you planned to abscond to Iowa or wherever.
- sudosteph 10y agoYou should really expand this to Seattle folks as well. I've decided to stay for now, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't wistfully start looking at the housing prices in Miami after this awful winter...
- CryoLogic 10y agoAlso in Seattle - housing prices have exploded to the point where many 100k+ engineers would struggle to get a 30yr mortgage on a 1 bedroom. 400k+ for a nice 1bd here (within 10 miles), not yet Silicon Valley but still quite bad.
- brutus1213 10y agoI don't track the Seattle market closly but several people have mentioned this. Is this just the city core or all the suburbs too? How much does a 3 bedroom go for? 4 years ago, I heard it could be had for 500K. Has it doubled?
- bryanh 10y agoWe're considering other places with outrageous cost of living as well - but as an experiment - we wanted to start with the Bay Area only.
- beatpanda 10y agoMore like this, please, from everyone. God bless you for doing this.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dsacco 10y agoAnalyzing this announcement critically, I work through the following: 1. Why would Zapier publicize a new policy for existing employees? Cynically, that appears to be a PR opportunity. 2. The new policy is an "experiment" that pays existing employees $10,000 to cover relocation costs to move outside the Bay Area. 3. I assume that the employees' salaries are then adjusted for COL (this is the crux). This presents an arbitrage between the $10k and salary adjustment. 4. Zapier is facilitating a process that, in effect, acquires employees from one location for a cheaper price than competitors, as long as those employees are willing to move outside of the Bay Area. I don't have a comment on whether I agree or disagree; I guess it's good to support employees living where they want to. But I'd be interested in knowing 1) if employees do have their salaries adjusted for cost of living when they move and 2) where many employees ultimately end up moving to. There is a face value lens that I can read this announcement through, but there is another lens related to the price of talent in the Bay Area. If I don't take this at face value, it's interesting to me if this carries any signal about real estate or tech salary outlook. EDIT - Nevermind, salaries aren't adjusted for cost of living.
- jkarneges 10y agoI read it as applying to new hires, not necessarily existing employees, so it makes sense that they'd publicize it. If it only applies to new hires then that may make salary adjustment easier (if that's part of this).
- r00fus 10y ago> 3. I assume that the employees' salaries are then adjusted for COL (this is the crux). This presents an arbitrage between the $10k and salary adjustment. The bryanh has said they don't adjust salaries post-move, theough I imagine future raises/bonuses might not be as competitive as elsewhere in the bay area e.g. another you might might have taken to stay in the bay area.
- rajeshp1986 10y agoI think this is a great start. More and more companies should start doing this. That way people will get convinced to take these packages and move to smaller cities where they can have better life. It doesn't make sense to cram your family in a 700 sq. ft apartment and still pay $3500 rent for it. I like other people was very excited about bay area but after coming here I often wonder whether it is worth it. Also, 30s is where you start saving more for future. giving that money as rent makes my heart cry.
- komali2 10y agoThis is my dream, and this is why I switched industries to become a programmer. One day, I will achieve the apex - beach cafe in Vietnam, tethered net connection, happily tapping away code for my full time job. Someday....
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dmode 10y agoI am probably in the minority, but I hate remote teams. I have worked with remote teams in various timezones all my life and it has pretty much destroyed any semblance of love of work that I had. Calls in the mornings, calls in the evenings, lack of white boarding capabilities, not able to quickly tap on the shoulder and ask a question, not able to have team outings or in promptu happy hours etc. has exhausted me. I am now looking for a job with a 100% local team.
- econner 10y agoThe grass is always greener..
- twothamendment 10y agoI'm on a remote dev team in three states, but luckily the same time zone. To me, the timezone issue is much bigger than remote or not. Whiteboard - that is one thing I miss, but I lost that while I was in the office!
- user5994461 10y agoIt's all about the timezone. You can take 4-5 hour difference top, that leaves you an afternoon to work together and talk when you need to. Any link with >8 hour difference is doomed to failure, you can't communicate at all. On top of that, you need to all be extremely experienced and autonomous, and you need to have regular trips to meet in person.
- nedwin 10y agoWould love to know how fundraising has been impacted by being a remote first company. Did you get resistance? Are there certain investors who are fundamentally for or against?
- bryanh 10y agoI think there is a bit of hesitation for some VC's in backing a remote first company - but some are all for it. Investors aren't as much a hivemind as one might think - they all have different theses that impact how they interpret remote first companies. We did raise some money in the early days (when it was much more faith than evidence) but I don't recall any concern about our remote intentions from our investors. Since then - we've reached profitability.
- agibsonccc 10y agoAnother bullet point for you: We're distributed in 6 time zones and haven't had problems with funding.
- agibsonccc 10y agoI'd just like to commend the zapier folks for promoting a remote first company like this. We're distributed across 6 timezones and have built up like this for years. I always try to hire engineers where they live. This causes some complications but it's been worth it for us. We've found you have to have the right culture for it though. It's harder to "bolt on" remote.