9 ms·

Then why pay $200k for a software engineer in the valley when the same talent can live outside of the bay area and can do with 1/3rd of the salary? The question

Then why pay $200k for a software engineer in the valley when the same talent can live outside of the bay area and can do with 1/3rd of the salary? The question I have is what portion of the $200k salary is 1) due to the raw talent of the individual 2) because they live in the bay area.

apengwin 6y ago
It's the rate the market dictates.
- WilliamEdward 6y ago
  This is essentially the same as saying "the sky is blue because it just is"
  - dpoochieni 6y ago
    But in the end it is reality. The question is who is actually in a position to be able to modify it? Because, this rate was reached by the cummulative effects of many many individuals optimizing their decisions for their own particular situation.
- epylar 6y ago
  The thing is, if more people are remote, the market includes people -outside- of SV.
  - esoterica 6y ago
    The market already included people outside of SV (big companies have many satellite offices). That hasn't depressed SV compensation because the best engineers cost a lot of money anywhere you look.
pmiller2 6y ago
Bingo! I often talk about how you can rent a 3BR apartment in my home town (Nowhere, Michigan) for like $900. This is true -- I've verified it recently. The drawback is that you have to live in my home town. I can certainly see companies wanting to pay less based on CoL simply to make the bottom line better. Given the way capitalism works, I'd say this is a near inevitability. The end result will probably be that the big tech companies are going to start "offshoring" work to the Midwest, and other low to very low cost of living areas. ("We'll pay you $70k per year, but you can live wherever you want in the US!") I can't see this being good for employees, because there are significant benefits to living in a place like NYC or the Bay Area, and those benefits would be lost if people had to live in the middle of nowhere to make it worthwhile.
- clarry 6y ago
  > I can't see this being good for employees... ... that want to live in NYC or SF. For everyone else, who doesn't want to live in places like that, this is awesome. (And that's a word I never use)
  - cvlasdkv 6y ago
    Is it awesome? It raises the cost of everything everywhere else (because for the majority of young, educated people there aren't _that_ many desirable cities). We are already seeing that in places like Austin or Colorado.
    - clarry 6y ago
      There aren't enough people employed in tech for their escape from SF to raise cost of living meaningfully across the globe. There are enough places to live in (with no shortage of real estate), so bring it on. And I think there'll be more desirable cities to live in in the future if remote work becomes the norm across fields where it is possible. People will start to liven up locations that nobody would otherwise look at as long as the jobs aren't there.
      - 6y ago
redisman 6y ago
Isn't this a win-win-win though? Salaries become more normalized across the country so people can work from where they choose, SF rents will go down as techies start streaming out of the Bay Area, hiring pools for companies become inclusive of people who don't want to move to the Bay Area (or the other 2-3 tech cities). The rest of the country also certainly doesn't pay 1/3rd of your salary.
- jrockway 6y ago
  Will people start streaming out of the Bay Area, though? The thing that always interested me about the Bay Area was that my friends in Mountain View would be posting long bike rides throughout the winter. Where it's snowy and below freezing in New York, it's 55 degrees and sunny there. I imagine people like that a lot, and is part of the reason it's a popular place to live. There are other places in the US that are warm in the winter, of course, but less of them are also nice in the summer. Then among those, very few of them match the Bay Area in friendliness to things like LGBT causes. I have a feeling that many people will continue gravitating to the Bay Area.
  - erohead 6y ago
    As a Canadian who moved to Palo Alto 10 years ago - this is the real answer! I love biking in the 'winter'
  - tfehring 6y ago
    Is the Bay Area unique in the US for being progressive, relatively walkable/bikeable, and having great weather? This is a sincere question, by the way. (It's also a practical one - I just accepted a fully remote position, and I'd move to the Bay Area in a heartbeat if it weren't so expensive.)
    - pb7 6y ago
      If by unique you mean in the vast minority, yes, if the only one, then no. Bay Area isn’t really walkable as it’s really vast. Mostly just San Francisco.
roosterdawn 6y ago
> when the same talent can live outside of the bay area and can do with 1/3rd of the salary What makes you think this is true and not just a post-hoc rationalization? Let me put it this way: offer that salary worldwide and you will still have difficulty finding top-tier talent, as many remote-first companies are finding out the hard way. Having been a hiring manager in such a position before, I will tell you that you are still competing against every other remote tech company to find and hire from the same global talent pool. Secondly, you're not accounting for communication ease and timezone differences. A huge amount of the world is cut out if you optimize for remote candidates within +-1-3 TZs. Finally, the assertion that the average valley firm doesn't need a $200k+ in 2020 USD terms engineer is also not necessarily true. Demand for senior talent is significantly higher than for mid range and junior talent, because mid-large size firms want it (to bolster their senior roster and make it easier for teams to subdivide), and small firms absolutely need it (they simply do not have a senior engineer and need at least one).
- RangerScience 6y ago
  The current gig I've got, if they'd had a senior engineer - even as an advisor - from the outset, basically the last ~8 mo of work split between myself and a different senior engineer would have been unnecessary.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  I wasn’t asserting or claiming one way or the other. I’m asking the question. Your response assumes some stance I might have - I don’t. I found your response pretty unpleasant and combative even though there is truth in what you’re saying.
  - roosterdawn 6y ago
    > I wasn’t asserting or claiming one way or the other. You verbatim asked "why pay $200k for a software engineer same talent can live outside of the bay area and can do with 1/3rd of the salary" and you got a response. If you think there's truth in what I'm saying but find that response "unpleasant and combative", I have two suggestions for you: 1. Communicate more clearly. If you are meaning to express an argument rhetorically or as a "devil's advocate" but it's easy to misinterpret your statement as if you simply support it, consider rewriting your comment for clarity. 2. Rethink your premises. If you actually do believe what it is you're saying, consider that you're the argument of "same talent for 1/3rd of the price" is the original offshoring argument, which has well known conceptual issues. If you're more thoughtful about checking your assumptions when you could be wrong, it will be much less likely that you end up in a situation where you find yourself saying "Gee, I found so and so's response unpleasant and combative, even though there is truth in what you're saying." If you put your hand on the stove, do you criticize the stove, or do you realize that maybe it was a mistake to put your hand there and then move it away?
mjayhn 6y ago
I wfh and I won't work for a company that bases my pay on my zipcode (Gitlab). I want complete flexibility on where I live. There are plenty of remote companies that don't do that, especially now post-covid. I wish more people would reject zip code COL so that companies starting to WFH don't just take Gitlabs idea of it.
- gen220 6y ago
  Is this a popular thing inside of gitlab? Personally, I'm conflicted: it's an interesting experiment, and I get where it comes from, but it's perhaps a bit too nearsighted. In the end, I think zipcode (and COL) is a weak proxy for talent. It's very easy to measure zipcode, compared to talent. But, think about it from the other angle: if you have a history of this talent (earning high salaries in high-COL zip codes or otherwise), why on earth would you accept anything less than that, when moving to a lower COL area? To me, it seems like a decision that would hurt the employer more than help them, since the people with proven talent would work for companies that don't discriminate on zip codes. And that costs more than the investment in assessing incoming talent levels.
  - mjayhn 6y ago
    Gitlabs salaries are historically low compared to what I'd expect, but their talent is also much more global than a lot of big tech corps so while you won't find someone from CA expecting a "high" CA salary there you'll find a lot of great global talent that probably has a more difficult time working at a $big_name since they might not have offices in their country. None of the salaries I've seen there seem remotely "senior/architect" level if you want Bay/WA talent. That's the way I see the company, at least.
- the_gipsy 6y ago
  Wait, so you can move to a super expensive place and the company will subsidize your mortgage investment?
  - mjayhn 6y ago
    My company generates revenue and my talent directly affects the revenue. The salary that you give me is correlated to that revenue that I help to generate. The company figured out my value when they made me an offer. My location during any of this transaction bears absolutely zero significance. If I'm worth $300k to generate $5mill for you don't worry about whether I'm living in NYC or on a ranch in Wyoming. If you're willing to take $60k for a remote job you can make $160k at because that's the actual global market value you're doing all of us in the field a disservice by working for the low COL wage. It's bad enough salaries have barely risen for other fields since the 70s. Our field can work anywhere but we need to make sure we don't let our salaries slide by letting the Gitlab style take hold. Often on hn I see people thinking they need to take a pay cut to work remotely. You don't! Same thing.
dqpb 6y ago
Regarding raw talent, didn't Google, Apple, etc. form a cartel a while back to suppress the wages of engineers? I highly doubt wages are tightly bound to value output. In my own experience throughout my career I've been both severely overpaid and underpaid relative to my economic impact.
daenz 6y ago
I've had a related thought: is it ethical to pay a person less based purely on where they live? I understand that there are different cost of living factors for different places, but that's on the employee's side and should be none of the employer's business. If they employer can pay $200k/yr for a remote employee, it shouldn't matter where they live, and so scaling that value seems discriminatory to me. Anyone have thoughts about this?
- pb7 6y ago
  Definitely an interesting point. What happens when you are remote in one expensive city then move to a cheaper city? Does the employer need to know where you presently reside? I would think not.
- option 6y ago
  the pay is based (as it should be) on market conditions, regulations and contractual obligations. Should not be based on ethics - those can vary in surprising ways.
  - daenz 6y ago
    I would be inclined to agree with you if your residence wasn't information you were required to give to your employer. It takes the normal market negotiations out of the equation. It's like if your rent was information you were required to give to your employer. They could then make lower offers to people with lower rent, because the market conditions are now warped in favor of the employer.
- edmundsauto 6y ago
  The US Government, normally a very conservative org, has cost of living increases for federal workers and (I think) military service members. Based on that, I think it's pretty well accepted (perhaps incorrectly!) that it is ethical. Or maybe practical beats ethical.
- xenocyon 6y ago
  > If they employer can pay $200k/yr for a remote employee It's interesting that folks envisioning a globally uniform payscale tend to posit SF salaries in Hanoi rather than Hanoi salaries in SF.
christiansakai 6y ago
There's an interesting theory about this based on game theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapiro%E2%80%93Stiglitz_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapiro%E2%80%93Stiglitz_theor...
wlll 6y ago
I work for places that pay me for what I'm worth, I don't work for places that pay me based on where I live. I'm not cranking out code that is somehow less effective while living in the NW England, and so to pay me less than someone else is downright insulting. I also, to be clear, don't have any hard feelings about people who live in even cheaper[0] places than me, it's their choice. I used to work with a guy in the Phillipines who was on the same as me. Good for him! [0] It's not that cheap in the NW England. It's clearly not SF, NY or London, but it's not cheap.
- hota_mazi 6y ago
  > I work for places that pay me for what I'm worth, I don't work for places that pay me based on where I live. That is very short sighted. Your dollar value is highly dependent on where you live, that's just reality.
  - wlll 6y ago
    Two things here. 1. That is very short sighted. Short sighted? You mean, the area-independent wages I've been earning for the last 10 years or so are going to stop? I can't see that happening, if that's what you mean. 2. Your dollar value is highly dependent on where you live, that's just reality. Only if I am doing something that requires me to be in a certain place, because that's where the value is created. There is a local market for drywall fitting in SF, and there is one in Bunghole, Montana. You can't make the CA rates in MT because you can't provide the value in CA while still being in MT. As a programmer though, I can provide value wherever it is needed from pretty much anywhere I want to be. I'm not providing value in my house, here in England, I'm providing the value at the place I work for. It's for this reason that I'd fully expect to be able to charge Polish rates to a Polish company, and SF rates to an SF company.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    I think you're missing the context here, we're talking about remote positions. Maybe what the company expect to pay depends on where the company's HQ is, if they have one, that kind of makes sense. But the company's cost for an employee shouldn't take the location of the (remote) employee into account because that has nothing to do with the hiring/work whatsoever.
tayo42 6y ago
If i can work remote at facebook for 200k or work remote at google for 210k who would I pick? Salaries I expect would dip slightly as the pool of engineers grows then go back up as it gets more competitive. Salaries would only go down if the supply of jobs goes down. I don't think that happens in the short term.
echelon 6y ago
I live in Atlanta and make over $200k total comp. As do my coworkers. I think your perception about salaries outside of the valley is skewed.
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  no offense intended, but how does that compare the an equivalent position in the valley? The point is not so helpful without the reference. For example, are you equivalent to a L3 with 0 years of experience at google making 200K, or an L6 with 10 years experience making 600k?
- esoterica 6y ago
  You can make far, far more than $200k in the bay area. An E6 at Facebook (not an extremely senior position) can make $600k+.
esoterica 6y ago
> Then why pay $200k for a software engineer in the valley when the same talent can live outside of the bay area and can do with 1/3rd of the salary That is a pretty ridiculous assertion. Rent and taxes are higher but they are not $130k/year higher. You can even save >$70k of the $200k you make in the bay area without being exceptionally frugal, which you obviously can't do if you're making $70k/year.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
koheripbal 6y ago
Looking at the disparity of incomes of tech workers across regions, makes it abundantly clear that wages would be 50% lower if they could hire anywhere in the country, and probably 80% lower if they could hire anywhere in the world. We've all worked with highly qualified offshore resources (as well as many bad ones). Do they really deserve that 20k salary when we're making high six figures? I've started hiring abroad. It's a different form of management, sure, but you absolutely beat the return on investment. My advice is to try to stick with the same timezone, and the same language (or roughly anyway).

apengwin 6y ago

It's the rate the market dictates.

WilliamEdward 6y ago
This is essentially the same as saying "the sky is blue because it just is"
- dpoochieni 6y ago
  But in the end it is reality. The question is who is actually in a position to be able to modify it? Because, this rate was reached by the cummulative effects of many many individuals optimizing their decisions for their own particular situation.
epylar 6y ago
The thing is, if more people are remote, the market includes people -outside- of SV.
- esoterica 6y ago
  The market already included people outside of SV (big companies have many satellite offices). That hasn't depressed SV compensation because the best engineers cost a lot of money anywhere you look.

pmiller2 6y ago

Bingo! I often talk about how you can rent a 3BR apartment in my home town (Nowhere, Michigan) for like $900. This is true -- I've verified it recently. The drawback is that you have to live in my home town. I can certainly see companies wanting to pay less based on CoL simply to make the bottom line better. Given the way capitalism works, I'd say this is a near inevitability. The end result will probably be that the big tech companies are going to start "offshoring" work to the Midwest, and other low to very low cost of living areas. ("We'll pay you $70k per year, but you can live wherever you want in the US!") I can't see this being good for employees, because there are significant benefits to living in a place like NYC or the Bay Area, and those benefits would be lost if people had to live in the middle of nowhere to make it worthwhile.

clarry 6y ago
> I can't see this being good for employees... ... that want to live in NYC or SF. For everyone else, who doesn't want to live in places like that, this is awesome. (And that's a word I never use)
- cvlasdkv 6y ago
  Is it awesome? It raises the cost of everything everywhere else (because for the majority of young, educated people there aren't _that_ many desirable cities). We are already seeing that in places like Austin or Colorado.
  - clarry 6y ago
    There aren't enough people employed in tech for their escape from SF to raise cost of living meaningfully across the globe. There are enough places to live in (with no shortage of real estate), so bring it on. And I think there'll be more desirable cities to live in in the future if remote work becomes the norm across fields where it is possible. People will start to liven up locations that nobody would otherwise look at as long as the jobs aren't there.
    - 6y ago

redisman 6y ago

Isn't this a win-win-win though? Salaries become more normalized across the country so people can work from where they choose, SF rents will go down as techies start streaming out of the Bay Area, hiring pools for companies become inclusive of people who don't want to move to the Bay Area (or the other 2-3 tech cities). The rest of the country also certainly doesn't pay 1/3rd of your salary.

jrockway 6y ago
Will people start streaming out of the Bay Area, though? The thing that always interested me about the Bay Area was that my friends in Mountain View would be posting long bike rides throughout the winter. Where it's snowy and below freezing in New York, it's 55 degrees and sunny there. I imagine people like that a lot, and is part of the reason it's a popular place to live. There are other places in the US that are warm in the winter, of course, but less of them are also nice in the summer. Then among those, very few of them match the Bay Area in friendliness to things like LGBT causes. I have a feeling that many people will continue gravitating to the Bay Area.
- erohead 6y ago
  As a Canadian who moved to Palo Alto 10 years ago - this is the real answer! I love biking in the 'winter'
- tfehring 6y ago
  Is the Bay Area unique in the US for being progressive, relatively walkable/bikeable, and having great weather? This is a sincere question, by the way. (It's also a practical one - I just accepted a fully remote position, and I'd move to the Bay Area in a heartbeat if it weren't so expensive.)
  - pb7 6y ago
    If by unique you mean in the vast minority, yes, if the only one, then no. Bay Area isn’t really walkable as it’s really vast. Mostly just San Francisco.

roosterdawn 6y ago

> when the same talent can live outside of the bay area and can do with 1/3rd of the salary What makes you think this is true and not just a post-hoc rationalization? Let me put it this way: offer that salary worldwide and you will still have difficulty finding top-tier talent, as many remote-first companies are finding out the hard way. Having been a hiring manager in such a position before, I will tell you that you are still competing against every other remote tech company to find and hire from the same global talent pool. Secondly, you're not accounting for communication ease and timezone differences. A huge amount of the world is cut out if you optimize for remote candidates within +-1-3 TZs. Finally, the assertion that the average valley firm doesn't need a $200k+ in 2020 USD terms engineer is also not necessarily true. Demand for senior talent is significantly higher than for mid range and junior talent, because mid-large size firms want it (to bolster their senior roster and make it easier for teams to subdivide), and small firms absolutely need it (they simply do not have a senior engineer and need at least one).

RangerScience 6y ago
The current gig I've got, if they'd had a senior engineer - even as an advisor - from the outset, basically the last ~8 mo of work split between myself and a different senior engineer would have been unnecessary.
fermienrico 6y ago
I wasn’t asserting or claiming one way or the other. I’m asking the question. Your response assumes some stance I might have - I don’t. I found your response pretty unpleasant and combative even though there is truth in what you’re saying.
- roosterdawn 6y ago
  > I wasn’t asserting or claiming one way or the other. You verbatim asked "why pay $200k for a software engineer same talent can live outside of the bay area and can do with 1/3rd of the salary" and you got a response. If you think there's truth in what I'm saying but find that response "unpleasant and combative", I have two suggestions for you: 1. Communicate more clearly. If you are meaning to express an argument rhetorically or as a "devil's advocate" but it's easy to misinterpret your statement as if you simply support it, consider rewriting your comment for clarity. 2. Rethink your premises. If you actually do believe what it is you're saying, consider that you're the argument of "same talent for 1/3rd of the price" is the original offshoring argument, which has well known conceptual issues. If you're more thoughtful about checking your assumptions when you could be wrong, it will be much less likely that you end up in a situation where you find yourself saying "Gee, I found so and so's response unpleasant and combative, even though there is truth in what you're saying." If you put your hand on the stove, do you criticize the stove, or do you realize that maybe it was a mistake to put your hand there and then move it away?

mjayhn 6y ago

I wfh and I won't work for a company that bases my pay on my zipcode (Gitlab). I want complete flexibility on where I live. There are plenty of remote companies that don't do that, especially now post-covid. I wish more people would reject zip code COL so that companies starting to WFH don't just take Gitlabs idea of it.

gen220 6y ago
Is this a popular thing inside of gitlab? Personally, I'm conflicted: it's an interesting experiment, and I get where it comes from, but it's perhaps a bit too nearsighted. In the end, I think zipcode (and COL) is a weak proxy for talent. It's very easy to measure zipcode, compared to talent. But, think about it from the other angle: if you have a history of this talent (earning high salaries in high-COL zip codes or otherwise), why on earth would you accept anything less than that, when moving to a lower COL area? To me, it seems like a decision that would hurt the employer more than help them, since the people with proven talent would work for companies that don't discriminate on zip codes. And that costs more than the investment in assessing incoming talent levels.
- mjayhn 6y ago
  Gitlabs salaries are historically low compared to what I'd expect, but their talent is also much more global than a lot of big tech corps so while you won't find someone from CA expecting a "high" CA salary there you'll find a lot of great global talent that probably has a more difficult time working at a $big_name since they might not have offices in their country. None of the salaries I've seen there seem remotely "senior/architect" level if you want Bay/WA talent. That's the way I see the company, at least.
the_gipsy 6y ago
Wait, so you can move to a super expensive place and the company will subsidize your mortgage investment?
- mjayhn 6y ago
  My company generates revenue and my talent directly affects the revenue. The salary that you give me is correlated to that revenue that I help to generate. The company figured out my value when they made me an offer. My location during any of this transaction bears absolutely zero significance. If I'm worth $300k to generate $5mill for you don't worry about whether I'm living in NYC or on a ranch in Wyoming. If you're willing to take $60k for a remote job you can make $160k at because that's the actual global market value you're doing all of us in the field a disservice by working for the low COL wage. It's bad enough salaries have barely risen for other fields since the 70s. Our field can work anywhere but we need to make sure we don't let our salaries slide by letting the Gitlab style take hold. Often on hn I see people thinking they need to take a pay cut to work remotely. You don't! Same thing.

dqpb 6y ago

Regarding raw talent, didn't Google, Apple, etc. form a cartel a while back to suppress the wages of engineers? I highly doubt wages are tightly bound to value output. In my own experience throughout my career I've been both severely overpaid and underpaid relative to my economic impact.

daenz 6y ago

I've had a related thought: is it ethical to pay a person less based purely on where they live? I understand that there are different cost of living factors for different places, but that's on the employee's side and should be none of the employer's business. If they employer can pay $200k/yr for a remote employee, it shouldn't matter where they live, and so scaling that value seems discriminatory to me. Anyone have thoughts about this?

pb7 6y ago
Definitely an interesting point. What happens when you are remote in one expensive city then move to a cheaper city? Does the employer need to know where you presently reside? I would think not.
option 6y ago
the pay is based (as it should be) on market conditions, regulations and contractual obligations. Should not be based on ethics - those can vary in surprising ways.
- daenz 6y ago
  I would be inclined to agree with you if your residence wasn't information you were required to give to your employer. It takes the normal market negotiations out of the equation. It's like if your rent was information you were required to give to your employer. They could then make lower offers to people with lower rent, because the market conditions are now warped in favor of the employer.
edmundsauto 6y ago
The US Government, normally a very conservative org, has cost of living increases for federal workers and (I think) military service members. Based on that, I think it's pretty well accepted (perhaps incorrectly!) that it is ethical. Or maybe practical beats ethical.
xenocyon 6y ago
> If they employer can pay $200k/yr for a remote employee It's interesting that folks envisioning a globally uniform payscale tend to posit SF salaries in Hanoi rather than Hanoi salaries in SF.

christiansakai 6y ago

There's an interesting theory about this based on game theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapiro%E2%80%93Stiglitz_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapiro%E2%80%93Stiglitz_theor...

wlll 6y ago

I work for places that pay me for what I'm worth, I don't work for places that pay me based on where I live. I'm not cranking out code that is somehow less effective while living in the NW England, and so to pay me less than someone else is downright insulting. I also, to be clear, don't have any hard feelings about people who live in even cheaper[0] places than me, it's their choice. I used to work with a guy in the Phillipines who was on the same as me. Good for him! [0] It's not that cheap in the NW England. It's clearly not SF, NY or London, but it's not cheap.

hota_mazi 6y ago
> I work for places that pay me for what I'm worth, I don't work for places that pay me based on where I live. That is very short sighted. Your dollar value is highly dependent on where you live, that's just reality.
- wlll 6y ago
  Two things here. 1. That is very short sighted. Short sighted? You mean, the area-independent wages I've been earning for the last 10 years or so are going to stop? I can't see that happening, if that's what you mean. 2. Your dollar value is highly dependent on where you live, that's just reality. Only if I am doing something that requires me to be in a certain place, because that's where the value is created. There is a local market for drywall fitting in SF, and there is one in Bunghole, Montana. You can't make the CA rates in MT because you can't provide the value in CA while still being in MT. As a programmer though, I can provide value wherever it is needed from pretty much anywhere I want to be. I'm not providing value in my house, here in England, I'm providing the value at the place I work for. It's for this reason that I'd fully expect to be able to charge Polish rates to a Polish company, and SF rates to an SF company.
- capableweb 6y ago
  I think you're missing the context here, we're talking about remote positions. Maybe what the company expect to pay depends on where the company's HQ is, if they have one, that kind of makes sense. But the company's cost for an employee shouldn't take the location of the (remote) employee into account because that has nothing to do with the hiring/work whatsoever.

tayo42 6y ago

If i can work remote at facebook for 200k or work remote at google for 210k who would I pick? Salaries I expect would dip slightly as the pool of engineers grows then go back up as it gets more competitive. Salaries would only go down if the supply of jobs goes down. I don't think that happens in the short term.

echelon 6y ago

I live in Atlanta and make over $200k total comp. As do my coworkers. I think your perception about salaries outside of the valley is skewed.

s1artibartfast 6y ago
no offense intended, but how does that compare the an equivalent position in the valley? The point is not so helpful without the reference. For example, are you equivalent to a L3 with 0 years of experience at google making 200K, or an L6 with 10 years experience making 600k?
esoterica 6y ago
You can make far, far more than $200k in the bay area. An E6 at Facebook (not an extremely senior position) can make $600k+.

esoterica 6y ago

> Then why pay $200k for a software engineer in the valley when the same talent can live outside of the bay area and can do with 1/3rd of the salary That is a pretty ridiculous assertion. Rent and taxes are higher but they are not $130k/year higher. You can even save >$70k of the $200k you make in the bay area without being exceptionally frugal, which you obviously can't do if you're making $70k/year.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

koheripbal 6y ago

Looking at the disparity of incomes of tech workers across regions, makes it abundantly clear that wages would be 50% lower if they could hire anywhere in the country, and probably 80% lower if they could hire anywhere in the world. We've all worked with highly qualified offshore resources (as well as many bad ones). Do they really deserve that 20k salary when we're making high six figures? I've started hiring abroad. It's a different form of management, sure, but you absolutely beat the return on investment. My advice is to try to stick with the same timezone, and the same language (or roughly anyway).