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Are 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
by iagooar 10y ago
Are 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.
- bryanh 10y agoWe do not adjust salaries when employees move. We try to pay similarly regardless of location.
- wlll 10y agoFantastic to hear. I've never (as an employee) found it fair that I would be paid more or less for the same work just because I happened to chose somewhere else to live.
- kgermino 10y agoI agree. I understand paying remote workers less than someone on site since there may be productivity gains that come from that. However, remote is remote. Once someone is a remote employee it should make no difference if they're in Manhattan or Milwaukee.
- taternuts 10y agoWell in this scenario you _are_ being paid less just in case you happen to choose a place you really want to live, if cost of living is higher. Most cool places have a higher cost of living - if you're one of those people who loves it in a rural place that costs 50k to buy a great house and has nothing to do than you're golden. Otherwise you're going to get penalized going to a remote-only company because as a whole they just won't pay on that scale (and realistically, why should they?).
- tukelully 10y agoI think it may be a worthwhile question and I'm curious why you think this. Why shouldn't they? Is there a objective measurable reason remote employees shouldn't be paid the same?
- ghaff 10y agoI assume the point is that salaries aren't about fairness. So the objective measurable reason is that if you want to hire employees in high CoL areas, you'll need to pay more to be competitive. To be clear, I have no issues with divorcing salary from location for a remote company. But it probably means you're paying generous salaries for people living in cheap locations and you'll have trouble hiring anyone who must must must live in SF for... reasons.
- 10y ago
- shostack 10y agoWhat happens with subsequent comp adjustments then? Do your ramp their growth rate down to be more like their new area for future raises and promotions, or do you keep it based on Bay Area rates?
- bryanh 10y agoWe try not to downscale raises/promotions based on location either. For what it is worth - we're not out to benchmark against "Bay Area rates". We generally will lose in head-to-head compensation with any large, on-site technical organization in the Bay Area (Google, Facebook, Netflix, etc.) - but we try and be consistent and competitive (6 fig eng, health, retire, etc.) anywhere else in the world - no matter where you are (suburbs of Chicago, middle-of-nowhere-Kansas, metro Pittsburgh, Barcelona, etc.). Check out a few of our other comments for more details.
- eldavido 10y agoI'm very interested in this question from an academic perspective -- where will the remote vs. local market clear, if more companies start doing this. Scenario A: More companies pay equally remote vs. local Scenario B: cost-of-living adjustments mean companies pay the local prevailing wage of where the employee is located. My prediction is that we'll get about 80% scenario A and 20% scenario B. Remotes might take a hit but it won't be large, and that's based on elasticity of demand -- I suspect companies have a less elastic demand for talent overall, vs. employee willingness to move.
- nedwin 10y agoI suspect you're right re: Scenario A. But I think it'll be at the detriment to engineers in high cost of living areas. Manhattan and SV don't have a monopoly on great engineers for the vast majority of engineering roles. Remotes won't take the hit. It's those who for some reason (family, prestige, other) are stuck in these centres.
- danaliv 10y agoThe question was whether people should expect to be paid less if they de-locate than they would if they stayed in/near SF.
- iagooar 10y agoI think you misunderstood what I was asking, it wasn't to compare you with Google or anything. But I got my answer further down the thread, and it's amazing that you pay full salary to people who live outside of the Bay Area. Way to go!
- shostack 10y agoWhat about other salaries for less in demand functions where employees typically have less leverage, like marketing?