7 ms·

> The lawsuits around this are going to be amazing. No. They won't. This isn't anything new. GitLab as a company does this. My company does this. US Federal Go

by lykr0n 6y ago

> The lawsuits around this are going to be amazing. No. They won't. This isn't anything new. GitLab as a company does this. My company does this. US Federal Government does this. It's not controversial. HN is the one making it controversial. YOU are making it controversial by bringing race into it. If you have clear salary bands ("SWE III makes base 100k to 150k") and clear location bands ("NYC is 35%, Westchester County is 29%, Monroe County is 8%) then it's completely fair. > And how does Facebook decide what the cost of living in your area is, anyway? You could use the same scales the US Federal Government releases. You could base it on the average cost of living. Lots of data-points. Every state and local government collects this data for various reasons. Hell, Walmart and other large Grocery Stores most likely do this as well to localize prices properly.

Craighead 6y ago
Race is always in it and always has been in it. YOU have decided to use that as a counter argument with zero evidence.
Joof 6y ago
What does your company do if the employee is entirely Nomadic? Officially I live somewhere, but I never go there.
- lykr0n 6y ago
  Legal Address? It's a good question. Who knows, with modern technology it could be updated daily. ... I shuttered at that thought.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    Your place of domicile (a tax and legal concept) cannot be updated daily.
    - IggleSniggle 6y ago
      How frequently can it be updated?
      - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
        I moved from PA to NM last year. From PA's perspective, PA remains your domicile until you take steps to permanently establish a new residence somewhere else. Other states may or may not take the same position. Those steps include, but are not limited to: buying/renting property as a primary residence, registering a car, registering to vote.
      - wiseleo 6y ago
        Should it be updated? South Dakota lets you establish tax domicile with no state income tax instantly. You need to show a receipt from a hotel or campground that you spent a night in the state. You also get a new driver's license and open a bank account. That's it. What stops me from setting up a remote workstation in SD, logging into work through VPN from there, and living wherever I want? :) Once the pandemic lessens, I am switching my domicile from California to SD and semi-retiring away from Bay Area. I will have a legal presence and a computer in that area, but I will not live there. There could be a business opportunity in setting up remote workstations in high rent areas to comply with these requirements.
        gbronner 6y ago
        Multiple states can consider you to be domiciled there, and you are liable for state taxes in each. There is no constitutional protection that prevents you from having to pay multiple resident state taxes, though in practice, it doesn't happen often. NY is notorious for claiming people are still residents after they have left-one factor is spending any part of 183 days in state, but another is intent and emotional attachment.
        yoav 6y ago
        Typically when you live in another state for 3 or more months you “establish residency”. Not declaring this properly on your state income taxes is tax evasion. Lying to your company about residency and tax evasion to receive more money is fraud. So it sounds like you’re going to have an interesting time either committing fraud or flying back and forth constantly to pull this off? I bet if you were hired by a company while living in a lower COL city for market rates in that city, and then moved to the Bay area you’d be advocating for getting a COL adjustment to afford Bay area rents. Considering fraud and tax evasion schemes to avoid the exact same adjustment in the other direction is ridiculous and selfish. If everyone did what you did housing rates would skyrocket in those cities like the Bay area and create even more housing crisis and displacement.
  - IggleSniggle 6y ago
    Sounds like masochistic performance art waiting to happen.
- jimkleiber 6y ago
  Maybe pretend it's not happening, no idea. Societal rules don't seem to work well with people who are more nomadic—the settlers seem to have won
  - throwaway17_17 6y ago
    I feel this comment so deeply. I spent all of my late teens and early 20s doing music in the US. I lived in a van or on a bus and only went ‘home’ for a few weeks consecutively at the most, and that was maybe three times a year. The world is viewed in a fundamentally different nature by those who are nomadic, and the rest of society has a very tough time dealing with those nomads.
    - jimkleiber 6y ago
      Yea, I lived in East Africa for a bit and learned a lot about the struggles between the nomadic pastoralists and settled farmers. Also in Europe with the Roma people and their struggles. I mean, I guess nomadic vs settled is probably a spectrum, with most of us not falling at anywhere near yhe extreme poles. Yet, yes, I feel you.
- Markoff 6y ago
  they should hire you under different contract where you are responsible for your taxes, not the employer, something like freelance contractor, not familiar with US law lowering salaries because company must adjust your taxes is lame excuse
  - yoav 6y ago
    They’re lowering salary for a different reason. But you have to tell them what state you have residency so they can withhold income taxes for the right state and not be liable for tax evasion. You’re conflating two separate things
burnte 6y ago
There's a HUGE difference between paying in a locale based on COL and lowering an existing salary for a remote worker simply because they might have lower COL.
- lykr0n 6y ago
  If you relocate at Google or Facebook, or any large company, they will adjust your salary for the new office you move to. If you move from SF to Upstate New York, you need to update your address with HR for tax purposes, and they would most likely adjust your salary under this plan. I moved from Austin to Seattle and my salary was adjusted up. If I move back it would adjust down (which is weird, because Austin is almost as expensive as Seattle now).
rayiner 6y ago
What you’re talking about is different pay for different localities for physical jobs. This practice does have a disparate impact on African Americans. (Part of the large pay gap between African Americans and whites is due to the fact that they disproportionately reside in low cost southern states.) Nonetheless, we accept the practice, partly out of inertia, and partly because of market principles. Companies must pay more to recruit the same level of talent in a place with high cost of living. So long as companies insist on co-located staff, that market economics provides a legitimate justification for salary discrimination. Extending the principle to remote work removes the comfort of accepted practice. We don’t have preconceived notions of what’s “fair” when it comes to remote work. It also removes the insulation layer of market dynamics. Companies need to pay more for talent physically located in an expensive metro area, just as they need to pay more for rent, etc. But when you remove the rationale of having your workforce all in one place, that also undercuts your rationales for paying different amounts in different locations. By paying more to remote workers who want to live in Connecticut versus Georgia, Facebook is subsidizing the lifestyle choices of some developers. But those lifestyle choices are heavily affected by race. (58% of African Americans live in the south, versus 27% of white Americans. One of the major trends of demographics in the US right now is a reversal of the movement of African Americans from the south to northern cities.) And as a result, that subsidy will have a significant disparate impact based on race. Under Facebook’s policy, you’ll have otherwise similarly situated developers being penalized in racially disparate ways for their individual housing choices. Moreover, so long as Facebook presumes that developers need o be co-located, Facebook has a legitimate economic reason to locate in San Francisco or Austin. It’s easier to recruit good developers there. Any incidental contribution to disparate impacts on groups that happen not to live in those places yields to the economics. But when you abandon that principle, you’re standing pretty naked. For remote work, what legitimate reason does Facebook have to subsidize certain developers’ consumptive habits? I prefer to live near the water—should Facebook pay me more money as a result?
- harryh 6y ago
  You've convinced me that there will be lawsuits on this issue. But do you think there will be lawsuits where the plaintiffs win (and not just an isolated win here and there, but mass wins that force large policy changes by employers)? That still seems fairly far fetched to me.
tomrod 6y ago
Never heard of a company punitively adjusting COL downward without being explicitly in contract, like with US Fedgov. Finance had people leave NY all the time for Midwestern and Southern states with the same company keeping their NYC paychecks.
- 121789 6y ago
  it's extremely common (I did some consulting and offices had salary multipliers based on high/mid/low-cost locations). I've been quite surprised at the reaction from HN on the topic
  - tomrod 6y ago
    Common, but something in initial employment agreement. This sounds like it is being forced on employees. If so, thus my reticence to seeing this practice as acceptable. If not, my mistake.
    - javagram 6y ago
      It’s likely these employees’ initial employment agreement was to work on-site in the Bay Area office. If they want to move away from the Bay Area and work 100% remote, they’re being offered that option - that’s a change in the contract itself, in their favor, which they don’t have to take if they don’t want to.
      - tomrod 6y ago
        Maybe so. All depends on the agreements at this point.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - 121789 6y ago
      Disclaimer: I'm a FB employee What's being forced upon me? If I continue to work as before, nothing changes. Working remote full time wasn't an option in my initial employment agreement either, so it does not seem like that agreement applies to this situation.
tptacek 6y ago
What's different here is presumably the scale the policy is being applied at, which creates the likelihood that significant groups of employees will be able to demonstrate disparate impact. For it to be a problem, there need to be enough remote employees in "favored" and "disfavored" {location,compensation} buckets to make a case. Gitlab is presumably not there yet.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  You think the US government isn't "at the scale" of Facebook?
  - count 6y ago
    USG pays flat rate globally. They then plus up a COLA allowance based on high-cost areas, special circumstances, etc. But the base rate is a flat rate for a given position. You can pay 'less extra', but not 'less', generally. Which I'm sure is what FB and others will technically do.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
      Parent comment started: >What's different here is presumably the scale the policy is being applied at Suggesting that FB is somehow going to apply any policy to its employees that is at a larger scale than the US government is a bit ridiculous. Yes, I agree that's what FB will do.
    - astura 6y ago
      BAH is based on your duty location
      - caleblloyd 6y ago
        For Active Duty - yes it is based on duty location zip code, because they assume you will move near the base that you work at. For National Guard - it is based on Home of Record zip code. Many National Guard members travel >100 miles to their assigned Armory.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 6y ago
> US Federal Government does this. US FedGov location pay is based on federally-dictated work site, not where the employee resides. Adjusting salaries based on employer location demands is non-controversial, and based on different job requirements in Paying people less because they live where lots of black people live (and race and other protected classes in US employment law do correlate with cost of living), when the employer requirements do not differ on whit, is not the same thing.
- lykr0n 6y ago
  Yeah. It's based on work site, but they define down to the county what the location adjustment is. But the same thing could be used for remote workers. I strongly assume the remote work positions that exist would pay based on the county where the worker resides. If these large tech companies just used the US GS Scale's locality adjustment, it would be super easy and non-controversial. https://www.federalpay.org/gs/locality https://www.federalpay.org/gs/locality
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > But the same thing could be used for remote workers. It wouldn't be the same thing if it wasn't based on job-required worksite. They don't pay you based on where you live (which is quite often a different county than the work site), but where you are assigned to work. If you have no assigned worksite, as is the case with remote work, there'd be no basis for the adjustment. > If these large tech companies just used the US GS Scale's locality adjustment, it would be super easy and non-controversial. Super easy, yes. Non-controversial, no.
    - throwaway4715 6y ago
      Sure. If you're working from home your work site is where you live.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Sure. If you're working from home your work site is where you live. Unless your employer assigns your residence, it's not a difference in job duty.you are being paid for, so is not analogous to being paid for employer-assogned job site when analyzing disparate impact.
causehealth101 6y ago
Exactly. It's a painful reality to accept for those who do not know it's an accepted practice.

by lykr0n 6y ago

Craighead 6y ago

Race is always in it and always has been in it. YOU have decided to use that as a counter argument with zero evidence.

Joof 6y ago

What does your company do if the employee is entirely Nomadic? Officially I live somewhere, but I never go there.

lykr0n 6y ago
Legal Address? It's a good question. Who knows, with modern technology it could be updated daily. ... I shuttered at that thought.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  Your place of domicile (a tax and legal concept) cannot be updated daily.
  - IggleSniggle 6y ago
    How frequently can it be updated?
    - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
      I moved from PA to NM last year. From PA's perspective, PA remains your domicile until you take steps to permanently establish a new residence somewhere else. Other states may or may not take the same position. Those steps include, but are not limited to: buying/renting property as a primary residence, registering a car, registering to vote.
    - wiseleo 6y ago
      Should it be updated? South Dakota lets you establish tax domicile with no state income tax instantly. You need to show a receipt from a hotel or campground that you spent a night in the state. You also get a new driver's license and open a bank account. That's it. What stops me from setting up a remote workstation in SD, logging into work through VPN from there, and living wherever I want? :) Once the pandemic lessens, I am switching my domicile from California to SD and semi-retiring away from Bay Area. I will have a legal presence and a computer in that area, but I will not live there. There could be a business opportunity in setting up remote workstations in high rent areas to comply with these requirements.
      - gbronner 6y ago
        Multiple states can consider you to be domiciled there, and you are liable for state taxes in each. There is no constitutional protection that prevents you from having to pay multiple resident state taxes, though in practice, it doesn't happen often. NY is notorious for claiming people are still residents after they have left-one factor is spending any part of 183 days in state, but another is intent and emotional attachment.
      - yoav 6y ago
        Typically when you live in another state for 3 or more months you “establish residency”. Not declaring this properly on your state income taxes is tax evasion. Lying to your company about residency and tax evasion to receive more money is fraud. So it sounds like you’re going to have an interesting time either committing fraud or flying back and forth constantly to pull this off? I bet if you were hired by a company while living in a lower COL city for market rates in that city, and then moved to the Bay area you’d be advocating for getting a COL adjustment to afford Bay area rents. Considering fraud and tax evasion schemes to avoid the exact same adjustment in the other direction is ridiculous and selfish. If everyone did what you did housing rates would skyrocket in those cities like the Bay area and create even more housing crisis and displacement.
- IggleSniggle 6y ago
  Sounds like masochistic performance art waiting to happen.
jimkleiber 6y ago
Maybe pretend it's not happening, no idea. Societal rules don't seem to work well with people who are more nomadic—the settlers seem to have won
- throwaway17_17 6y ago
  I feel this comment so deeply. I spent all of my late teens and early 20s doing music in the US. I lived in a van or on a bus and only went ‘home’ for a few weeks consecutively at the most, and that was maybe three times a year. The world is viewed in a fundamentally different nature by those who are nomadic, and the rest of society has a very tough time dealing with those nomads.
  - jimkleiber 6y ago
    Yea, I lived in East Africa for a bit and learned a lot about the struggles between the nomadic pastoralists and settled farmers. Also in Europe with the Roma people and their struggles. I mean, I guess nomadic vs settled is probably a spectrum, with most of us not falling at anywhere near yhe extreme poles. Yet, yes, I feel you.
Markoff 6y ago
they should hire you under different contract where you are responsible for your taxes, not the employer, something like freelance contractor, not familiar with US law lowering salaries because company must adjust your taxes is lame excuse
- yoav 6y ago
  They’re lowering salary for a different reason. But you have to tell them what state you have residency so they can withhold income taxes for the right state and not be liable for tax evasion. You’re conflating two separate things

burnte 6y ago

There's a HUGE difference between paying in a locale based on COL and lowering an existing salary for a remote worker simply because they might have lower COL.

lykr0n 6y ago
If you relocate at Google or Facebook, or any large company, they will adjust your salary for the new office you move to. If you move from SF to Upstate New York, you need to update your address with HR for tax purposes, and they would most likely adjust your salary under this plan. I moved from Austin to Seattle and my salary was adjusted up. If I move back it would adjust down (which is weird, because Austin is almost as expensive as Seattle now).

rayiner 6y ago

What you’re talking about is different pay for different localities for physical jobs. This practice does have a disparate impact on African Americans. (Part of the large pay gap between African Americans and whites is due to the fact that they disproportionately reside in low cost southern states.) Nonetheless, we accept the practice, partly out of inertia, and partly because of market principles. Companies must pay more to recruit the same level of talent in a place with high cost of living. So long as companies insist on co-located staff, that market economics provides a legitimate justification for salary discrimination. Extending the principle to remote work removes the comfort of accepted practice. We don’t have preconceived notions of what’s “fair” when it comes to remote work. It also removes the insulation layer of market dynamics. Companies need to pay more for talent physically located in an expensive metro area, just as they need to pay more for rent, etc. But when you remove the rationale of having your workforce all in one place, that also undercuts your rationales for paying different amounts in different locations. By paying more to remote workers who want to live in Connecticut versus Georgia, Facebook is subsidizing the lifestyle choices of some developers. But those lifestyle choices are heavily affected by race. (58% of African Americans live in the south, versus 27% of white Americans. One of the major trends of demographics in the US right now is a reversal of the movement of African Americans from the south to northern cities.) And as a result, that subsidy will have a significant disparate impact based on race. Under Facebook’s policy, you’ll have otherwise similarly situated developers being penalized in racially disparate ways for their individual housing choices. Moreover, so long as Facebook presumes that developers need o be co-located, Facebook has a legitimate economic reason to locate in San Francisco or Austin. It’s easier to recruit good developers there. Any incidental contribution to disparate impacts on groups that happen not to live in those places yields to the economics. But when you abandon that principle, you’re standing pretty naked. For remote work, what legitimate reason does Facebook have to subsidize certain developers’ consumptive habits? I prefer to live near the water—should Facebook pay me more money as a result?

harryh 6y ago
You've convinced me that there will be lawsuits on this issue. But do you think there will be lawsuits where the plaintiffs win (and not just an isolated win here and there, but mass wins that force large policy changes by employers)? That still seems fairly far fetched to me.

tomrod 6y ago

Never heard of a company punitively adjusting COL downward without being explicitly in contract, like with US Fedgov. Finance had people leave NY all the time for Midwestern and Southern states with the same company keeping their NYC paychecks.

121789 6y ago
it's extremely common (I did some consulting and offices had salary multipliers based on high/mid/low-cost locations). I've been quite surprised at the reaction from HN on the topic
- tomrod 6y ago
  Common, but something in initial employment agreement. This sounds like it is being forced on employees. If so, thus my reticence to seeing this practice as acceptable. If not, my mistake.
  - javagram 6y ago
    It’s likely these employees’ initial employment agreement was to work on-site in the Bay Area office. If they want to move away from the Bay Area and work 100% remote, they’re being offered that option - that’s a change in the contract itself, in their favor, which they don’t have to take if they don’t want to.
    - tomrod 6y ago
      Maybe so. All depends on the agreements at this point.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - 121789 6y ago
    Disclaimer: I'm a FB employee What's being forced upon me? If I continue to work as before, nothing changes. Working remote full time wasn't an option in my initial employment agreement either, so it does not seem like that agreement applies to this situation.

tptacek 6y ago

What's different here is presumably the scale the policy is being applied at, which creates the likelihood that significant groups of employees will be able to demonstrate disparate impact. For it to be a problem, there need to be enough remote employees in "favored" and "disfavored" {location,compensation} buckets to make a case. Gitlab is presumably not there yet.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
You think the US government isn't "at the scale" of Facebook?
- count 6y ago
  USG pays flat rate globally. They then plus up a COLA allowance based on high-cost areas, special circumstances, etc. But the base rate is a flat rate for a given position. You can pay 'less extra', but not 'less', generally. Which I'm sure is what FB and others will technically do.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    Parent comment started: >What's different here is presumably the scale the policy is being applied at Suggesting that FB is somehow going to apply any policy to its employees that is at a larger scale than the US government is a bit ridiculous. Yes, I agree that's what FB will do.
  - astura 6y ago
    BAH is based on your duty location
    - caleblloyd 6y ago
      For Active Duty - yes it is based on duty location zip code, because they assume you will move near the base that you work at. For National Guard - it is based on Home of Record zip code. Many National Guard members travel >100 miles to their assigned Armory.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dragonwriter 6y ago

> US Federal Government does this. US FedGov location pay is based on federally-dictated work site, not where the employee resides. Adjusting salaries based on employer location demands is non-controversial, and based on different job requirements in Paying people less because they live where lots of black people live (and race and other protected classes in US employment law do correlate with cost of living), when the employer requirements do not differ on whit, is not the same thing.

lykr0n 6y ago
Yeah. It's based on work site, but they define down to the county what the location adjustment is. But the same thing could be used for remote workers. I strongly assume the remote work positions that exist would pay based on the county where the worker resides. If these large tech companies just used the US GS Scale's locality adjustment, it would be super easy and non-controversial. https://www.federalpay.org/gs/locality https://www.federalpay.org/gs/locality
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > But the same thing could be used for remote workers. It wouldn't be the same thing if it wasn't based on job-required worksite. They don't pay you based on where you live (which is quite often a different county than the work site), but where you are assigned to work. If you have no assigned worksite, as is the case with remote work, there'd be no basis for the adjustment. > If these large tech companies just used the US GS Scale's locality adjustment, it would be super easy and non-controversial. Super easy, yes. Non-controversial, no.
  - throwaway4715 6y ago
    Sure. If you're working from home your work site is where you live.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Sure. If you're working from home your work site is where you live. Unless your employer assigns your residence, it's not a difference in job duty.you are being paid for, so is not analogous to being paid for employer-assogned job site when analyzing disparate impact.

causehealth101 6y ago

Exactly. It's a painful reality to accept for those who do not know it's an accepted practice.