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I worked remotely 17 years for a large SV tech corp doing work that was global in nature. 5 years in, they instituted a policy of having salary modifiers based
by wintermutestwin 7y ago
I worked remotely 17 years for a large SV tech corp doing work that was global in nature. 5 years in, they instituted a policy of having salary modifiers based on where you lived for both remote and onsite employees. Your salary wouldn't immediately change, but when it came time for increases, your compensation rate was considered. I had no problem with this policy because I lived on the side of a mountain and my house cost 1/5th a Bay Area home. Instead of a 1.5hour commute home, I would have a 1.5hr mountain bike ride out my back door. Now, the salary difference wasn't 50%, it was more like 25%, but I would have taken 50% to not have to live in the Bay Area.
The real downside was that I had minimal mobility because most of the tech world is still in the dark ages of management by proximity. Doing a job search in the startup world in the age of Covid, I assumed that there would be an explosion of WFH jobs, but most are not.
- aantix 7y ago“But I would have taken 50% less to not have to live in the Bay Area” The even crazier notion is this - you shouldn’t have to concede anything. If they landed a dev in SF, they’d be willing to pay them the appropriate SF comp. It’s in their budget. Press harder. Money gives you options, even if you’re not a big spender, it’s security. Why not you? Demand more.
- SamuelAdams 7y agoRight but it's also a race to the bottom. You don't know if the company has another candidate in their cards that will accept a 50% reduction to a SF engineer. With remote work you have a lot more competition.
- aantix 7y ago"More competition" - but the company still has just a finite amount of time to evaluate candidates. I've been on the hiring side - if you want a very senior engineer and want to vet them properly, there's nothing fast about the process. You have access to a million senior engineers but who cares if you only have two engineers on your side that are qualified enough to interview them and those engineers are still expected to ship code, do code reviews, alongside doing interviews? If you can deliver a fantastic interview where you code on demand, talk architecture tradeoffs intelligently, the leverage still belongs to you as the engineer. Regardless of the number of candidates.