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Zapier 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
by bryanh 10y ago
Zapier 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.
- 10y ago
- 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!