5 ms·

It 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 mi

by hapless 10y ago

It 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 ago
Eh, 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 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. 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 ago
      You 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.
  - bryanh 10y ago
    Literally none of this has been our experience.
  - dionidium 10y ago
    > eastern European wages The caricatures of Middle America really never top, do they? Good developers in St. Louis, where I'm from, make six figures. The GDP per capita in Romania (to pick a totally random example (it's literally just the first place I thought to check)) is $9,499. In Missouri it's $42,984. There's this weird perception that the Midwest is like a third-world country, a perception that's plainly ignorant.
johndavi 10y ago
To a large extent that's on the employee. If you choose to move to an area with no industrial foundation, then you are stuck with the horse you rode in on. (It's also -- knowing the Zapier history of being aggressive on the employee-friendliness front, and having interacted with them in their earlier days -- somewhat uncharitable as a default position.)
mikeknoop 10y ago
This experiment is primarily to find others who already want to leave the bay area for reason like family, partners, housing, or cost. We noticed several Zapier teammates do this, and thought there might be more. If you're only after a $10k bonus, you're right, there are more effective ways to get that.
zeamaize 10y ago
I left the Bay Area in 2011 because I was tired of the endless suburban hellscape, the high cost of housing, and the poor cultural offerings (yeah SFO is great but that's a long way off). I was worried it'd be tough to move jobs or careers and that getting new jobs would be harder. It hasn't been. I've been steadily moving up and into new positions at new companies every 2 years just like I was in the Bay Area. My salary is 2.7x higher than it was when I left the Bay Area, and I now have a 5,000 sqft home in a great city that I paid about 1/10th as much for as I would have in the Bay Area.
- lj3 10y ago
  Do you have any tips for that? I've found it harder and harder to get the attention of distributed companies, to the point where I'm fairly sure I'll be relocating to an A or B tier city in the near future.
  - zeamaize 10y ago
    I don't work for a distributed company. I'm in R&D these days and head up the main science section of my company. I used my network to find jobs, applied for every opportunity and stayed on the ball. Earlier in my career I'd send 150+ applications. The last move I only looked at three positions and got offers from all three.
- iandanforth 10y ago
  Please tell us more! What city did you end up in?
  - zeamaize 10y ago
    I've lived in Miami, Chicago, London, DC, Boston (briefly), and Houston. I'm now somewhere else entirely, and while I don't want to say, I'll just say you'd find it surprising, because I certainly did. We like it, though, and there is a strong science-based economy with big growth in cloud and data, low crime, a highly educated population, and an amazing metro area.
mdasen 10y ago
It isn't really a way to get $10k out of an employer at all. The point is that some people genuinely don't want to live in the Bay Area and this offer could give them an opportunity/incentive to leave. There are plenty of non-Bay Area markets that have thriving software scenes and even places that offer you more disposable income once housing costs are factored in. My cynical view on it is that it's more of a marketing ploy. Lots of non-Bay Area folk will be reading this and might make a decision to apply. I don't think they're trying to trap people. They're already a remote company. It's not like they're a major company employing 5,000 SWEs in the Bay Area and offering to relocate them to Northern Michigan where they're setting up a new office, but there won't be other companies around. While you might have more options in San Francisco than Seattle, I think the amount of leverage that more companies give you in your career is probably logarithmically increasing. That is to say, Seattle would have more than enough other companies around that the company couldn't forego raises and equity grants because you don't have other options. And I think it would be a good thing for our industry to spread out a bit more. Some people have families in certain areas they wish to be close to, some people enjoy the local culture and amenities of certain areas more than others. Having people feel "forced" to live in locations that aren't their cup of tea for economic opportunity isn't really helping anything. The people who do want to live there face increased housing prices and congestion. The people who would rather live somewhere else make a choice for their career that doesn't match what they'd choose for their life. Tying economic opportunity to location isn't a wonderful thing.
- hapless 10y ago
  Economic opportunity is tied to location. Those are the facts on the ground. A $10k signing bonus in exchange for putting yourself in a more vulnerable position will not change those (unfortunate) facts.
- TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
  > There are plenty of non-Bay Area markets that have thriving software scenes This is true, there are other tech hubs in the United States, but they are facing many of the problems that the Bay Area is facing now, with a tightening housing market, increasing cost of living, and long commutes. Places outside of those tech hubs generally have a terrible IT industry, and generally only accept people with a bachelor's degree plus 2+ years experience to get into even a junior role.

by hapless 10y ago

saturdayplace 10y ago

Eh, 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 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. 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 ago
    You 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.
- bryanh 10y ago
  Literally none of this has been our experience.
- dionidium 10y ago
  > eastern European wages The caricatures of Middle America really never top, do they? Good developers in St. Louis, where I'm from, make six figures. The GDP per capita in Romania (to pick a totally random example (it's literally just the first place I thought to check)) is $9,499. In Missouri it's $42,984. There's this weird perception that the Midwest is like a third-world country, a perception that's plainly ignorant.

johndavi 10y ago

To a large extent that's on the employee. If you choose to move to an area with no industrial foundation, then you are stuck with the horse you rode in on. (It's also -- knowing the Zapier history of being aggressive on the employee-friendliness front, and having interacted with them in their earlier days -- somewhat uncharitable as a default position.)

mikeknoop 10y ago

This experiment is primarily to find others who already want to leave the bay area for reason like family, partners, housing, or cost. We noticed several Zapier teammates do this, and thought there might be more. If you're only after a $10k bonus, you're right, there are more effective ways to get that.

zeamaize 10y ago

I left the Bay Area in 2011 because I was tired of the endless suburban hellscape, the high cost of housing, and the poor cultural offerings (yeah SFO is great but that's a long way off). I was worried it'd be tough to move jobs or careers and that getting new jobs would be harder. It hasn't been. I've been steadily moving up and into new positions at new companies every 2 years just like I was in the Bay Area. My salary is 2.7x higher than it was when I left the Bay Area, and I now have a 5,000 sqft home in a great city that I paid about 1/10th as much for as I would have in the Bay Area.

lj3 10y ago
Do you have any tips for that? I've found it harder and harder to get the attention of distributed companies, to the point where I'm fairly sure I'll be relocating to an A or B tier city in the near future.
- zeamaize 10y ago
  I don't work for a distributed company. I'm in R&D these days and head up the main science section of my company. I used my network to find jobs, applied for every opportunity and stayed on the ball. Earlier in my career I'd send 150+ applications. The last move I only looked at three positions and got offers from all three.
iandanforth 10y ago
Please tell us more! What city did you end up in?
- zeamaize 10y ago
  I've lived in Miami, Chicago, London, DC, Boston (briefly), and Houston. I'm now somewhere else entirely, and while I don't want to say, I'll just say you'd find it surprising, because I certainly did. We like it, though, and there is a strong science-based economy with big growth in cloud and data, low crime, a highly educated population, and an amazing metro area.

mdasen 10y ago

It isn't really a way to get $10k out of an employer at all. The point is that some people genuinely don't want to live in the Bay Area and this offer could give them an opportunity/incentive to leave. There are plenty of non-Bay Area markets that have thriving software scenes and even places that offer you more disposable income once housing costs are factored in. My cynical view on it is that it's more of a marketing ploy. Lots of non-Bay Area folk will be reading this and might make a decision to apply. I don't think they're trying to trap people. They're already a remote company. It's not like they're a major company employing 5,000 SWEs in the Bay Area and offering to relocate them to Northern Michigan where they're setting up a new office, but there won't be other companies around. While you might have more options in San Francisco than Seattle, I think the amount of leverage that more companies give you in your career is probably logarithmically increasing. That is to say, Seattle would have more than enough other companies around that the company couldn't forego raises and equity grants because you don't have other options. And I think it would be a good thing for our industry to spread out a bit more. Some people have families in certain areas they wish to be close to, some people enjoy the local culture and amenities of certain areas more than others. Having people feel "forced" to live in locations that aren't their cup of tea for economic opportunity isn't really helping anything. The people who do want to live there face increased housing prices and congestion. The people who would rather live somewhere else make a choice for their career that doesn't match what they'd choose for their life. Tying economic opportunity to location isn't a wonderful thing.

hapless 10y ago
Economic opportunity is tied to location. Those are the facts on the ground. A $10k signing bonus in exchange for putting yourself in a more vulnerable position will not change those (unfortunate) facts.
TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
> There are plenty of non-Bay Area markets that have thriving software scenes This is true, there are other tech hubs in the United States, but they are facing many of the problems that the Bay Area is facing now, with a tightening housing market, increasing cost of living, and long commutes. Places outside of those tech hubs generally have a terrible IT industry, and generally only accept people with a bachelor's degree plus 2+ years experience to get into even a junior role.