5 ms·

I'm always reading about job openings throughout my country (or world, for that matter) that offer 100% remote positions, and initially the huge difference in s

by geddy 6y ago

I'm always reading about job openings throughout my country (or world, for that matter) that offer 100% remote positions, and initially the huge difference in salary was pretty jarring. Then I hopped on Trulia for some less populated (not rural, but certainly not close-to-the-city-suburbs), and realized the mortgage for a house twice my size would cost the property taxes I pay now. Literally talking about a $25,000/year difference in just the mortgage. In other words, what I pay just in property taxes annually here, is how much a house costs annually that's double the size, there. Suddenly I didn't mind seeing zeroes falling off the salary.

shuckles 6y ago
There's a concept known as operating leverage which applies here: fixed costs, even if high, mean that increases in revenue multiply net income. And of course by moving outside a greater metro area, you're also saving money by choosing not to consume any amenities of private schools, airports, large hospitals, high infrastructure recreation, etc.
- mcguire 6y ago
  Absolutely true. Once you move out of the center of a high-density, major metropolitan area, you literally cannot find and use private schools, airports, hospitals, and theme parks. And your IQ drops by 50 points. Instantly. It's weird.
  - shuckles 6y ago
    That's not what I said, so your sarcasm is misplaced and makes you seem unnecessarily irritated. Maybe you are misunderstanding the meaning of "greater metro area" which means "a metro area and surrounding, connected developments" and not "better than rural metro area."
    - mcguire 6y ago
      I live in northeast Alabama currently, in a rural area, well outside any metropolitan area. Now, I can't speak to private schools; I don't have kids. As far as airports go, there are two connector airports about an hour away, to the northeast and west, and a major hub two hours east. (As it turns out, even when I've lived in major metropolitan areas, I've never been closer than an hour to an airport.) There are two regional hospitals relatively close (plus trauma helicopters if you need that sort of thing). Then there are major hospitals an hour west, plus Birmingham and Nashville---both of which I've known people to go to for specialized care. I honestly don't know what you mean by "high infrastructure recreation"; if it's outdoor sporting and recreation, it's as good here as anywhere (and fishing is better than most). There is a dearth of bars and live-music venues, but then I didn't partake of those even when I had easy access. So, when you write "And of course by moving outside a greater metro area, you're also saving money by choosing not to consume any amenities of private schools, airports, large hospitals, high infrastructure recreation, etc." you seem to have a very wrong idea of life outside a "greater metro area", one that is either extremely naive or deliberately insulting. And I'm not irritated, just cranky.
      - shuckles 6y ago
        No, I have the right idea just as you corroborated. There are amenities of legitimate value in a metro area. You do not care for them, so it doesn’t make sense for you to pay for easy access to them. However, saving money by reducing consumption is a lifestyle choice. Many people would rather choose to consume. That’s all I was trying to point out. There are network effects as well. I live 15 minutes from an airport with daily direct flights to the my parent’s home country. There are only a few such airports in the USA. Places with that kind of infrastructure also tend to have other valuable infrastructure. So even though I don’t benefit from the live music venue 2 blocks from my home, it’s part of the deal of being able to return home on short notice in emergency.
viklove 6y ago
fuck hn
- geddy 6y ago
  Totally, it's a dangerous path to tread. Suddenly your potential worth as having you as an employee is tied to how small of a shanty you live in. "Whoa, this guy's resume says he has 20 years experience and lives in a box down by the river, wonder if we he'll take a $7,000 salary?"
- bhupy 6y ago
  > It's literally just the lowest they can get away with paying you. Um, yes? That's exactly how this works. Google doesn't pay software engineers what they do out of the goodness of their hearts, they do it because that's how much it costs for a highly skilled engineer to come live in the Bay Area and work there. Humans aren't necessarily commodities, but labor is ABSOLUTELY a commodity. We have to start decoupling the value of a human from the value of their labor, because there's no use pretending that all labor is worth the same — while you and I might both agree that all humans are inherently equal. It's like any other good/service, labor costs as much as the buyer is willing to pay.
  - viklove 6y ago
    fuck hn
    - bhupy 6y ago
      > And employees don't work for Google out of the goodness of their hearts, what's your point? My point is that the current value of a Google employee in Mountain View is the result of the negotiated value between the buyer and the seller. A Google employee in Mountain View earns more than a Google employee in Atlanta even if they are engaging in the same labor for the same number of hours. > How exactly would you go about doing this? How is it possible to say that you don't deserve to live in a nice house, or have a nice car, or send your children to college based on the job you have and how much Google decides to pay you -- all while they capture the value you're generating so their execs and VCs can live in a nice house, have a nice car, and send their children to college? Are you really making the argument that software engineers outside the Bay Area do not live in nice houses, or drive nice cars, or send their children to college? In fact, even with the currently lower salaries of software engineers outside the Bay Area, it is easier to buy a house, buy a nicer car, etc. This can be calculated by computing the ratio between the median house price in a locale and the median salary in that same locale[1]. In San Francisco, one must earn $183k to afford the median home. In Chicago, one must earn $63k to afford the median home. > The system we live in is disgusting. The system we live in is one in which we try and minimize the cost of goods and services to consumers. The role of markets is to minimize the amount of input necessary to produce goods/services, while maximizing the output of those goods/services. In practice, this means driving down the price of goods/services to the minimum possible price, while making them as abundant as possible, and as high quality as possible. This is good for consumers, because they can purchase those goods/services cheaply. This is why bread, milk, eggs, washing machines, clothes, TVs etc have gotten cheaper over time, relative to inflation. Another good/service that consumers purchase is labor, mostly indirectly. The market is also very good at driving down the price of labor, and this is why wages don't outpace inflation, in the same way that the price of bread doesn't outpace inflation. Again, this is excellent for consumers, because the labor is an input in the production of goods/services, and the former’s cost is a part of the latter cost that consumers ultimately pay. For software engineers, this is largely fine, because there is virtually no market in which software engineers are not in the top quintile of wage earners — or at the very least, in the top 2 quintiles. High skill workers will always find higher leverage work to do, and it's easiest for them to adapt to a changing market. Low skill workers, on the other hand, struggle to do this, and we must help them out through welfare and safety nets. [1] https://www.hsh.com/finance/mortgage/salary-home-buying-25-cities.html https://www.hsh.com/finance/mortgage/salary-home-buying-25-c...
bcrosby95 6y ago
> Suddenly I didn't mind seeing zeroes falling off the salary. Keep in mind: that asset your company is paying for can be sold and the difference will be kept by the employee, which will let them set themselves up for a much better retirement in a lower cost of living area. It reminds me a bit of the SF Giants. They couldn't pay high salaries because they had to pay for their ballpark. But the value of that ballpark is part of the value of the club, which would be realized if the owner ever sold it. So it still was a lot like the owners pocketing the money. But not exactly.
asdff 6y ago
This could be dangerous, restarting your life somewhere sight unseen just because it looks great on paper. You sell and move to that house in location x for cost alone, always pining for that life you had in location y with all the intangibles you never realized you were reliant on, and never will make enough to reverse the play and relocate back to y which has experienced ever higher property values since you've been gone. A better move would be to move laterally, to a place with the same benefits that the one you are in gives you, be it leisure activities or a network for your field. That might limit you to metros, and particular metros that are most favorable to your activities (skiers might like CO, sailors might like FL). Suddenly your options become limited, and you find among these limited choices the same housing issues that have plagued states like CA as demand ramps up, because everyone had the same idea as you. No city in the U.S. actually builds sufficient supply for their influx in labor; even the ones that we applaud are doing quite poorly in terms of how much housing should be built and where. The ones that don't seem to have a housing crisis are experiencing a contracting local economy, and that doesn't bode well with your networking prospects and career options.

by geddy 6y ago

shuckles 6y ago

There's a concept known as operating leverage which applies here: fixed costs, even if high, mean that increases in revenue multiply net income. And of course by moving outside a greater metro area, you're also saving money by choosing not to consume any amenities of private schools, airports, large hospitals, high infrastructure recreation, etc.

mcguire 6y ago
Absolutely true. Once you move out of the center of a high-density, major metropolitan area, you literally cannot find and use private schools, airports, hospitals, and theme parks. And your IQ drops by 50 points. Instantly. It's weird.
- shuckles 6y ago
  That's not what I said, so your sarcasm is misplaced and makes you seem unnecessarily irritated. Maybe you are misunderstanding the meaning of "greater metro area" which means "a metro area and surrounding, connected developments" and not "better than rural metro area."
  - mcguire 6y ago
    I live in northeast Alabama currently, in a rural area, well outside any metropolitan area. Now, I can't speak to private schools; I don't have kids. As far as airports go, there are two connector airports about an hour away, to the northeast and west, and a major hub two hours east. (As it turns out, even when I've lived in major metropolitan areas, I've never been closer than an hour to an airport.) There are two regional hospitals relatively close (plus trauma helicopters if you need that sort of thing). Then there are major hospitals an hour west, plus Birmingham and Nashville---both of which I've known people to go to for specialized care. I honestly don't know what you mean by "high infrastructure recreation"; if it's outdoor sporting and recreation, it's as good here as anywhere (and fishing is better than most). There is a dearth of bars and live-music venues, but then I didn't partake of those even when I had easy access. So, when you write "And of course by moving outside a greater metro area, you're also saving money by choosing not to consume any amenities of private schools, airports, large hospitals, high infrastructure recreation, etc." you seem to have a very wrong idea of life outside a "greater metro area", one that is either extremely naive or deliberately insulting. And I'm not irritated, just cranky.
    - shuckles 6y ago
      No, I have the right idea just as you corroborated. There are amenities of legitimate value in a metro area. You do not care for them, so it doesn’t make sense for you to pay for easy access to them. However, saving money by reducing consumption is a lifestyle choice. Many people would rather choose to consume. That’s all I was trying to point out. There are network effects as well. I live 15 minutes from an airport with daily direct flights to the my parent’s home country. There are only a few such airports in the USA. Places with that kind of infrastructure also tend to have other valuable infrastructure. So even though I don’t benefit from the live music venue 2 blocks from my home, it’s part of the deal of being able to return home on short notice in emergency.

viklove 6y ago

fuck hn

geddy 6y ago
Totally, it's a dangerous path to tread. Suddenly your potential worth as having you as an employee is tied to how small of a shanty you live in. "Whoa, this guy's resume says he has 20 years experience and lives in a box down by the river, wonder if we he'll take a $7,000 salary?"
bhupy 6y ago
> It's literally just the lowest they can get away with paying you. Um, yes? That's exactly how this works. Google doesn't pay software engineers what they do out of the goodness of their hearts, they do it because that's how much it costs for a highly skilled engineer to come live in the Bay Area and work there. Humans aren't necessarily commodities, but labor is ABSOLUTELY a commodity. We have to start decoupling the value of a human from the value of their labor, because there's no use pretending that all labor is worth the same — while you and I might both agree that all humans are inherently equal. It's like any other good/service, labor costs as much as the buyer is willing to pay.
- viklove 6y ago
  fuck hn
  - bhupy 6y ago
    > And employees don't work for Google out of the goodness of their hearts, what's your point? My point is that the current value of a Google employee in Mountain View is the result of the negotiated value between the buyer and the seller. A Google employee in Mountain View earns more than a Google employee in Atlanta even if they are engaging in the same labor for the same number of hours. > How exactly would you go about doing this? How is it possible to say that you don't deserve to live in a nice house, or have a nice car, or send your children to college based on the job you have and how much Google decides to pay you -- all while they capture the value you're generating so their execs and VCs can live in a nice house, have a nice car, and send their children to college? Are you really making the argument that software engineers outside the Bay Area do not live in nice houses, or drive nice cars, or send their children to college? In fact, even with the currently lower salaries of software engineers outside the Bay Area, it is easier to buy a house, buy a nicer car, etc. This can be calculated by computing the ratio between the median house price in a locale and the median salary in that same locale[1]. In San Francisco, one must earn $183k to afford the median home. In Chicago, one must earn $63k to afford the median home. > The system we live in is disgusting. The system we live in is one in which we try and minimize the cost of goods and services to consumers. The role of markets is to minimize the amount of input necessary to produce goods/services, while maximizing the output of those goods/services. In practice, this means driving down the price of goods/services to the minimum possible price, while making them as abundant as possible, and as high quality as possible. This is good for consumers, because they can purchase those goods/services cheaply. This is why bread, milk, eggs, washing machines, clothes, TVs etc have gotten cheaper over time, relative to inflation. Another good/service that consumers purchase is labor, mostly indirectly. The market is also very good at driving down the price of labor, and this is why wages don't outpace inflation, in the same way that the price of bread doesn't outpace inflation. Again, this is excellent for consumers, because the labor is an input in the production of goods/services, and the former’s cost is a part of the latter cost that consumers ultimately pay. For software engineers, this is largely fine, because there is virtually no market in which software engineers are not in the top quintile of wage earners — or at the very least, in the top 2 quintiles. High skill workers will always find higher leverage work to do, and it's easiest for them to adapt to a changing market. Low skill workers, on the other hand, struggle to do this, and we must help them out through welfare and safety nets. [1] https://www.hsh.com/finance/mortgage/salary-home-buying-25-cities.html https://www.hsh.com/finance/mortgage/salary-home-buying-25-c...

bcrosby95 6y ago

> Suddenly I didn't mind seeing zeroes falling off the salary. Keep in mind: that asset your company is paying for can be sold and the difference will be kept by the employee, which will let them set themselves up for a much better retirement in a lower cost of living area. It reminds me a bit of the SF Giants. They couldn't pay high salaries because they had to pay for their ballpark. But the value of that ballpark is part of the value of the club, which would be realized if the owner ever sold it. So it still was a lot like the owners pocketing the money. But not exactly.

asdff 6y ago

This could be dangerous, restarting your life somewhere sight unseen just because it looks great on paper. You sell and move to that house in location x for cost alone, always pining for that life you had in location y with all the intangibles you never realized you were reliant on, and never will make enough to reverse the play and relocate back to y which has experienced ever higher property values since you've been gone. A better move would be to move laterally, to a place with the same benefits that the one you are in gives you, be it leisure activities or a network for your field. That might limit you to metros, and particular metros that are most favorable to your activities (skiers might like CO, sailors might like FL). Suddenly your options become limited, and you find among these limited choices the same housing issues that have plagued states like CA as demand ramps up, because everyone had the same idea as you. No city in the U.S. actually builds sufficient supply for their influx in labor; even the ones that we applaud are doing quite poorly in terms of how much housing should be built and where. The ones that don't seem to have a housing crisis are experiencing a contracting local economy, and that doesn't bode well with your networking prospects and career options.