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If I could keep my current compensation and move to the low cost of living area where my family is located, I would reach financial independence 10-15 years ahe

If I could keep my current compensation and move to the low cost of living area where my family is located, I would reach financial independence 10-15 years ahead of my current trajectory with Bay Area rents/costs. I'll settle for the minor inconveniences of WFH any day in order to get a decade of my life to spend with family or to work on my own projects.

almost_usual 6y ago
Or even have the funds to start your own company rather than spend it on rent / housing.
lhorie 6y ago
My understanding is that this has big tax implications (since presumably said low cost of living areas are outside of California). I would love to understand better what sorts of complications WFH bring to the table for those cases (and how they can be mitigated).
- ghaff 6y ago
  The company needs to do payroll in a different state and you, as an individual, now pay taxes in your state of residence which isn't where company HQ is. From a tax perspective it's mostly no different than if they had a small office in that state. For big companies, in particular, it's not that big a deal as they're probably using a payroll service like ADP anyway. There may be some paperwork--and certainly more so if other countries are involved.
  - SkyPuncher 6y ago
    > The company needs to do payroll in a different state and you, as an individual, now pay taxes in your state of residence which isn't where company HQ is. This is not always true. I'm remote. I pay my state and CA taxes for my CA based company even though I have never set foot in CA for this job.
    - tylermac1 6y ago
      Is that something specific to CA? I've worked remotely for 5 years and have only ever paid state income tax in my home state, not wherever my employer is.
    - lhorie 6y ago
      I've also heard of stories of people getting in trouble for "moving residence" to Incline Village (Nevada) and doing taxes in Nevada while working in CA.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      I confess I don't know what the laws are then. Presumably you don't pay both your state and CA taxes on your whole salary? I confess I've never been in the position of being officially completely remote. I certainly don't pay taxes to the state where my company's HQ is but then I'm officially in an office in my state of residence. (And maybe the existence of that office would make a difference even if I weren't actually assigned there.)
    - jedberg 6y ago
      You may want to talk to a CPA or tax specialist. You’re most likely violating your state law as well as overpaying on your taxes.
    - volandovengo 6y ago
      I've unfortunately become a payroll tax-witholding specialist. You're required to withold taxes in the state that work is performed. If you're working from home, that's your work location. You should get refunded for your CA taxes at the end of the year if they are being withheld.
    - fmpwizard 6y ago
      Like others have said, check with an accountant, I have worked remotely for the past 11 years in NC, for companies in GA, CT and NY, but because I'm 100% remote, I only have to pay NC taxes. None of them ever had an office in NC
  - cdjk 6y ago
    Unemployment insurance, family/medical leave, workers comp, and health insurance are all different by state. That can be a lot of overhead for the first employee in a new state, but then the second is trivial.
  - blahblahblogger 6y ago
    Wow so if I work for a company with an office in Chicago, but I work in their SF office - I could potentially relocate without a salary adjustment?
    - ghaff 6y ago
      I was just talking about taxes. Whether the company adjusts salaries based on your home address is orthogonal.
  - lhorie 6y ago
    I had two different scenarios in mind: one happened to an acquaintance, where they negotiated a pay cut (because presumably the company doesn't want to pay Bay Area salary to a remote worker in a location in an area w/ lower salary base), and there was the question of taxes involving part of the year in one state and part in another (plus the math for RSUs and options, of which the person had vested both in both states). The other scenario involves visa workers. The I-140 is predicated on not being able to find local candidates that match a criteria. More broadly, the H1-B visa grant pertains to foreigners being able to work in the US at all in the first place. I'd imagine that if you had everything setup to be remote from the beginning it'd probably be fine to keep things humming along, but I imagine that switching surely must pose some sort of logistic challenge?
  - smueller1234 6y ago
    For big companies, this is an international problem! And then tax issues aren't just the employees' income taxes but the company's tax regime.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      mitchellh discusses some of the international complexities here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17022563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17022563 It's definitely way more complicated than adding an employee in a new state.
      - smueller1234 6y ago
        Absolutely! In that long comment, mitchellh briefly talks about the impact of employing folks in different states on potential corporate tax. Now imagine you ran one of the big billion+ USD revenue tech companies, and you're not talking about different states in the same country but a distributed workforce in many countries and the political pressures on taxation of e-commerce or similar business models involving intangible goods. One of the key arguments in many a tech company's tax/legal toolbox (usually for arguing they should pay taxes on one jurisdiction instead of another) is in which countries their engineering efforts reside and to what extent. It's really no wonder that employment legal & finance wins out on totally flexible work arrangements in that situation, for better or worse. Politicians aren't taking any hostages in this context, see eg. France. To provide an example from sufficient years back: I had to represent the stance of a past employer on compliance with Russian privacy laws to Roskomnadzor[1] in their HQ in Moscow. Through a carefully planted trick they tried to get us to commit to establish just the right kind of representation to be able to tax our revenue from Russian customers. In many countries, the narrative would've been "you have engineers here, you therefore build your products here, you should pay income tax here". Curiously, there isn't really obvious right or wrong in all this since the goods are intangible. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=roskomnadzor https://www.google.com/search?q=roskomnadzor (Disclaimer: experience entirely from prior to my current employment at Google, I don't speak for Google in any way and have no insight into these matters at Google.)
  - jedberg 6y ago
    You’re vastly underestimating the work of “setting up an office” in a new state. Every state has a bunch of paperwork, like setting up your company as a foreign corporation in that state. Then there is state licensing. Also every state has its own worker’s compensation requirements and some have other requirements too. Your payroll provider generally tells you that you’re on your own for all that stuff. For every additional state there is a ton of overhead. I’ve had employees in California, Washington, and New York. It took two years to unwind Washington after the one employee there left, and it took a year and 20 hours of lawyer time to unwind New York, who was trying to charge us $5,000 as a penalty for missing paperwork we didn’t think we had to file (we ended up being right after paying the lawyer).
    - lhorie 6y ago
      Sounds like a startup opportunity!
      - jedberg 6y ago
        Honestly I’m surprised Gusto doesn’t handle more of the work of setting up in a new state. Seems like it would be in their wheelhouse.
        ghaff 6y ago
        I admit to having been naive on the issue. I know that bureaucracies are involved but it still seems as if at least the 90% case would be pretty cookie-cutter/repeatable even if there are a lot of steps and potential gotchas.
    - jjeaff 6y ago
      Payroll companies handle all the workers comp and payroll related duties for all different states and they do it for near nothing. The only thing you are on your own for is tax filings and registration as a foreign entity. And that is only in some cases in some states. In most states, having a few remote employees is not enough to even trigger a filing requirement. In CA, which is probably one of the most draconian, we had to register as a foreign entity and then we have to file corporate taxes there and allocate taxes proportionally according to percentage of revenue that comes from CA, I believe. And actually, they want your corporate income tax even if you don't have employees there, just because you sell to Californians. But they have had a hard time collecting for those that have no employees or other presence in the state.
amiga_500 6y ago
I would imagine salaries might dip because your new "competition" would be anyone in the same timezone (with the requisite skills). However I'd also imagine, if you are good, the offset would be well in your favour. I got covid and was (and still am) as sick as hell. I'm going to live (not sure if I will get back to 100% yet), and I never thought this kind of sorely needed decentralization would happen in my lifetime. It almost feels like a fair swap, as this is going to be so, so good for humanity. If we can get a decent handle on covid, I'm actually feeling optimistic for my children, for the first time in years.
Vysero 6y ago
I couldn't agree more. If I could work from home permanently I would move far far away from where I am currently living. I would get myself a nice condo or small house, and settle in. Currently, where I live, despite the fact that I make almost 30k/year more than the medium average income I still can only just afford a one bedroom apartment spending the suggested 30% of my income. Imagine being able to buy a house!!!! What a world that would be!!!
- CodeSheikh 6y ago
  What's the guarantee that say your San Francisco/NYC employer will keep paying you city rates when you are living in a small town in mid-west. At some point they will catch up and start saving money this way. Everyone at a tech company is not a crucial employee. Don't get me wrong, I am all in for getting paid SF rates while living in a cheap Texas suburb.
  - dheera 6y ago
    If that really happens, the next order effect will be cheaper rents in the bay area. Even now, there are some good rent deals. I moved to a new apartment a couple weeks ago (mainly because I needed a better WFH space to work effectively) and got 6 weeks free on my lease, which isn't normally seen in the bay area. When the pandemic passes though I do hope to be able to return to working from an office, if just because it's less lonely and there is usually better sunlight in business spaces than what I get at home. Maybe 2-3 days a week in the office and 2-3 days from home would be a nice balance, when it is safe to do so. Employers may also see the value in at least providing some additional financial incentive for living closer to the office and being willing to come to the office (if safe), although enabling full remote work for those who choose it is something I also fully agree with.
  - kbos87 6y ago
    Bingo. As a director of a team at a mid-sized tech company who had conversations with employees making decisions like this, I can tell you that it is standard practice to adjust salary for the cost of living and the availability of talent in a particular market. I work for a very pro remote work company, but that’s still how we did things. You want to move to the Midwest and work remotely, or apply for a transfer to a different regional office? Happy to let you do it, but know that the market rate for your skills there is X, which means an adjustment in salary for a voluntary move. People usually weren’t jazzed about it but understood.
m0zg 6y ago
That's the whole point though. You're not going to be able to "keep your current compensation" if companies embrace this in earnest.
- HenryKissinger 6y ago
  Top talent will. The trick is to be good enough to be top talent.
  - m0zg 6y ago
    Top talent from Canada is less than one third the price of the US top talent though.
    - 908B64B197 6y ago
      From Canada or in Canada? A lot of the "Top Talent" in Canada simply couldn't make it to the US due to stricter visa requirements.
      - m0zg 6y ago
        The difference between "in" and "from" is not material when you don't even have to show up to sit in a cubicle.
        908B64B197 6y ago
        I meant that a lot of the top talent in Canada is already working in the US. There's a skill gap between top talent in the US and top talent in Canada.
        m0zg 6y ago
        Well, they may lose their jobs to folks still in Canada then. You can get a seasoned dev in Canada for less money than a fresh grad in San Francisco. If the company switches to be distributed a-la GitLab, there's no reason not to do it. The reason why offshoring nearly always failed in the past is because teams weren't fully distributed/remote. If a company re-tools around distributed, it can operate just fine as long as there aren't any "hallway conversations" remote workers don't have access to.
yellow_postit 6y ago
I can imagine more companies adopting a cost of living adjustment. There’s also a non trivial tax burden complexity with an employee base spread around the country/world.
notyourday 6y ago
Largely the compensation in SV and NYC was high because those were the cultural centers, it is expensive to live there but "everyone" wanted to be there. Make no mistake - work from home means the salaries are going to regress to the midwest level of pay.
vinniejames 6y ago
Companies don't do this. They will adjust your salary down based on your city of residence. Square is one example of this. You're not compensated for the value you provide, you're compensated for the cost of living near the office. You're also now competing against a national talent pool vs locals only
- nathan_long 6y ago
  So you're considering Candidate A, who lives in SF, and B, who lives in a small town. You decide that B has to compete with A on talent, but A doesn't have to compete with B on price. Does that make strategic sense?
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Yes. Stripe and Gitlab follow that model for their remote workforce.
  - vinniejames 6y ago
    Candidate A probably wouldn't live in SF if he didn't have to
  - lultimouomo 6y ago
    If you want to hire A, you have to compete with local SF company that pay high wages. If you want to hire B, you have to compete with local small town companies which pay low wages, plus a very small number of remote companies which are in the same position as you from a game-theoretical perspective. I think it's obvious that in the long term, if remote work becomes widespread, wages (and thus cost of living) will level out, but in the short term if few enough companies do it they can beat the prisoner's dilemma and keep remote wages lower than the ones in Silicon Valley.
- bpicolo 6y ago
  > Companies don't do this. Some do. I've gotten this deal in the past personally and know others that have as well. Always for employees with tenure that they want to keep around. Remote salaries in tech are typically well-above "local" rates, either way.
kelnos 6y ago
I doubt you'd be able to keep that current compensation, though. Most people I've talked with who have moved out of the bay area (or another HCOL area) to somewhere with a lower cost of living have either gotten an immediate pay cut, or their company has told them that they won't be getting pay raises until their pay is in-line with their new local market.
visarga 6y ago
Spent 20 years WFH on various personal projects, earning money on my own, and now I am hired and working from office. Too much freedom can be hard to cope with. A little bit of structure can be great.
squnch 6y ago
If you have great skills you can do that today. If you don't have great skills and a company has made itself amenable to remote work, then why would they hire you at a Bay Area salary instead of firing you and hiring someone already in that location for half your salary?
pradn 6y ago
I want to live in a city with an abundance of arts organizations; but it does seem a bit odd to live in a place that has those things, but can't be accessed.
kantrowitz 6y ago
Hey! I'd love to hear more about this. Want to chat? My email is alex.kantrowitz at Gmail dot com
koheripbal 6y ago
Obviously your salary would diminish similarly.
dilandau 6y ago
What with the virus and how it played out in nyc I wouldn't be surprised to see a large migration out of cities in the coming years.
eatmeblowmewoah 6y ago
Thatd be great because those of us who grew up here hate the techies and you guys should all leave

almost_usual 6y ago

Or even have the funds to start your own company rather than spend it on rent / housing.

lhorie 6y ago

My understanding is that this has big tax implications (since presumably said low cost of living areas are outside of California). I would love to understand better what sorts of complications WFH bring to the table for those cases (and how they can be mitigated).

ghaff 6y ago
The company needs to do payroll in a different state and you, as an individual, now pay taxes in your state of residence which isn't where company HQ is. From a tax perspective it's mostly no different than if they had a small office in that state. For big companies, in particular, it's not that big a deal as they're probably using a payroll service like ADP anyway. There may be some paperwork--and certainly more so if other countries are involved.
- SkyPuncher 6y ago
  > The company needs to do payroll in a different state and you, as an individual, now pay taxes in your state of residence which isn't where company HQ is. This is not always true. I'm remote. I pay my state and CA taxes for my CA based company even though I have never set foot in CA for this job.
  - tylermac1 6y ago
    Is that something specific to CA? I've worked remotely for 5 years and have only ever paid state income tax in my home state, not wherever my employer is.
  - lhorie 6y ago
    I've also heard of stories of people getting in trouble for "moving residence" to Incline Village (Nevada) and doing taxes in Nevada while working in CA.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I confess I don't know what the laws are then. Presumably you don't pay both your state and CA taxes on your whole salary? I confess I've never been in the position of being officially completely remote. I certainly don't pay taxes to the state where my company's HQ is but then I'm officially in an office in my state of residence. (And maybe the existence of that office would make a difference even if I weren't actually assigned there.)
  - jedberg 6y ago
    You may want to talk to a CPA or tax specialist. You’re most likely violating your state law as well as overpaying on your taxes.
  - volandovengo 6y ago
    I've unfortunately become a payroll tax-witholding specialist. You're required to withold taxes in the state that work is performed. If you're working from home, that's your work location. You should get refunded for your CA taxes at the end of the year if they are being withheld.
  - fmpwizard 6y ago
    Like others have said, check with an accountant, I have worked remotely for the past 11 years in NC, for companies in GA, CT and NY, but because I'm 100% remote, I only have to pay NC taxes. None of them ever had an office in NC
- cdjk 6y ago
  Unemployment insurance, family/medical leave, workers comp, and health insurance are all different by state. That can be a lot of overhead for the first employee in a new state, but then the second is trivial.
- blahblahblogger 6y ago
  Wow so if I work for a company with an office in Chicago, but I work in their SF office - I could potentially relocate without a salary adjustment?
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I was just talking about taxes. Whether the company adjusts salaries based on your home address is orthogonal.
- lhorie 6y ago
  I had two different scenarios in mind: one happened to an acquaintance, where they negotiated a pay cut (because presumably the company doesn't want to pay Bay Area salary to a remote worker in a location in an area w/ lower salary base), and there was the question of taxes involving part of the year in one state and part in another (plus the math for RSUs and options, of which the person had vested both in both states). The other scenario involves visa workers. The I-140 is predicated on not being able to find local candidates that match a criteria. More broadly, the H1-B visa grant pertains to foreigners being able to work in the US at all in the first place. I'd imagine that if you had everything setup to be remote from the beginning it'd probably be fine to keep things humming along, but I imagine that switching surely must pose some sort of logistic challenge?
- smueller1234 6y ago
  For big companies, this is an international problem! And then tax issues aren't just the employees' income taxes but the company's tax regime.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    mitchellh discusses some of the international complexities here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17022563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17022563 It's definitely way more complicated than adding an employee in a new state.
    - smueller1234 6y ago
      Absolutely! In that long comment, mitchellh briefly talks about the impact of employing folks in different states on potential corporate tax. Now imagine you ran one of the big billion+ USD revenue tech companies, and you're not talking about different states in the same country but a distributed workforce in many countries and the political pressures on taxation of e-commerce or similar business models involving intangible goods. One of the key arguments in many a tech company's tax/legal toolbox (usually for arguing they should pay taxes on one jurisdiction instead of another) is in which countries their engineering efforts reside and to what extent. It's really no wonder that employment legal & finance wins out on totally flexible work arrangements in that situation, for better or worse. Politicians aren't taking any hostages in this context, see eg. France. To provide an example from sufficient years back: I had to represent the stance of a past employer on compliance with Russian privacy laws to Roskomnadzor[1] in their HQ in Moscow. Through a carefully planted trick they tried to get us to commit to establish just the right kind of representation to be able to tax our revenue from Russian customers. In many countries, the narrative would've been "you have engineers here, you therefore build your products here, you should pay income tax here". Curiously, there isn't really obvious right or wrong in all this since the goods are intangible. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=roskomnadzor https://www.google.com/search?q=roskomnadzor (Disclaimer: experience entirely from prior to my current employment at Google, I don't speak for Google in any way and have no insight into these matters at Google.)
- jedberg 6y ago
  You’re vastly underestimating the work of “setting up an office” in a new state. Every state has a bunch of paperwork, like setting up your company as a foreign corporation in that state. Then there is state licensing. Also every state has its own worker’s compensation requirements and some have other requirements too. Your payroll provider generally tells you that you’re on your own for all that stuff. For every additional state there is a ton of overhead. I’ve had employees in California, Washington, and New York. It took two years to unwind Washington after the one employee there left, and it took a year and 20 hours of lawyer time to unwind New York, who was trying to charge us $5,000 as a penalty for missing paperwork we didn’t think we had to file (we ended up being right after paying the lawyer).
  - lhorie 6y ago
    Sounds like a startup opportunity!
    - jedberg 6y ago
      Honestly I’m surprised Gusto doesn’t handle more of the work of setting up in a new state. Seems like it would be in their wheelhouse.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        I admit to having been naive on the issue. I know that bureaucracies are involved but it still seems as if at least the 90% case would be pretty cookie-cutter/repeatable even if there are a lot of steps and potential gotchas.
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    Payroll companies handle all the workers comp and payroll related duties for all different states and they do it for near nothing. The only thing you are on your own for is tax filings and registration as a foreign entity. And that is only in some cases in some states. In most states, having a few remote employees is not enough to even trigger a filing requirement. In CA, which is probably one of the most draconian, we had to register as a foreign entity and then we have to file corporate taxes there and allocate taxes proportionally according to percentage of revenue that comes from CA, I believe. And actually, they want your corporate income tax even if you don't have employees there, just because you sell to Californians. But they have had a hard time collecting for those that have no employees or other presence in the state.

amiga_500 6y ago

I would imagine salaries might dip because your new "competition" would be anyone in the same timezone (with the requisite skills). However I'd also imagine, if you are good, the offset would be well in your favour. I got covid and was (and still am) as sick as hell. I'm going to live (not sure if I will get back to 100% yet), and I never thought this kind of sorely needed decentralization would happen in my lifetime. It almost feels like a fair swap, as this is going to be so, so good for humanity. If we can get a decent handle on covid, I'm actually feeling optimistic for my children, for the first time in years.

Vysero 6y ago

I couldn't agree more. If I could work from home permanently I would move far far away from where I am currently living. I would get myself a nice condo or small house, and settle in. Currently, where I live, despite the fact that I make almost 30k/year more than the medium average income I still can only just afford a one bedroom apartment spending the suggested 30% of my income. Imagine being able to buy a house!!!! What a world that would be!!!

CodeSheikh 6y ago
What's the guarantee that say your San Francisco/NYC employer will keep paying you city rates when you are living in a small town in mid-west. At some point they will catch up and start saving money this way. Everyone at a tech company is not a crucial employee. Don't get me wrong, I am all in for getting paid SF rates while living in a cheap Texas suburb.
- dheera 6y ago
  If that really happens, the next order effect will be cheaper rents in the bay area. Even now, there are some good rent deals. I moved to a new apartment a couple weeks ago (mainly because I needed a better WFH space to work effectively) and got 6 weeks free on my lease, which isn't normally seen in the bay area. When the pandemic passes though I do hope to be able to return to working from an office, if just because it's less lonely and there is usually better sunlight in business spaces than what I get at home. Maybe 2-3 days a week in the office and 2-3 days from home would be a nice balance, when it is safe to do so. Employers may also see the value in at least providing some additional financial incentive for living closer to the office and being willing to come to the office (if safe), although enabling full remote work for those who choose it is something I also fully agree with.
- kbos87 6y ago
  Bingo. As a director of a team at a mid-sized tech company who had conversations with employees making decisions like this, I can tell you that it is standard practice to adjust salary for the cost of living and the availability of talent in a particular market. I work for a very pro remote work company, but that’s still how we did things. You want to move to the Midwest and work remotely, or apply for a transfer to a different regional office? Happy to let you do it, but know that the market rate for your skills there is X, which means an adjustment in salary for a voluntary move. People usually weren’t jazzed about it but understood.

m0zg 6y ago

That's the whole point though. You're not going to be able to "keep your current compensation" if companies embrace this in earnest.

HenryKissinger 6y ago
Top talent will. The trick is to be good enough to be top talent.
- m0zg 6y ago
  Top talent from Canada is less than one third the price of the US top talent though.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    From Canada or in Canada? A lot of the "Top Talent" in Canada simply couldn't make it to the US due to stricter visa requirements.
    - m0zg 6y ago
      The difference between "in" and "from" is not material when you don't even have to show up to sit in a cubicle.
      - 908B64B197 6y ago
        I meant that a lot of the top talent in Canada is already working in the US. There's a skill gap between top talent in the US and top talent in Canada.
        m0zg 6y ago
        Well, they may lose their jobs to folks still in Canada then. You can get a seasoned dev in Canada for less money than a fresh grad in San Francisco. If the company switches to be distributed a-la GitLab, there's no reason not to do it. The reason why offshoring nearly always failed in the past is because teams weren't fully distributed/remote. If a company re-tools around distributed, it can operate just fine as long as there aren't any "hallway conversations" remote workers don't have access to.

yellow_postit 6y ago

I can imagine more companies adopting a cost of living adjustment. There’s also a non trivial tax burden complexity with an employee base spread around the country/world.

notyourday 6y ago

Largely the compensation in SV and NYC was high because those were the cultural centers, it is expensive to live there but "everyone" wanted to be there. Make no mistake - work from home means the salaries are going to regress to the midwest level of pay.

vinniejames 6y ago

Companies don't do this. They will adjust your salary down based on your city of residence. Square is one example of this. You're not compensated for the value you provide, you're compensated for the cost of living near the office. You're also now competing against a national talent pool vs locals only

nathan_long 6y ago
So you're considering Candidate A, who lives in SF, and B, who lives in a small town. You decide that B has to compete with A on talent, but A doesn't have to compete with B on price. Does that make strategic sense?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Yes. Stripe and Gitlab follow that model for their remote workforce.
- vinniejames 6y ago
  Candidate A probably wouldn't live in SF if he didn't have to
- lultimouomo 6y ago
  If you want to hire A, you have to compete with local SF company that pay high wages. If you want to hire B, you have to compete with local small town companies which pay low wages, plus a very small number of remote companies which are in the same position as you from a game-theoretical perspective. I think it's obvious that in the long term, if remote work becomes widespread, wages (and thus cost of living) will level out, but in the short term if few enough companies do it they can beat the prisoner's dilemma and keep remote wages lower than the ones in Silicon Valley.
bpicolo 6y ago
> Companies don't do this. Some do. I've gotten this deal in the past personally and know others that have as well. Always for employees with tenure that they want to keep around. Remote salaries in tech are typically well-above "local" rates, either way.

kelnos 6y ago

I doubt you'd be able to keep that current compensation, though. Most people I've talked with who have moved out of the bay area (or another HCOL area) to somewhere with a lower cost of living have either gotten an immediate pay cut, or their company has told them that they won't be getting pay raises until their pay is in-line with their new local market.

visarga 6y ago

Spent 20 years WFH on various personal projects, earning money on my own, and now I am hired and working from office. Too much freedom can be hard to cope with. A little bit of structure can be great.

squnch 6y ago

If you have great skills you can do that today. If you don't have great skills and a company has made itself amenable to remote work, then why would they hire you at a Bay Area salary instead of firing you and hiring someone already in that location for half your salary?

pradn 6y ago

I want to live in a city with an abundance of arts organizations; but it does seem a bit odd to live in a place that has those things, but can't be accessed.

kantrowitz 6y ago

Hey! I'd love to hear more about this. Want to chat? My email is alex.kantrowitz at Gmail dot com

koheripbal 6y ago

Obviously your salary would diminish similarly.

dilandau 6y ago

What with the virus and how it played out in nyc I wouldn't be surprised to see a large migration out of cities in the coming years.

eatmeblowmewoah 6y ago

Thatd be great because those of us who grew up here hate the techies and you guys should all leave