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I think this is the hugest news yet. It suddenly opens the pool of candidates to all across the country. I expect other tech giants will follow suit. Those wh

I think this is the hugest news yet. It suddenly opens the pool of candidates to all across the country. I expect other tech giants will follow suit. Those who previously can't afford or don't want to live in big cities like NYC/Seattle/SF because they are older, have families, or various other reasons now are included in the candidate pool. This can go two ways: either the local software business will have to compete with FAANG salaries, or there will be jumps from senior developers, experienced developers, and many smarter/more capable developers from smaller software business to FAANG due to salary/perks attraction. Whatever the case is, suddenly fresh graduates, mid level developers, senior developers, are now competing on the same pool. It is getting even more real to compete in the high FAANG salary job openings now. This serves as a reminder for us, whether fresh graduates, mid level, or even seniors, to always to keep your edge. DS&A grinding, system design, etc, do whatever you can to not lose your edge. As a matter of fact, I think almost all knowledge workers will find themselves in this situation. If you are a knowledge/office worker, huge competition looms over the horizon. Never lose your edge.

hodgesrm 6y ago
The pool of qualified software engineers outside of high-cost urban areas is pretty shallow. I run a 100% remote company in the midst of staffing up. We're looking for database internals people. There are not a lot of qualified candidates in, say, Oklahoma. If COVID-19 really helped people to work from the Ouachitas at reasonable salaries, it would be completely awesome. But we're a long way from that. I love remote work and would like to see more people do it. But the past history of epidemics (e.g., 1918, the 1665 London plague, etc.) indicates people will go back to previous behavior--favoring urban areas--once the crisis passes.
- CinchWrench 6y ago
  I have fantasies about a homestead in the shadow of Cavanal Hill. If I could raise chickens and goats, and maybe a family, all while working remote, I'd truly have the best our age has to offer. There are a lot of us out here in the middle who want that. I get your skepticism, but I'm going to hope against hope that telepresence technology will continue to improve and make that possible.
  - hodgesrm 6y ago
    I really hope I'm wrong, because working remotely is great. Pandemics historically have not had a big impact on the political economy unless they kill an enormous number of people. The Black Plague in the 1300s is an example.
seanmcdirmid 6y ago
That assumes they restrict remote work to America for work that was done previously in the states. If this picks up, and there are no legal restrictions on what country a remote employee must be in, then the low end might just go much lower than what it currently is in small cities.
- christiansakai 6y ago
  Yes this assumption is remote work to America only.
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  Yes, though work gets less efficient +/- 3 time zones or so.
  - andreshb 6y ago
    If you hire in the Americas, you keep the same time zone. There's a whole world of English speaking programmers, core contributors to node, to ruby, ML engineers, data engineers south of the border. All the same time zone.
    - mixmastamyk 6y ago
      Not often. I’m Pacific and work for a company in the Eastern timezone. At 2pm I can no longer get answers until the next day.
- peteretep 6y ago
  And just to make your point explicit, if everyone moves to local-remote, then the move to hiring cheap and top-notch Bulgarian or Romanian programmers is even easier.
  - christiansakai 6y ago
    This is further in the future, and labor laws will likely stifle this first, especially in today's climate.
youdonthavekids 6y ago
But what about hanging around the water cooler so I can colab on some random ideas I overheard!!! my whole go to market and product strategy depends on this!!!! - Some anti-WFH person, probably
- wyattpeak 6y ago
  Losing those serendipitous meetings is frequently mentioned by people bullish about working from home as one of the things they find difficult. There are downsides to working from home, it's silly to dismiss them as mindlessness from the other camp.
  - dakna 6y ago
    > Losing those serendipitous meetings In a remote-first culture, those meetings still happen, even though it needs some more effort to facilitate those situations. It's when the team is split between onsite and remote that remote contributors have a disadvantage and might even miss out on important things going on.
  - _jal 6y ago
    I'm having trouble finding it now, but there's a paper that studied white collar promotions as a factor of how physically close the promoted subordinate sat to their manager. It was pretty correlated. I wonder how that effect virtualizes.
hintymad 6y ago
Maybe it's the other way around: due to increased supply, total package of FAANG engineers will drop. That's not necessarily a bad thing though. We've been enjoying unprecedented packages for many years. It may be a good time to distribute some of the wealth to other parts of the country.
- austinheap 6y ago
  FAANG total comp -- today -- is at a record high and well outpacing every other vertical.
- schkkd 6y ago
  There's no wealth there. All Google employees get something like 25 billions a year. The US budget is measured in trillions and to cover up just this recession alone, Fed created 6 trillions, or 240 years worth of wages for those employees. Do I need to say that in ten years there will be another recession, where Fed will create 20 trillions?
kbenson 6y ago
> This can go two ways: either the local software business will have to compete with FAANG salaries, or there will be jumps from senior developers, experienced developers, and many smarter/more capable developers from smaller software business to FAANG due to salary/perks attraction. I think if it's widespread it would be a little of both with some extra effects to consider. Not only will FAANG organizations get a wider pool of applicants which will drive down salaries for FAANG orgs, AND other businesses will how have to deal with the fact that their technology workers are part of a much larger market than they were previously, which will drive up salaries for those workers remotes, but there could be some very interesting delayed effects. How many FAANG workers now would opt to move farther away and keep their position, which will depress (that is, realign with reality to some small degree) the real estate market in areas like Seattle and San Francisco? What does that do to salaries later (likely a much smaller effect, but maybe non-negligible)? Telecommuting has been hailed as one aspect of saving the suburban and rural life for a long time. Maybe we'll actually see some of it now. What happens if there's a net reduction in people living in San Francisco and surrounds over 10 years, say 10%? I mean, it sounds unlikely, but so didthe idea of so many people staying inside for months at a time, and everyone switching to telecommuting so fast. All these things are related, and with major changes in one, relatively rapid change in things that related to it can be expected. At this point I'm actually thinking it's possible we could shift to UBI of some sort, and just a few months ago I didn't see any way that could happen without a major economic disruption, but hey, we've already got that.
- hintymad 6y ago
  Personally I would not move away from west coast. Mediterranean weather is gift from god. Plus it's so close to many good ski resorts. Being able to enjoy outdoors throughout the year and being able to go out to ski every week is priceless.
  - kbenson 6y ago
    There's a lot of area on the west coast a couple hours from the major metro areas that's much more affordable. I was born, raised, and have worked all my life in Sonoma county an hour north of SF, and even that is expensive. If I could move another hour away for significantly reduced cost of living while still having the security I enjoy now (where I know likely at worst I have to deal with a commute to SF for some other job if something happens to my current local job), that would be real tempting. I already live an hour away from SF, what's two hours, if all I'm doing is going there for special occasions? And that's still a very minor change compared to what this might allow.
acituan 6y ago
I think you are overestimating the size of the eligible labor supply increase. Just for Google, for 2017-2019 the number of H1B workers sponsored was 22k. For the same period the increase in number of full time employees was 40k (couldn’t find the figure for US only but fair to assume majority is US-based). So more than half of the new employers are supplied internationally. Does the geo-unlocked US supply pose a substantial competition to that? I don’t see how. FAANG salary is a pretty damn strong incentive to overcome that geo-friction to begin with. If anything, if the twitter trend follows, FAANG salaries will lose heat. For the majority of the employees, a good chunk of the paycheck goes to housing costs. Wider WFH adoption will ease the overly localized housing demand, even with several days of WFO, longer commutes will be much more tolerable and the housing spread will increase. That would mean acceptance of lower salaries and lowering of housing costs over time. One competing factor; as the seniority increases, the say on WFH policies increases, also the possibility of housing ownership increases (whether as primary residence or also with rental properties). That creates a perverse incentive to not let people go away in aggregate. Not saying individual managers will think this way explicitly, but might have an indirect influence. Edit: - Previously I stated 22k as H1B + green card numbers. In reality 22k was H1B only and 6k was green card. Source: https://www.myvisajobs.com/Visa-Sponsor/Google/225093.htm https://www.myvisajobs.com/Visa-Sponsor/Google/225093.htm
- sizzle 6y ago
  What's stopping someone from moving to SF for higher comp on hiring, then getting a P.O. box or friend's mailing address in SF and moving back to work from lower cost area after some time? Is your employer really going to decrease your salary after the fact? Can you file taxes in your lower cost of living state after you lock in your high SF comp package and never notify your employer but still pay your taxes in the state you moved back to? Note: I don't condone illegal behavior just thinking of edge cases that benefit us tech workers.
  - ElysianEagle 6y ago
    I’m guessing you’re being downvoted by those who think your comment is encouraging unethical behavior. While I certainly don’t think it’s ethical to do so, I did wonder the same thing - would companies start putting measures in place to verify you’re working from the same general area as your initially provided address? Eg, sifting through VPN log files to geo locate IP addresses etc.
ptero 6y ago
We will see how things play out, but WFH success is not guaranteed. Managing remote workers requires different skills which most managers today do not have. For now, most big companies have enough cash and are primarily focusing on making sure workers are not going crazy rather than on turning out new software. Give it another 3-4 months though and those companies will have to pivot back to real development which may be harder than they expect if WFH is still practiced en masse. My 2c.
- doitLP 6y ago
  What are the skills that are different managing remote vs onsite devs?
  - ptero 6y ago
    Planning-related. Onsite teams allow first line of management to muddle through many issues in an ad-hoc way: walk over to see if A is stuck, if so go and ask B to help A, etc. This is not good: most engineers hate constant interruptions and best engineers' most productive time can get decimated. But this type of management mostly keeps the ship afloat. This does not work with remote teams. There, a manager needs to have a longer-term plan, parcel work in a larger chunks, clearly write the tasks and minimal thresholds ("this task is done when you can confirm X"). The manager then sees when someone is blocked, what tasks are getting behind, etc. This setup is actually better for the worker bees, too, who get clearly identifiable tasks and are not tracked on how they spend their time as long as their task is completed on time.
yesimahuman 6y ago
It seems likely local salaries in smaller cities will go up, since they already have in response to the first wave of remote friendly startups and companies. Now, most of them can't offer public company compensation options but can compete in other areas.
product50 6y ago
You are wrong that FAANG companies will pay the same salary as you make in SF if you are in a low cost state like Indiana. I have a friend at one of those companies and they were running a survey to gauge employee's keenness for permanent wfh - and they were very clear that employee's salary will be adjusted based on which city they are based in. So, while this is still healthy, since FAANG pays pretty well, but don't expect half a million dollar working from your house in Indiana.
- RhodesianHunter 6y ago
  They didn't say that though, so the whole "you're wrong" is unwarranted. They said local companies will have to compete with FANG salaries. To your point these would likely be cost of living adjusted, but would almost certainly be higher than the current average in most Midwestern cities.
  - product50 6y ago
    Lol - let us see. You must me dreaming if you are expecting no significant cost of living adjustments on salaries.
    - RhodesianHunter 6y ago
      You are again completely misreading what I said, which clearly states that there will be cost of living adjustments, but that the salaries are still likely to be higher than non-tech hub averages. Not every online conversation has to be a fight with winners and losers.
      - product50 6y ago
        You are right. I was reacting based on your first sentence. Sorry about that!
- longtimegoogler 6y ago
  Yup. Salaries are based on the local market.
matchagaucho 6y ago
The FAANGs are not likely to pay HCOL compensation to LCOL employees. The employee's local cost-of-living will factor into the comp.
- CyanLite4 6y ago
  At the end of the day there’s a pay band in HR and while COL may be 3x in SF than Oklahoma, but either it’s 600k in San Fran or 250k in Oklahoma, which is nearing physician’s pay in many smaller states. Pay will go up in smaller states and pay will come down in SF/SV areas. People in LCOL areas will make top end salaries in their respective geographic areas and will see the best quality of life improvement. $250k in Oklahoma is going to be much better quality of life than $600k in San Jose for some people who have a spouse and 2 kids. And then over time they can hire a lot more people at 200-250k rather than 600k.
  - freedomben 6y ago
    I just don't see why from a company's perspective you would pay two equally qualified/titled people massively different salaries based on the city they choose to live (which is completely irrelevant to the company). If I were an employer and one person wanted 125k and the other 400k, that seems like a no-brainer to me when they are both remote workers and equally qualified. If they offer to raise the person getting 125k to 400k if they move to an expensive area, then at least it's fair :shrug:
    - nemothekid 6y ago
      Companies do not pay based on CoL. The 400k guy is going to be looking at competing offers in that range. If Google decided they would only pay based on Kansas salaries, and Apple only hired local, why would you ever consider a Google offer when Apple pays 3x as much?
    - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
      By that logic why would either of you be paid 6 figures when someone the other side of the world can do the same for 5 figures? If it doesn't matter where you are to work for the company then why does it matter if you're even in America.
tehjoker 6y ago
Alternatively, one might unionize to help prevent the vagaries of capitalist competition from messing with your individual life.
WheelsAtLarge 6y ago
Everyone is thinking about picking talent from across the country. We should be thinking from across the world. Get ready for high salaries to start going down once everything starts to get stable.
twblalock 6y ago
FAANG companies have already been trying to hire in US cities outside of Silicon Valley and Seattle in order to cut costs. Austin in particular comes to mind. It turns out to be fairly difficult to recruit engineering talent in the United States outside of major metropolitan areas. It also turns out that when tech companies start to hire people in a new city, the cost of living in that city rises substantially -- again, Austin in particular comes to mind. In the end, if tech compensation decreases substantially I don't think it will be because of remote work, but rather because the recession will kill a lot of startups and the same amount of engineering talent will be chasing a smaller number of jobs, thereby giving employers more leverage.
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  > It also turns out that when tech companies start to hire people in a new city, the cost of living in that city rises substantially -- again, Austin in particular comes to mind. That is inevitable if more housing is not built. If demand rises and supply doesn’t, or rises slower than demand rents and house prices rise. Or you could be like Tokyo with population growing 50% over the last twenty years and flat housing costs.
  - evancox100 6y ago
    Do you know anything about Austin? There are cranes all over downtown, mid-rise apartment buildings sprouting up everywhere, etc. We’re certainly not perfect in terms of housing, could use more “missing middle” housing such as duplexes/triplexes/etc., but the idea we are not allowing new housing is crazy. Costs are still going up, definitely the most expensive big city in Texas at this point, but obviously nowhere near Bay Area levels.
    - bobwaycott 6y ago
      The parent, responding to a comment that mentions Austin, never suggested new housing wasn’t allowed—you seem to have inserted that thought yourself. They simply observed that housing supply—and how well it matches (and avoids lagging behind) demand—has an impact on cost of living. They don’t even make a point about Austin specifically—Tokyo is the place they call specific attention to as a point of comparison to the GP’s thoughts. I find it interesting you chose to defend Austin against an attack that wasn’t made. Of course, I also think there may be more than housing supply at work to explain why cost of living increases in a place that starts to see a new uptick in tech hiring. I’m not sure if anyone has studied and documented the extent to which increased tech hiring in a new location leads to a surge of new people trying to live in that area before cost of living begins to increase. If that isn’t the case, and cost of living and goods starts increasing before population does, it seems likely there’s more than housing supply to blame— perhaps all the existing property and business owners start raising prices to get some of those sweet tech dollars in their pockets?
echevil 6y ago
Why not all across the world? At least those that can communicate in the same language
Podwicker 6y ago
"Those who previously can't afford or don't want to live in big cities like NYC/Seattle/SF because they are older, have families, or various other reasons now are included in the candidate pool." Yeah this exactly. Yet another giant step towards a borderless world. Next up is a passport granting universal access to live and work anywhere and a decentralised currency.
grumple 6y ago
I'm not so sure about that, mainly because CA offers the best laws in terms of employee competitiveness - no non-competes, mainly.
slumpt_ 6y ago
This is so absurd. We struggle to hire even remote work around the country. There just aren't enough qualified people for some of these more senior positions. "Never lose your edge." How about, enjoy your free time. Enjoy your friends and family. Work hard at your job, but maintain the division. This hyper-productivity porn is a net negative. There is competition in this industry, but nowhere near enough to leave talented engineers fearing for anything. Not on a near time-horizon, at least.

hodgesrm 6y ago

The pool of qualified software engineers outside of high-cost urban areas is pretty shallow. I run a 100% remote company in the midst of staffing up. We're looking for database internals people. There are not a lot of qualified candidates in, say, Oklahoma. If COVID-19 really helped people to work from the Ouachitas at reasonable salaries, it would be completely awesome. But we're a long way from that. I love remote work and would like to see more people do it. But the past history of epidemics (e.g., 1918, the 1665 London plague, etc.) indicates people will go back to previous behavior--favoring urban areas--once the crisis passes.

CinchWrench 6y ago
I have fantasies about a homestead in the shadow of Cavanal Hill. If I could raise chickens and goats, and maybe a family, all while working remote, I'd truly have the best our age has to offer. There are a lot of us out here in the middle who want that. I get your skepticism, but I'm going to hope against hope that telepresence technology will continue to improve and make that possible.
- hodgesrm 6y ago
  I really hope I'm wrong, because working remotely is great. Pandemics historically have not had a big impact on the political economy unless they kill an enormous number of people. The Black Plague in the 1300s is an example.

seanmcdirmid 6y ago

That assumes they restrict remote work to America for work that was done previously in the states. If this picks up, and there are no legal restrictions on what country a remote employee must be in, then the low end might just go much lower than what it currently is in small cities.

christiansakai 6y ago
Yes this assumption is remote work to America only.
mixmastamyk 6y ago
Yes, though work gets less efficient +/- 3 time zones or so.
- andreshb 6y ago
  If you hire in the Americas, you keep the same time zone. There's a whole world of English speaking programmers, core contributors to node, to ruby, ML engineers, data engineers south of the border. All the same time zone.
  - mixmastamyk 6y ago
    Not often. I’m Pacific and work for a company in the Eastern timezone. At 2pm I can no longer get answers until the next day.
peteretep 6y ago
And just to make your point explicit, if everyone moves to local-remote, then the move to hiring cheap and top-notch Bulgarian or Romanian programmers is even easier.
- christiansakai 6y ago
  This is further in the future, and labor laws will likely stifle this first, especially in today's climate.

youdonthavekids 6y ago

But what about hanging around the water cooler so I can colab on some random ideas I overheard!!! my whole go to market and product strategy depends on this!!!! - Some anti-WFH person, probably

wyattpeak 6y ago
Losing those serendipitous meetings is frequently mentioned by people bullish about working from home as one of the things they find difficult. There are downsides to working from home, it's silly to dismiss them as mindlessness from the other camp.
- dakna 6y ago
  > Losing those serendipitous meetings In a remote-first culture, those meetings still happen, even though it needs some more effort to facilitate those situations. It's when the team is split between onsite and remote that remote contributors have a disadvantage and might even miss out on important things going on.
- _jal 6y ago
  I'm having trouble finding it now, but there's a paper that studied white collar promotions as a factor of how physically close the promoted subordinate sat to their manager. It was pretty correlated. I wonder how that effect virtualizes.

hintymad 6y ago

Maybe it's the other way around: due to increased supply, total package of FAANG engineers will drop. That's not necessarily a bad thing though. We've been enjoying unprecedented packages for many years. It may be a good time to distribute some of the wealth to other parts of the country.

austinheap 6y ago
FAANG total comp -- today -- is at a record high and well outpacing every other vertical.
schkkd 6y ago
There's no wealth there. All Google employees get something like 25 billions a year. The US budget is measured in trillions and to cover up just this recession alone, Fed created 6 trillions, or 240 years worth of wages for those employees. Do I need to say that in ten years there will be another recession, where Fed will create 20 trillions?

kbenson 6y ago

> This can go two ways: either the local software business will have to compete with FAANG salaries, or there will be jumps from senior developers, experienced developers, and many smarter/more capable developers from smaller software business to FAANG due to salary/perks attraction. I think if it's widespread it would be a little of both with some extra effects to consider. Not only will FAANG organizations get a wider pool of applicants which will drive down salaries for FAANG orgs, AND other businesses will how have to deal with the fact that their technology workers are part of a much larger market than they were previously, which will drive up salaries for those workers remotes, but there could be some very interesting delayed effects. How many FAANG workers now would opt to move farther away and keep their position, which will depress (that is, realign with reality to some small degree) the real estate market in areas like Seattle and San Francisco? What does that do to salaries later (likely a much smaller effect, but maybe non-negligible)? Telecommuting has been hailed as one aspect of saving the suburban and rural life for a long time. Maybe we'll actually see some of it now. What happens if there's a net reduction in people living in San Francisco and surrounds over 10 years, say 10%? I mean, it sounds unlikely, but so didthe idea of so many people staying inside for months at a time, and everyone switching to telecommuting so fast. All these things are related, and with major changes in one, relatively rapid change in things that related to it can be expected. At this point I'm actually thinking it's possible we could shift to UBI of some sort, and just a few months ago I didn't see any way that could happen without a major economic disruption, but hey, we've already got that.

hintymad 6y ago
Personally I would not move away from west coast. Mediterranean weather is gift from god. Plus it's so close to many good ski resorts. Being able to enjoy outdoors throughout the year and being able to go out to ski every week is priceless.
- kbenson 6y ago
  There's a lot of area on the west coast a couple hours from the major metro areas that's much more affordable. I was born, raised, and have worked all my life in Sonoma county an hour north of SF, and even that is expensive. If I could move another hour away for significantly reduced cost of living while still having the security I enjoy now (where I know likely at worst I have to deal with a commute to SF for some other job if something happens to my current local job), that would be real tempting. I already live an hour away from SF, what's two hours, if all I'm doing is going there for special occasions? And that's still a very minor change compared to what this might allow.

acituan 6y ago

I think you are overestimating the size of the eligible labor supply increase. Just for Google, for 2017-2019 the number of H1B workers sponsored was 22k. For the same period the increase in number of full time employees was 40k (couldn’t find the figure for US only but fair to assume majority is US-based). So more than half of the new employers are supplied internationally. Does the geo-unlocked US supply pose a substantial competition to that? I don’t see how. FAANG salary is a pretty damn strong incentive to overcome that geo-friction to begin with. If anything, if the twitter trend follows, FAANG salaries will lose heat. For the majority of the employees, a good chunk of the paycheck goes to housing costs. Wider WFH adoption will ease the overly localized housing demand, even with several days of WFO, longer commutes will be much more tolerable and the housing spread will increase. That would mean acceptance of lower salaries and lowering of housing costs over time. One competing factor; as the seniority increases, the say on WFH policies increases, also the possibility of housing ownership increases (whether as primary residence or also with rental properties). That creates a perverse incentive to not let people go away in aggregate. Not saying individual managers will think this way explicitly, but might have an indirect influence. Edit: - Previously I stated 22k as H1B + green card numbers. In reality 22k was H1B only and 6k was green card. Source: https://www.myvisajobs.com/Visa-Sponsor/Google/225093.htm https://www.myvisajobs.com/Visa-Sponsor/Google/225093.htm

sizzle 6y ago
What's stopping someone from moving to SF for higher comp on hiring, then getting a P.O. box or friend's mailing address in SF and moving back to work from lower cost area after some time? Is your employer really going to decrease your salary after the fact? Can you file taxes in your lower cost of living state after you lock in your high SF comp package and never notify your employer but still pay your taxes in the state you moved back to? Note: I don't condone illegal behavior just thinking of edge cases that benefit us tech workers.
- ElysianEagle 6y ago
  I’m guessing you’re being downvoted by those who think your comment is encouraging unethical behavior. While I certainly don’t think it’s ethical to do so, I did wonder the same thing - would companies start putting measures in place to verify you’re working from the same general area as your initially provided address? Eg, sifting through VPN log files to geo locate IP addresses etc.

ptero 6y ago

We will see how things play out, but WFH success is not guaranteed. Managing remote workers requires different skills which most managers today do not have. For now, most big companies have enough cash and are primarily focusing on making sure workers are not going crazy rather than on turning out new software. Give it another 3-4 months though and those companies will have to pivot back to real development which may be harder than they expect if WFH is still practiced en masse. My 2c.

doitLP 6y ago
What are the skills that are different managing remote vs onsite devs?
- ptero 6y ago
  Planning-related. Onsite teams allow first line of management to muddle through many issues in an ad-hoc way: walk over to see if A is stuck, if so go and ask B to help A, etc. This is not good: most engineers hate constant interruptions and best engineers' most productive time can get decimated. But this type of management mostly keeps the ship afloat. This does not work with remote teams. There, a manager needs to have a longer-term plan, parcel work in a larger chunks, clearly write the tasks and minimal thresholds ("this task is done when you can confirm X"). The manager then sees when someone is blocked, what tasks are getting behind, etc. This setup is actually better for the worker bees, too, who get clearly identifiable tasks and are not tracked on how they spend their time as long as their task is completed on time.

yesimahuman 6y ago

It seems likely local salaries in smaller cities will go up, since they already have in response to the first wave of remote friendly startups and companies. Now, most of them can't offer public company compensation options but can compete in other areas.

product50 6y ago

You are wrong that FAANG companies will pay the same salary as you make in SF if you are in a low cost state like Indiana. I have a friend at one of those companies and they were running a survey to gauge employee's keenness for permanent wfh - and they were very clear that employee's salary will be adjusted based on which city they are based in. So, while this is still healthy, since FAANG pays pretty well, but don't expect half a million dollar working from your house in Indiana.

RhodesianHunter 6y ago
They didn't say that though, so the whole "you're wrong" is unwarranted. They said local companies will have to compete with FANG salaries. To your point these would likely be cost of living adjusted, but would almost certainly be higher than the current average in most Midwestern cities.
- product50 6y ago
  Lol - let us see. You must me dreaming if you are expecting no significant cost of living adjustments on salaries.
  - RhodesianHunter 6y ago
    You are again completely misreading what I said, which clearly states that there will be cost of living adjustments, but that the salaries are still likely to be higher than non-tech hub averages. Not every online conversation has to be a fight with winners and losers.
    - product50 6y ago
      You are right. I was reacting based on your first sentence. Sorry about that!
longtimegoogler 6y ago
Yup. Salaries are based on the local market.

matchagaucho 6y ago

The FAANGs are not likely to pay HCOL compensation to LCOL employees. The employee's local cost-of-living will factor into the comp.

CyanLite4 6y ago
At the end of the day there’s a pay band in HR and while COL may be 3x in SF than Oklahoma, but either it’s 600k in San Fran or 250k in Oklahoma, which is nearing physician’s pay in many smaller states. Pay will go up in smaller states and pay will come down in SF/SV areas. People in LCOL areas will make top end salaries in their respective geographic areas and will see the best quality of life improvement. $250k in Oklahoma is going to be much better quality of life than $600k in San Jose for some people who have a spouse and 2 kids. And then over time they can hire a lot more people at 200-250k rather than 600k.
- freedomben 6y ago
  I just don't see why from a company's perspective you would pay two equally qualified/titled people massively different salaries based on the city they choose to live (which is completely irrelevant to the company). If I were an employer and one person wanted 125k and the other 400k, that seems like a no-brainer to me when they are both remote workers and equally qualified. If they offer to raise the person getting 125k to 400k if they move to an expensive area, then at least it's fair :shrug:
  - nemothekid 6y ago
    Companies do not pay based on CoL. The 400k guy is going to be looking at competing offers in that range. If Google decided they would only pay based on Kansas salaries, and Apple only hired local, why would you ever consider a Google offer when Apple pays 3x as much?
  - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
    By that logic why would either of you be paid 6 figures when someone the other side of the world can do the same for 5 figures? If it doesn't matter where you are to work for the company then why does it matter if you're even in America.

tehjoker 6y ago

Alternatively, one might unionize to help prevent the vagaries of capitalist competition from messing with your individual life.

WheelsAtLarge 6y ago

Everyone is thinking about picking talent from across the country. We should be thinking from across the world. Get ready for high salaries to start going down once everything starts to get stable.

twblalock 6y ago

FAANG companies have already been trying to hire in US cities outside of Silicon Valley and Seattle in order to cut costs. Austin in particular comes to mind. It turns out to be fairly difficult to recruit engineering talent in the United States outside of major metropolitan areas. It also turns out that when tech companies start to hire people in a new city, the cost of living in that city rises substantially -- again, Austin in particular comes to mind. In the end, if tech compensation decreases substantially I don't think it will be because of remote work, but rather because the recession will kill a lot of startups and the same amount of engineering talent will be chasing a smaller number of jobs, thereby giving employers more leverage.

barry-cotter 6y ago
> It also turns out that when tech companies start to hire people in a new city, the cost of living in that city rises substantially -- again, Austin in particular comes to mind. That is inevitable if more housing is not built. If demand rises and supply doesn’t, or rises slower than demand rents and house prices rise. Or you could be like Tokyo with population growing 50% over the last twenty years and flat housing costs.
- evancox100 6y ago
  Do you know anything about Austin? There are cranes all over downtown, mid-rise apartment buildings sprouting up everywhere, etc. We’re certainly not perfect in terms of housing, could use more “missing middle” housing such as duplexes/triplexes/etc., but the idea we are not allowing new housing is crazy. Costs are still going up, definitely the most expensive big city in Texas at this point, but obviously nowhere near Bay Area levels.
  - bobwaycott 6y ago
    The parent, responding to a comment that mentions Austin, never suggested new housing wasn’t allowed—you seem to have inserted that thought yourself. They simply observed that housing supply—and how well it matches (and avoids lagging behind) demand—has an impact on cost of living. They don’t even make a point about Austin specifically—Tokyo is the place they call specific attention to as a point of comparison to the GP’s thoughts. I find it interesting you chose to defend Austin against an attack that wasn’t made. Of course, I also think there may be more than housing supply at work to explain why cost of living increases in a place that starts to see a new uptick in tech hiring. I’m not sure if anyone has studied and documented the extent to which increased tech hiring in a new location leads to a surge of new people trying to live in that area before cost of living begins to increase. If that isn’t the case, and cost of living and goods starts increasing before population does, it seems likely there’s more than housing supply to blame— perhaps all the existing property and business owners start raising prices to get some of those sweet tech dollars in their pockets?

echevil 6y ago

Why not all across the world? At least those that can communicate in the same language

Podwicker 6y ago

"Those who previously can't afford or don't want to live in big cities like NYC/Seattle/SF because they are older, have families, or various other reasons now are included in the candidate pool." Yeah this exactly. Yet another giant step towards a borderless world. Next up is a passport granting universal access to live and work anywhere and a decentralised currency.

grumple 6y ago

I'm not so sure about that, mainly because CA offers the best laws in terms of employee competitiveness - no non-competes, mainly.

slumpt_ 6y ago

This is so absurd. We struggle to hire even remote work around the country. There just aren't enough qualified people for some of these more senior positions. "Never lose your edge." How about, enjoy your free time. Enjoy your friends and family. Work hard at your job, but maintain the division. This hyper-productivity porn is a net negative. There is competition in this industry, but nowhere near enough to leave talented engineers fearing for anything. Not on a near time-horizon, at least.