9 ms·

"Facebook will reduce the pay of workers who move to less expensive areas." Personally, this is a deal breaker for me. I don't want to get paid less for doing

"Facebook will reduce the pay of workers who move to less expensive areas." Personally, this is a deal breaker for me. I don't want to get paid less for doing the same amount of work. In a remote world, deciding where to live should be a personal decision of how one spends their income. Facebook doesn't pay employees less because they decided to drive an expensive car to work. Facebook, along with all other tech companies, make crazy amounts of revenue per employee. The pay reductions will be a rounding error on the company's budget. Why not keep salaries the same and get the absolute best talent in every market across the world?

HorizonXP 6y ago
I agree with this in some ways, but I could see how it could heavily skew local job markets against companies that can't match the FAANG salaries. Now, that's assuming that FB can hire enough people to shift local salaries like that.
- oarabbus_ 6y ago
  Spread across the entire country/world? Unrealistic to think FB alone moves the needle. Maybe if all of FANG+ followed Facebook's lead, you'd see this effect.
zerr 6y ago
Companies (e.g. Mozilla, Gitlab, now Facebook) often forget another side of the coin - "less expensive areas" most of the time means worse quality of life. Also, all of those companies say "less expensive areas" while they really mean "lower wage areas" - which doesn't necessary align with the former preposition.
- cameronbrown 6y ago
  Cities are horrible places to live. Literally the only thing keeping me in them are jobs.
  - dbish 6y ago
    It's all personal preference. I love cities due to the density, walkability, and different types of people and events you can find, and have lived in rural areas and cities alike. I get depressed in suburbs generally as there isn't much happening and you have to drive everywhere. Rural areas I can live with in stretches since you at least can get more adventurous outdoor situations with more property and areas to wander
    - kortilla 6y ago
      In the context of this discussion (silicon valley employers like Facebook and Google), these offices are in the suburbs. Good luck walking to the FB headquarters.
      - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        The weird thing is, all of Google and FB's global offices are in city centres, with the exception of the ones in SV. I never really got that, myself.
      - dbish 6y ago
        That's fair. I've been to FB HQ and agree, not city-like at all. I currently live in Seattle and work at Amazon HQ, which I walk to (normally, pre-covid :) )
- derision 6y ago
  Where do you get that idea from? Everywhere outside of major tech hubs the cost of living is significantly less and "quality of life" is actually better. I moved to Cleveland and yes there's less "trendy" things like restaurants but there's so many parks and places to go and activities and casual events
  - zerr 6y ago
    I meant the planet Earth rather than one particular country. The cost of living in Bangladesh or rural Somalia might be less than SF, but I suspect the living conditions are worse. As for low-wage/high-cost place - e.g. Italy is a great example.
    - curiousgal 6y ago
      The living conditions are worst on average but if you're bringing in CS money then you can afford to live luxuriously in whichever country you choose and it would cost you less.
      - zerr 6y ago
        Unless you're so rich that you can afford buying citizenships, it is not that easy to move between countries in today's world, unfortunately.
- curiousgal 6y ago
  I would take living in Boulder or Fort Collins over San Francisco for half the salary anytime!
  - celim307 6y ago
    Boulder ain’t cheap itself, but at least you can live fairly close to it for fairly cheap.
    - mikeyouse 6y ago
      This surprised me a year ago when I was looking at Boulder as an option to relocate to from the SFBay.. You can get a single-family home there for roughly the same price as much of the Oakland Hills.. nearly everything on the cheaper side was ~$800k. https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/house_type/2-_beds/2.0-_baths/?searchQueryState=%7B%22pagination%22%3A%7B%7D%2C%22mapBounds%22%3A%7B%22west%22%3A-105.36395759159886%2C%22east%22%3A-105.1631137805637%2C%22south%22%3A39.969685234386155%2C%22north%22%3A40.09625873731518%7D%2C%22isMapVisible%22%3Atrue%2C%22mapZoom%22%3A13%2C%22filterState%22%3A%7B%22beds%22%3A%7B%22min%22%3A2%7D%2C%22baths%22%3A%7B%22min%22%3A2%7D%2C%22price%22%3A%7B%22max%22%3A900000%7D%2C%22con%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22apa%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22mf%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22mp%22%3A%7B%22max%22%3A3221%7D%2C%22land%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22tow%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22manu%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%7D%2C%22isListVisible%22%3Atrue%7D https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/house_type/2-_beds/2.0...
  - dmode 6y ago
    Boulder is surprisingly as expensive as the Bay Area
- disabled 6y ago
  > Companies (e.g. Mozilla, Gitlab, now Facebook) often forget another side of the coin - "less expensive areas" most of the time means worse quality of life. Exactly. Also, if you live in the “middle of nowhere” or even outside a major metro area on the east and west coasts of the US, the quality of healthcare substantially declines. Considering that the third leading cause of death in the US is preventable medical errors, living outside of these areas can literally be a death sentence. It is only a matter of time before it is likely to become the case for an individual, healthy or not. As somebody with 2 rare neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system, plus type 1 diabetes, remote work helps tremendously. But, living in the boonies would literally, in no exaggeration, kill me. So, I need a salary that allows me to live in a major decent metro area, plus allows me to pay for my healthcare. That is non-negotiable. Every day, working in the US is looking less appealing. I can legally work in select places in other parts of the world, and plan on leaving the US. There are other places in the world that have universal healthcare, that do not have huge disparities in quality across similar geographical areas. You can find out more about healthcare quality worldwide and the US by examining the data on http://HealthData.org http://HealthData.org
  - pbourke 6y ago
    Moving from "daily commute distance" to "occasional long trip distance" would still be huge. Moving 2-3hrs out from major east and west coast metros would massively increase affordability.
    - disabled 6y ago
      You are missing the point: I still need a lot of care, and the quality of it allows me not only to work, but to stay alive. I have at least 1 appointment per week for my medical care, if not a minimum of 2. Sometimes I can have 4 appointments per week. It is not just a matter of having to commute, however long that may be. In an emergency, where I am located matters, and living 2-3 hours outside a major metro area can easily hasten my death, with my medical issues. Rare diseases tend to be systematic, with limited treatments. They are also not easy to treat either. In my case in particular, I am technically more susceptible to having other rare conditions too. My rare diseases are immune-mediated. But, where I live absolutely matters. I also require a lot of healthcare contact, where living 2-3 hours outside of a city just does not work.
- kyran_adept 6y ago
  If the money is more equally distributed, the quality of life will also become equally distributed. I imagine the next "Facebook city" at the border of "nowhere" and "farm ville" will get immediately a huge influx of hospitals, gourmet restaurants and private schools to supply its citizens.
- Aunche 6y ago
  This happens already in medicine a lot. A surgeon in a small hospital in Kansas actually makes more money than one in NYC. The reason is because nobody wants to live in the middle of nowhere.
- dzonga 6y ago
  where did you get this idea from ? my advice travel around more. & spend less time on the internet. and then you'll see plenty of places where quality of life from clean air, healthcare, transportation, entertainment, culture, friendly folks etc is much better than the american metros. nyc & sf.
- diogenescynic 6y ago
  I think you’re confusing cost of living with quality of life. Quality of life can be bad and cost of living can still be high and vice verse.
roosterdawn 6y ago
Because you, the laborer, begin as a fungible commodity to a company that very much operates on a short-term, quarterly basis. But with that said, it's certainly possible that Facebook will need to functionally do as you described and "keep salaries the same and get the absolute best talent in every market across the world" because otherwise, they won't be able to effectively recruit. They'll get outbid by startups that don't attempt such hare-brained schemes, and maybe they'll dislike it enough to raise wages where required. Secondly, it's not likely the case that Facebook needs the "absolute best talent" across the board -- it's more likely that they do for some positions (and will pay appropriately) and not so much for others. And for where it stands there, I'm pretty sure Facebook knows what that Pareto frontier looks like -- at least in recent history, they have generally outbid their weight class competitors [1] in terms of total compensation. [1] https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En...
oarabbus_ 6y ago
>Personally, this is a deal breaker for me. I don't want to get paid less for doing the same amount of work. In a remote world, deciding where to live should be a personal decision of how one spends their income. Obviously, you're free to work wherever you want but I simply fail to understand the sentiment here. The "same" house that costs $1M in the Bay Area costs $300k in Atlanta. A pound of chicken or gallon of milk is also half the price. Day care for children? Twice as expensive in CA. Why should FB pay Bay Area living wages to someone in Atlanta, when they can pay them top dollar for their own market? Does this suggest a company should have to pay the entire workforce, whatever they pay the individual in the highest-cost-of-living area? These are businesses, not charities. As a side note, Bay Area inflated prices will probably drop as a result of this.
- dbish 6y ago
  Personally, I would not move somewhere with half the cost of living if I'm getting half the pay. At higher incomes (ex: senior level FAANG engineers and up) you don't spend a lot of your income (stock + salary), you save a good chunk of it (as long as you haven't had major lifestyle inflation issues, you should be saving a lot). This means that it's more important to find a balance between pay and cost of living where you can maximize saving. It's why I prefer Seattle to SF. SF pays a little more, but the cost of living greatly increases. Seattle is much more expensive then many other places you could live, but then I'd be saving a lot less due to pay drops. There is of course quality of life that has to be brought into the equation, which is more about personal preferences and what makes you happy, so I won't get into that part, but $1M on a house in one location vs. $300k for Atlanta is not the deal breaker at higher pay (btw, those are Seattle price ranges, $1M will not get you much of a house in the Bay Area from what I've seen).
  - disabled 6y ago
    As somebody who is originally from Seattle, this comment is right on and hits the mark.
    - oarabbus_ 6y ago
asdff 6y ago
On the flip side, it's all relative, and by moving to a cheap area your stance is to expect to be rewarded and paid more for the same exact work.
Consultant32452 6y ago
You've got it backwards. They aren't going to pay the Mobile Alabama employee a Bay Area salary. They will pay the Bay Area employee the Mobile Alabama salary and tell you you're welcome to live wherever you like. If you choose to live in the Bay Area, that's your problem. Pizza delivery drivers don't get to demand a higher wage just because they prefer to drive a lambo.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- biztos 6y ago
  Wouldn't that just end up applying to whatever subset of employees are up for living in Alabama? Sure, if you can grow that subset to 100% then you can keep all the pizza for yourself, but the reason tech salaries are so high is the companies are that profitable. If Zuckerberg is paying Alabama rates to everyone, it will be trivially easy to poach talent from him, and he knows this, so while he might have in mind a pool of "superfungibles" making $ALABAMA in $WHEREVER, you will not see Big Tech start slashing the compensation of the people they want to keep.
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    To be honest, my OP was a little hyperbolic. It's more like you'll be less able to demand a wage premium because you're willing/able to live in a high COL place. But you still have lots of other attributes/skills which are valuable. I already live in a low COL location and successfully demand Bay Area salary. So obviously I don't see a problem with this. Most people all across the country will see no appreciable change here. The only people who need to be concerned are people who are unable to demand a high salary based on their attributes other than geography.
    - rargulati 6y ago
      This to me is the real argument: those who can demand a high salary regardless of geography, and those who can only demand a high salary _because_ of geography. The mistake is many people in the latter group think they are in the former.
blizkreeg 6y ago
I think it's silly (and borderline divorced from understanding how business works) to expect bay area salaries when you're living in Nebraska or Uruguay. After all, when you move to the bay area, you don't say "give me my Kansas salary". No one gets paid that way. Pay is always tied to comparative salaries in that market. Why should I hire someone and pay them a bay area salary if there are equally talented folks in that geography that are perfectly happy making what's market for _their_ location? This is only a perspective that highly paid engineers living in the bay area share. The rest of the world doesn't work this way.
- kortilla 6y ago
  I think you fail to recognize what you’re competing for as an employer. If you just want average engineers from city X, go ahead and pay the reduced wage. However, if you want top talent, you have to pay what other companies are willing to pay and some are willing to pay Bay Area salaries for remote. When someone good is on the line, it’s not hard to justify the Bay Area salary when you were willing to pay it if they were in the bay. Source: kept Bay Area salary when moved remote and was able to easily negotiate Bay Area salary at future companies.
  - blizkreeg 6y ago
    That's good for you. And there will always be companies that are the exception. Some companies will do it simply to keep you because they're already familiar with you, know how you work, and have trust built. But it won't be the norm. I might still say if someone is doing a 6-mo/1-yr temporary change of scenery, it makes sense to not dock their salary. But an actual move and keep my $300K FAANG salary while working in Thailand? I don't see it happening. If the difference is < 20%, may be sure. But a > 50% difference? I doubt we'll see that world. But who knows...stranger things have happened. Every profession gets paid this way. Tech is no different, or some special snowflake.
    - hodgesrm 6y ago
      Actually if you move to Thailand with your FAANG salary it's likely that the HR team will have a conniption fit. Thailand is--or at least was until recently--considered a prime location for dodging taxes. That is a problem for any company that wants to be SOX-compliant.
Exmoor 6y ago
It's odd to me that they would give current local employees living in high-cost areas a significant incentive to not transfer to remote when a remote worker arguably costs significantly less to employ. The costs keeping a building in a high-cost area are huge and increasing constantly. Moving those costs (rent, utilities, etc.) to the employee is a major cost savings.
xwdv 6y ago
Then your job will be eaten up by those in other areas who will be willing to do that work for whatever their standard of living requires. Good luck in your future endeavors.
davidedicillo 6y ago
This already happens. FB employees working in London make less money than those living in the US because adjusted to the local market.
Rapzid 6y ago
As an individual you can often just say no thanks to the pay cut.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

HorizonXP 6y ago

I agree with this in some ways, but I could see how it could heavily skew local job markets against companies that can't match the FAANG salaries. Now, that's assuming that FB can hire enough people to shift local salaries like that.

oarabbus_ 6y ago
Spread across the entire country/world? Unrealistic to think FB alone moves the needle. Maybe if all of FANG+ followed Facebook's lead, you'd see this effect.

zerr 6y ago

Companies (e.g. Mozilla, Gitlab, now Facebook) often forget another side of the coin - "less expensive areas" most of the time means worse quality of life. Also, all of those companies say "less expensive areas" while they really mean "lower wage areas" - which doesn't necessary align with the former preposition.

cameronbrown 6y ago
Cities are horrible places to live. Literally the only thing keeping me in them are jobs.
- dbish 6y ago
  It's all personal preference. I love cities due to the density, walkability, and different types of people and events you can find, and have lived in rural areas and cities alike. I get depressed in suburbs generally as there isn't much happening and you have to drive everywhere. Rural areas I can live with in stretches since you at least can get more adventurous outdoor situations with more property and areas to wander
  - kortilla 6y ago
    In the context of this discussion (silicon valley employers like Facebook and Google), these offices are in the suburbs. Good luck walking to the FB headquarters.
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      The weird thing is, all of Google and FB's global offices are in city centres, with the exception of the ones in SV. I never really got that, myself.
    - dbish 6y ago
      That's fair. I've been to FB HQ and agree, not city-like at all. I currently live in Seattle and work at Amazon HQ, which I walk to (normally, pre-covid :) )
derision 6y ago
Where do you get that idea from? Everywhere outside of major tech hubs the cost of living is significantly less and "quality of life" is actually better. I moved to Cleveland and yes there's less "trendy" things like restaurants but there's so many parks and places to go and activities and casual events
- zerr 6y ago
  I meant the planet Earth rather than one particular country. The cost of living in Bangladesh or rural Somalia might be less than SF, but I suspect the living conditions are worse. As for low-wage/high-cost place - e.g. Italy is a great example.
  - curiousgal 6y ago
    The living conditions are worst on average but if you're bringing in CS money then you can afford to live luxuriously in whichever country you choose and it would cost you less.
    - zerr 6y ago
      Unless you're so rich that you can afford buying citizenships, it is not that easy to move between countries in today's world, unfortunately.
curiousgal 6y ago
I would take living in Boulder or Fort Collins over San Francisco for half the salary anytime!
- celim307 6y ago
  Boulder ain’t cheap itself, but at least you can live fairly close to it for fairly cheap.
  - mikeyouse 6y ago
    This surprised me a year ago when I was looking at Boulder as an option to relocate to from the SFBay.. You can get a single-family home there for roughly the same price as much of the Oakland Hills.. nearly everything on the cheaper side was ~$800k. https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/house_type/2-_beds/2.0-_baths/?searchQueryState=%7B%22pagination%22%3A%7B%7D%2C%22mapBounds%22%3A%7B%22west%22%3A-105.36395759159886%2C%22east%22%3A-105.1631137805637%2C%22south%22%3A39.969685234386155%2C%22north%22%3A40.09625873731518%7D%2C%22isMapVisible%22%3Atrue%2C%22mapZoom%22%3A13%2C%22filterState%22%3A%7B%22beds%22%3A%7B%22min%22%3A2%7D%2C%22baths%22%3A%7B%22min%22%3A2%7D%2C%22price%22%3A%7B%22max%22%3A900000%7D%2C%22con%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22apa%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22mf%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22mp%22%3A%7B%22max%22%3A3221%7D%2C%22land%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22tow%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22manu%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%7D%2C%22isListVisible%22%3Atrue%7D https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/house_type/2-_beds/2.0...
- dmode 6y ago
  Boulder is surprisingly as expensive as the Bay Area
disabled 6y ago
> Companies (e.g. Mozilla, Gitlab, now Facebook) often forget another side of the coin - "less expensive areas" most of the time means worse quality of life. Exactly. Also, if you live in the “middle of nowhere” or even outside a major metro area on the east and west coasts of the US, the quality of healthcare substantially declines. Considering that the third leading cause of death in the US is preventable medical errors, living outside of these areas can literally be a death sentence. It is only a matter of time before it is likely to become the case for an individual, healthy or not. As somebody with 2 rare neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system, plus type 1 diabetes, remote work helps tremendously. But, living in the boonies would literally, in no exaggeration, kill me. So, I need a salary that allows me to live in a major decent metro area, plus allows me to pay for my healthcare. That is non-negotiable. Every day, working in the US is looking less appealing. I can legally work in select places in other parts of the world, and plan on leaving the US. There are other places in the world that have universal healthcare, that do not have huge disparities in quality across similar geographical areas. You can find out more about healthcare quality worldwide and the US by examining the data on http://HealthData.org http://HealthData.org
- pbourke 6y ago
  Moving from "daily commute distance" to "occasional long trip distance" would still be huge. Moving 2-3hrs out from major east and west coast metros would massively increase affordability.
  - disabled 6y ago
    You are missing the point: I still need a lot of care, and the quality of it allows me not only to work, but to stay alive. I have at least 1 appointment per week for my medical care, if not a minimum of 2. Sometimes I can have 4 appointments per week. It is not just a matter of having to commute, however long that may be. In an emergency, where I am located matters, and living 2-3 hours outside a major metro area can easily hasten my death, with my medical issues. Rare diseases tend to be systematic, with limited treatments. They are also not easy to treat either. In my case in particular, I am technically more susceptible to having other rare conditions too. My rare diseases are immune-mediated. But, where I live absolutely matters. I also require a lot of healthcare contact, where living 2-3 hours outside of a city just does not work.
kyran_adept 6y ago
If the money is more equally distributed, the quality of life will also become equally distributed. I imagine the next "Facebook city" at the border of "nowhere" and "farm ville" will get immediately a huge influx of hospitals, gourmet restaurants and private schools to supply its citizens.
Aunche 6y ago
This happens already in medicine a lot. A surgeon in a small hospital in Kansas actually makes more money than one in NYC. The reason is because nobody wants to live in the middle of nowhere.
dzonga 6y ago
where did you get this idea from ? my advice travel around more. & spend less time on the internet. and then you'll see plenty of places where quality of life from clean air, healthcare, transportation, entertainment, culture, friendly folks etc is much better than the american metros. nyc & sf.
diogenescynic 6y ago
I think you’re confusing cost of living with quality of life. Quality of life can be bad and cost of living can still be high and vice verse.

roosterdawn 6y ago

Because you, the laborer, begin as a fungible commodity to a company that very much operates on a short-term, quarterly basis. But with that said, it's certainly possible that Facebook will need to functionally do as you described and "keep salaries the same and get the absolute best talent in every market across the world" because otherwise, they won't be able to effectively recruit. They'll get outbid by startups that don't attempt such hare-brained schemes, and maybe they'll dislike it enough to raise wages where required. Secondly, it's not likely the case that Facebook needs the "absolute best talent" across the board -- it's more likely that they do for some positions (and will pay appropriately) and not so much for others. And for where it stands there, I'm pretty sure Facebook knows what that Pareto frontier looks like -- at least in recent history, they have generally outbid their weight class competitors [1] in terms of total compensation. [1] https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-Engineer/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En...

oarabbus_ 6y ago

>Personally, this is a deal breaker for me. I don't want to get paid less for doing the same amount of work. In a remote world, deciding where to live should be a personal decision of how one spends their income. Obviously, you're free to work wherever you want but I simply fail to understand the sentiment here. The "same" house that costs $1M in the Bay Area costs $300k in Atlanta. A pound of chicken or gallon of milk is also half the price. Day care for children? Twice as expensive in CA. Why should FB pay Bay Area living wages to someone in Atlanta, when they can pay them top dollar for their own market? Does this suggest a company should have to pay the entire workforce, whatever they pay the individual in the highest-cost-of-living area? These are businesses, not charities. As a side note, Bay Area inflated prices will probably drop as a result of this.

dbish 6y ago
Personally, I would not move somewhere with half the cost of living if I'm getting half the pay. At higher incomes (ex: senior level FAANG engineers and up) you don't spend a lot of your income (stock + salary), you save a good chunk of it (as long as you haven't had major lifestyle inflation issues, you should be saving a lot). This means that it's more important to find a balance between pay and cost of living where you can maximize saving. It's why I prefer Seattle to SF. SF pays a little more, but the cost of living greatly increases. Seattle is much more expensive then many other places you could live, but then I'd be saving a lot less due to pay drops. There is of course quality of life that has to be brought into the equation, which is more about personal preferences and what makes you happy, so I won't get into that part, but $1M on a house in one location vs. $300k for Atlanta is not the deal breaker at higher pay (btw, those are Seattle price ranges, $1M will not get you much of a house in the Bay Area from what I've seen).
- disabled 6y ago
  As somebody who is originally from Seattle, this comment is right on and hits the mark.
  - oarabbus_ 6y ago

asdff 6y ago

On the flip side, it's all relative, and by moving to a cheap area your stance is to expect to be rewarded and paid more for the same exact work.

Consultant32452 6y ago

You've got it backwards. They aren't going to pay the Mobile Alabama employee a Bay Area salary. They will pay the Bay Area employee the Mobile Alabama salary and tell you you're welcome to live wherever you like. If you choose to live in the Bay Area, that's your problem. Pizza delivery drivers don't get to demand a higher wage just because they prefer to drive a lambo.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
biztos 6y ago
Wouldn't that just end up applying to whatever subset of employees are up for living in Alabama? Sure, if you can grow that subset to 100% then you can keep all the pizza for yourself, but the reason tech salaries are so high is the companies are that profitable. If Zuckerberg is paying Alabama rates to everyone, it will be trivially easy to poach talent from him, and he knows this, so while he might have in mind a pool of "superfungibles" making $ALABAMA in $WHEREVER, you will not see Big Tech start slashing the compensation of the people they want to keep.
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  To be honest, my OP was a little hyperbolic. It's more like you'll be less able to demand a wage premium because you're willing/able to live in a high COL place. But you still have lots of other attributes/skills which are valuable. I already live in a low COL location and successfully demand Bay Area salary. So obviously I don't see a problem with this. Most people all across the country will see no appreciable change here. The only people who need to be concerned are people who are unable to demand a high salary based on their attributes other than geography.
  - rargulati 6y ago
    This to me is the real argument: those who can demand a high salary regardless of geography, and those who can only demand a high salary _because_ of geography. The mistake is many people in the latter group think they are in the former.

blizkreeg 6y ago

I think it's silly (and borderline divorced from understanding how business works) to expect bay area salaries when you're living in Nebraska or Uruguay. After all, when you move to the bay area, you don't say "give me my Kansas salary". No one gets paid that way. Pay is always tied to comparative salaries in that market. Why should I hire someone and pay them a bay area salary if there are equally talented folks in that geography that are perfectly happy making what's market for _their_ location? This is only a perspective that highly paid engineers living in the bay area share. The rest of the world doesn't work this way.

kortilla 6y ago
I think you fail to recognize what you’re competing for as an employer. If you just want average engineers from city X, go ahead and pay the reduced wage. However, if you want top talent, you have to pay what other companies are willing to pay and some are willing to pay Bay Area salaries for remote. When someone good is on the line, it’s not hard to justify the Bay Area salary when you were willing to pay it if they were in the bay. Source: kept Bay Area salary when moved remote and was able to easily negotiate Bay Area salary at future companies.
- blizkreeg 6y ago
  That's good for you. And there will always be companies that are the exception. Some companies will do it simply to keep you because they're already familiar with you, know how you work, and have trust built. But it won't be the norm. I might still say if someone is doing a 6-mo/1-yr temporary change of scenery, it makes sense to not dock their salary. But an actual move and keep my $300K FAANG salary while working in Thailand? I don't see it happening. If the difference is < 20%, may be sure. But a > 50% difference? I doubt we'll see that world. But who knows...stranger things have happened. Every profession gets paid this way. Tech is no different, or some special snowflake.
  - hodgesrm 6y ago
    Actually if you move to Thailand with your FAANG salary it's likely that the HR team will have a conniption fit. Thailand is--or at least was until recently--considered a prime location for dodging taxes. That is a problem for any company that wants to be SOX-compliant.

Exmoor 6y ago

It's odd to me that they would give current local employees living in high-cost areas a significant incentive to not transfer to remote when a remote worker arguably costs significantly less to employ. The costs keeping a building in a high-cost area are huge and increasing constantly. Moving those costs (rent, utilities, etc.) to the employee is a major cost savings.

xwdv 6y ago

Then your job will be eaten up by those in other areas who will be willing to do that work for whatever their standard of living requires. Good luck in your future endeavors.

davidedicillo 6y ago

This already happens. FB employees working in London make less money than those living in the US because adjusted to the local market.

Rapzid 6y ago

As an individual you can often just say no thanks to the pay cut.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]