22 ms·

Evolving Reddit’s Workforce

248 points by NearAP 6y ago

NearAP 6y ago
The key bit in the article ....To help drive the idea home (pun intended), we’ve reimagined our approach to compensation in the US. To support employees to live where they want to and do their best work, we are eliminating geographic compensation zones in the US. It means that our US compensation will be tied to pay ranges of high-cost areas such as SF and NY, regardless of where employees live. We believe this is the right balance of flexibility and support for employees, recognizing the varied tradeoffs people consider when deciding where to live. Internationally, we have had one pay range per country, and now the US will be consistent with this approach.....
- seibelj 6y ago
  In a remote-working world, the best talent should always command top-dollar, regardless of where they live. If they are absolutely rockstar talent and can be just as good remotely, then why wouldn't they command the highest salary? In fact, they should be able to command even more money now as all the remote-OK companies bid for them without any friction over moving / commute issues. Honestly it's a win-win-win - a win for the company that has far larger talent pool, win for the employee who gets paid more and can move to a more desirable, low cost-of-living location, and win for the "left-behind" areas of the country where many rich techies will move to. This will reduce class divisions and equalize our communities without any coercion and continue to allow highly-skilled labor to extract maximum income from capital. I very much like this shift towards remote work - it is the silver lining to come out of the pandemic.
  - tomarr 6y ago
    Well this assumes the management cost (or inefficiency) does not go up for remote, which is unclear.
    - jnwatson 6y ago
      From personal experience, top-tier individual contributors are cheaper to manage.
      - kevinventullo 6y ago
        That's part of what makes them top-tier!
    - corobo 6y ago
      Considering all the middle managers I know of are desperately trying to get the workforce back into offices because they seemingly have bugger-all to do now, I'd say you can cut out a fair few of them if you need to balance out a new cost. Without being overworked, can a remote manager manage more people than an on-site manager? I don't know any remote managers
      - thedufer 6y ago
        > Considering all the middle managers I know of are desperately trying to get the workforce back into offices because they seemingly have bugger-all to do now, I'd say you can cut out a fair few of them if you need to balance out a new cost. Are you sure you've diagnosed this correctly? The managers I know are ready to get back to the office for the exact opposite reason - managing remotely is much harder and more time-consuming.
        corobo 6y ago
        I'm talking about the types that value ass in seat over output. Of course good managers are still needed :)
  - gotoeleven 6y ago
    The best talent always has and always will command top-dollar. We're talking about reddit here.
  - jcrawfordor 6y ago
    I think there's an even simpler reason than this... some companies that hire remote employees use the same payscale everywhere, and that gives remote workers substantial negotiation leverage. An offer for remote work from one employer that was NYC-based and offered me an NYC-competitive salary in a much cheaper city was enough to talk a different company which leveled by city substantially upwards. Having watched this effect happen, if I were considering moving while working for a company that would relevel salary based on CoL, I would almost certainly be considering offers from other employers - and if I were a manager with an employee who was moving to go remote I would really push back on adjusting their salary, knowing that there are competing employers who won't, and the employee will probably find out one way or another. I wouldn't call myself a source of advice on remote work necessarily because I kind of fell into remote work by accident pre-COVID, and COVID has really solidified the situation. But it also seems like remote work is going to be on the rise outside of the context of COVID. I live in a city with very little tech industry and so I only rarely here from recruiters, and those that do contact me are usually talking about relo to a different city. Just over the last two months or so I've started hearing from recruiters at nearly the level I did when I lived in San Francisco - and they're mostly not talking relo.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    >if they are absolutely rockstar talent and can be just as good remotely, then why wouldn't they command the highest salary? because this isn't how market economics work. You're not payed for being a rockstar, you're payed for the least amount of money you're willing to work for. Indian rockstar coders may be as productive as American ones, the difference is their cost of living is lower, so they're willing to do the same work for less money. Same reason your barista in SF makes more money than the same barista in Podunk Idaho despite serving just as much coffee.
    - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
      The end result will be a huge equalization in pay. People in low cost of living areas will become a lot richer and those in high cost of living places will become a lot poorer. Likely those high cost of living places will quickly drop in cost as most people spread out.
      - xur17 6y ago
        This seems like a desirable outcome. Wouldn't this mean a more even distribution of wealth rather than large concentrations in a few big cities?
        Rebelgecko 6y ago
        It's interesting because that equalization would only affect people in certain industries which are already fairly well compensated. If people making tech salaries move to overlooked parts of the country, I wonder to what extent their wealth would trickle down to benefit their new communities? It would be interesting if a bunch of people leaving the Bay Area ended up congregating in certain low-COL communities. I wouldn't be surprised if a sort of rural gentrification occurs in the handful of Midwestern towns that have gigabit fiber. Would those areas remain low COL? Would the existing inhabitants become a sort of underclass?
        webmaven 6y ago
        > I wouldn't be surprised if a sort of rural gentrification occurs in the handful of Midwestern towns that have gigabit fiber. Would those areas remain low COL? Would the existing inhabitants become a sort of underclass? You'd see something like that, but keep in mind that outside of dense urban cores, you mostly don't have the same constraints on available real estate that drive existing residents out by rising prices (and the SF Bay Area's lack of housing inventory is largely self-inflicted, unlike, say, Manhattan). So, yes, some competition from well-heeled newcomers will drive prices up a bit (encouraging new construction), but without a constraint on housing inventory that drives the newcomers to compete with each other, what you get is just a bit of urbanization, rather than gentrification per-se.
- manningthegoose 6y ago
  This is great, glad to see reddit leading on this front. I do wonder what effect this would have on metro areas with high COL if more companies adopted this policy. Mass exodus? Probably not. But I imagine the effect will at least be measurable.
  - paxys 6y ago
    I'm more interested in the effect on metro areas with a lower COL. Imagine an influx of young professionals with Bay Area salaries in cities like Denver, Austin, Huntsville, Madison, San Diego, Nashville, Charlotte, Salt Lake City. I can't imagine current residents would be too happy.
    - triceratops 6y ago
      In the short-term. In the long-term wouldn't everyone's wages rise?
    - manningthegoose 6y ago
      Definitely agree. Although maybe the increased dilution of tech workers (roughly same # spread across larger set of cities) will help mitigate this.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - silentsea90 6y ago
      The only case where residents would be unhappy is when said residents flood the market causing meaningful inflation across local markets. It takes the entirety of the bay area young professionals to keep the bay area as expensive as it is. 1. Would the dispersion of the same talent (assuming talent isn't suddenly growing in size) + local tech talent being paid higher cause the same inflation even when split over a large number of cities? 2. If said inflation happens, would they not move again? I believe incentives here are to distribute this talent across the US, not concentrate in new cheaper centers
    - sologoub 6y ago
- Thaxll 6y ago
  This is such a bad idea, why would someone earning 150k in sf should earn the same in Deroit? It will just increase the price of living in cheaper area which will create the same problem as in SF, you work in IT you're ok otherwise life gets too expensive.
  - core-questions 6y ago
    > It will just increase the price of living in cheaper area Also seen by some as the value of their houses rising, which they might welcome; and this only happens if there's some demand from other workers to work remotely from their area, which brings money into the area's service sectors. This could breathe new life into many parts of the country that are currently without any particular reason to go on existing. I could see smaller townships deliberately incentivizing remote workers and designing things around them as a primary source of monetary influx.
  - alfalfasprout 6y ago
    Typical shortsighted viewpoint... cost of living increases along with the economy. Those higher paid workers will then spend their dollars in the economy thus bolstering local businesses. So many places in the US would kill for an influx of high paid individuals to kickstart their economy.
    - Thaxll 6y ago
      It works until too many people are paid big salary, it increases the cost of living because of demand. You should talk to the people in the bay area.
      - shuntress 6y ago
        You already refuted this in your original statement. >why would someone earning 150k in sf should earn the same in Deroit? Just replace Detroit with [Some other place] and replace SF with Detroit
  - paxys 6y ago
    Why should two people adding the same amount of value to a company be compensated differently?
- slg 6y ago
  >we are eliminating geographic compensation zones in the US I am worried about the precedent this sets and the long term consequences. I can certainly imagine a scenario that plays out like the following: Step 1 - Eliminate geographic considerations for salary. Step 2 - Scale all salaries to expensive markets. Step 3 - Slowly allow salaries to stagnate until employees in expensive markets are no longer receiving fair pay. Step 4 - Employees in expensive markets leave for other jobs. Step 5 - Allow steps 3 and 4 to repeat themselves as many times as you like. Step 6 - Company has now decreased employee salaries and physical expenses like office space. Step 7 - Profit.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    Step 6.5 - Watch as all the good talent ends up elsewhere Step 7 - Watch your lovely forum turn to shit Step 8 - Fail and declare bankruptcy/get sold to Yahoo
    - vermilingua 6y ago
      “Turn to shit” makes it sound like it hasn’t already. Reddit is no longer trying to innovate, they’re milking their incumbent userbase for the ad money until they can sell.
      - cvhashim 6y ago
        That’s unfortunately what happens when you’re funded and scale up with VC money. The investors want their returns so this is just a result of that. VC backed companies like Reddit will add unpopular features and intrusive ads to make money — users be damned.
      - 0-_-0 6y ago
        Looking at the horrible website redesign, they are trying to innovate
        dralley 6y ago
        The day the "new" reddit design is enforced without some way to get around it is the day I quit permanently. "Old" reddit and HN, while not perfect, feel vastly more usable.
- banana_giraffe 6y ago
  I am curious: Why stop at the US? If reddit feels this is a good idea, then why not eliminate geographic compensation zones worldwide? I suppose the answer is: There's little friction to move inside the US, but a lot of friction (well, a ton right now, but even pre COVID, there was still a lot) to move outside the US and keep working for a US company. Not to mention time zone issues. I probably answered my own question, though I am curious what their rational is. That bit about time zones, though, is interesting to me. In my experience working with a team on both coasts, one side's gotta give. Generally, it's the side with fewer people, but one side ends up syncing up their work schedule to either be early or later. Tough to avoid.
  - grecy 6y ago
    Earn a US salary but not have to put up with the US political nonsense while living in essentially the same timezone while living as a king in Costa Rica, or Ecuador, Chile, Argentina or similar? Yes please, times 1000.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
      You're also held hostage by their infrastructure too. I'm not saying it's bad cause I don't know, but if something went out, do you really trust them to get things back online in a reasonable amount of time?
      - kyawzazaw 6y ago
        how much reliability of an infrastructure does an an individual engineer need?
        function_seven 6y ago
        I suppose if you have reliable and reasonably-priced mobile data, then you can deal with any other infrastructure issues that arise. Laptops don't need perfect power uptime, and software engineers don't always need to shower. But without that, at least the telecoms should probably be reliable.
- tareqak 6y ago
  That’s an excellent start, so hats off to Reddit for that. The next item on the list would be other things that vary within the US, such as the enforceability of non-compete clauses. Reddit can’t change the law for each state, but they can agree to not add those clauses for any US employee. How they would be held accountable is not a question I know how to answer beyond the realm of public opinion/memory. Again, I congratulate Reddit for the steps they took so far.
anuila 6y ago
The only way they should reimagine their workforce is to fire them all. The website has become embarrassing, with videos loading ridiculously slow or without audio. They’re basically helping me off of the addiction to Reddit, which actually isn’t such a bad thing.
- neeeeees 6y ago
  Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. A little harsh and hyperbolic , sure, but their website has become an unusable joke in recent years.
  - Deimorz 6y ago
    Using an article entirely as an excuse to soapbox about something that's barely related should always be downvoted. Even if you agree with it, that doesn't make it a relevant (or good) comment.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  I don't think you're being hyperbolic, the ruinously bad updates broke my addiction to reddit too. The charitable take is that they made it deliberately shit to drive adoption of their official app. If it's not that, then they must be hilariously incompetent.
  - ilaksh 6y ago
    I cannot view new messages on mobile without putting Chrome in Desktop Mode. In mobile view it always shows me the same old moderator message instead of new ones. Since it's been like that for so long, I have to assume it's deliberate. Some executive at Reddit decided they were going to try to break things to force people into the app.
- 0xy 6y ago
  The mobile website has deliberate unnecessary delays in order to force you onto the mobile app. Are reddit frontend engineers actually proud of this behavior?
- 6y ago
mimikatz 6y ago
Didn't Reddit not too long ago fire everyone who wouldn't move to SF?
RandallBrown 6y ago
Didn't Reddit start as a remote company before laying off everyone that wouldn't move to SF?
- xeromal 6y ago
  I was thinking that same thing. They nuked a few great people a few years ago
- konjin 6y ago
  Yes. They even had an open source client that you could contribute to and run your own copies of.
  - RandallBrown 6y ago
    We actually had an instance of Reddit that someone at my company hacked together an integration with our ActiveDirectory and we used it like an internal wiki and discussion board. It was better than anything else I've used.
- jahlove 6y ago
  This was one of the previous CEO's initiatives (Yishan Wong) back in 2014. https://venturebeat.com/2014/10/01/after-raising-50m-reddit-forces-remote-workers-to-relocate-to-sf-or-get-fired/ https://venturebeat.com/2014/10/01/after-raising-50m-reddit-...
- cmdshiftf4 6y ago
  What Reddit started as, and what is has become, are two entirely different beasts in virtually every manner.
  - purplecats 6y ago
    tragic what they did to the real founder
- jedberg 6y ago
  Reddit was never a remote company. We had a few remote employees at some point, and then in 2014 that was stopped, and now it looks like remote is back. But for at least the first five years, no one worked remotely (except the last two weeks of December, when we all worked remotely).
jaggederest 6y ago
Ironic considering this move in 2014: https://venturebeat.com/2014/10/01/after-raising-50m-reddit-forces-remote-workers-to-relocate-to-sf-or-get-fired/ https://venturebeat.com/2014/10/01/after-raising-50m-reddit-... If I were being hired remotely by Reddit I would be pretty wary of a sea change the moment it becomes possible to work in an office again.
- jbellis 6y ago
  Fair point, but 6 years and 3 (?) CEOs is an eternity in startup years. It's effectively a different company with the same name now.
  - hitekker 6y ago
    Perhaps. I've heard that Reddit engineers still push features to production without PMs in the loop.
    - ryanSrich 6y ago
      That sounds awesome TBH. I hate Reddit, and think it's Orwellian, but smart engineers shouldn't have to slow down to appease PMs.
      - silentsea90 6y ago
        Can imagine PMs at a product focused HN like forum complaining about the opposite aka engineers spending time at the wrong places
        ryanSrich 6y ago
        I've managed enough PMs to know that's 100% true. It happens at work, in the open.
      - _ah 6y ago
        A good PM saves work for the team by shifting work away from from valueless investments. If a team is "slowing down to appease a PM" then that PM is worthless.
ianmobbs 6y ago
> Our US compensation will be tied to pay ranges of high-cost areas such as SF and NY, regardless of where employees live This is exactly how it should be, kudos to Reddit. Major tech companies taking advantage of employees relocating to lower-CoL areas completely ignores that the value they bring to the company doesn't change at all.
- ilaksh 6y ago
  Right but you better believe they have already started planning what they are going to say for the next phase where they reduce the pay and recommend that people don't live in SF or NY etc.
jnwatson 6y ago
Perhaps I'm a little late to the game; I've now read enough of these articles that I sense a genuine seismic shift in the way that knowledge work is done in the US. Especially now, it is looking like we're in this situation for at least another year; it makes sense for companies to make longer-term changes. I was fortunate to start working for a 100% remote company 2.5 years ago; it is nice to see that I'll have more options for future employment if I ever need to seek it.
- soared 6y ago
  I'd imagine its similar to the whole 'hotdesk' topic. I read about hotdesks and how people hate them, but nobody I know in real life even knows what that is, much less works at a company with them.
TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
More power to them, but I would weigh giving anyone a raise until their web page stops being so user-hostile as to be worse than useless. The web site is so bad that I will go back and add "-reddit -site:reddit.com" to my searches if they've SEO'd the terms I'm looking for, and it comes up on the first page of results. The only reason the site exists now is as the world's largest porn aggregator. I'm sure there's enough money in that to continue to prosper, but I have no use for it any more.
- fooey 6y ago
  old.reddit.com still works, and if you make an account, you can set old as your default so //reddit.com uses that layout instead You can only change "Opt out of the redesign" setting on the new site though, which is super annoying, and a pretty big signal https://new.reddit.com/settings/ https://new.reddit.com/settings/
  - eznzt 6y ago
    You can also use extensions that do the same thing (redirecting you to old.reddit.com) without having to create an account.
    - RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 6y ago
      https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-redirect/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re... Works fine for me. But I also run it in a dedicated full-fat profile I use only for Reddit, because I'm paranoid.
  - ryanSrich 6y ago
    Call me old fashioned, but the old version of reddit on mobile without mobile styling or any media queries is a far better experience than any Reddit app.
  - repsilat 6y ago
    This doesn't work for me. When I "opt out" it just redirects me to old.reddit.com, and then when I go to reddit.com I get the new look again. And the opt-out button is missing on mobile. I think something changed a month or two back, that preference used to work.
grumple 6y ago
Excellent! I've never though it made much sense to tie compensation so tightly to geography. If I'm providing enough value for you to pay me $X, and I move somewhere cheaper but provide the same value, you'll either pay me $X or I'll find someone else that will. If you think you can find a suitable replacement for cheaper, you should be doing that anyway.
Thorentis 6y ago
It all starts with celebrating people getting paid the same. Then you realise that when Reddit starts doing pay cuts, everybody across the board will get them and SF/NYC become even more unaffordable.
- cma 6y ago
  Maybe SF will allow more dense housing to be built.
  - refurb 6y ago
    With the number of empty apartment in SF right now, I don't think more housing is the issue right now.
    - kortilla 6y ago
      Until I can rent a 2BR apartment for $1200/mo, it’s the issue.
      - refurb 6y ago
        In a major city like SF? Will never happen. That's the price for a 2-bed in a mid-west city with excess supply, super cheap labor and materials costs, limited permitting, etc. I could never see a $1200 2-bed in SF ever coving the costs of construction.
        kortilla 6y ago
        Yes, that’s the price in cities that haven’t fucking failed to address housing issues. The building materials are not meaningfully different in costs and labor isn’t that much worse (not nearly enough to justify 100% difference). There is nothing magical about the bay compared to Indianapolis that means I can’t find a 2 br apartment anywhere on the outskirts of even San Jose for a similar price. The only difference is the overbearing NIMBY crowd protecting their own investments in their homes.
corobo 6y ago
> Our employees, or Snoos as we’re known, rose to the occasion Well yeah weren't they all remote a few years back before Reddit forced them to move to SF or something?
forpayandlabor 6y ago
Posting from a throwaway since I use my real name (and reference my employer) on my primary account... Is nobody else worried that policies like this are going to end up penalizing workers who genuinely prefer living in an urban, high-COL area? I'm not sitting here in Brooklyn eagerly awaiting a chance to move to a cheap giant home in the suburbs - I genuinely like walkable communities, and moved to one, and found a job there which paid me enough to justify the high COL. This feels like a regression-to-the-mean sort of move, where the net effect over time will be all tech salaries becoming reduced as the labor pool spreads to cheaper areas and the national average market rates become depressed. It'll be great for those who genuinely like living in small towns in the midwest, they'll probably still be doing well relative to the local average. It'll be horrible for those who genuinely like living in expensive coastal areas - the pressure to move to a cheaper place will be enormous. (And thats not to say anything about my belief that a lot of low-COL areas afford to be cheap by providing poor social services, which feels like we're diminishing the ability of high-COL areas to apply social pressure to elevate the standard of living of other states and regions...) Am I thinking about this the wrong way, or are high-COL urban workers going to take a hit here?
- claydavisss 6y ago
  You're being paid for your value, not your zip code. If you like the amenities of more expensive locations, pay the price. No different than people who enjoy expensive cars...its a choice and your own expense. In any case what would even be the conclusion of these discussions anyway? This is developer wages getting normalized as the inevitable decoupling from expensive tech hubs draws out. Its happening no matter who gets upvotes on HN.
- R0b0t1 6y ago
  How would this penalize you?
  - forpayandlabor 6y ago
    I'm basically operating with the assumption that with the expansion of programs like this, enough tech workers would be willing to leave high-COL tech labor markets to reduce the average tech worker pay nationally as NYC/SF are no longer hyper-competitive, but not so many as to meaningfully reduce the cost of living in those areas, especially in NY where the COL is driven by many other industries. The end result (as I'm imagining it) would be that these new national-average tech salaries can still provide a very comfortable living in low-COL areas, but are no longer comfortable in high-COL areas.
azuriten 6y ago
> Imagine: casual and coffee shop-style seating, private space for heads-down focusing, larger bookable resources and collaboration spaces for teams to strategically meet IRL, and no more fixed desks—we’ll have neighborhoods for teams to gather and bookable desks for employees working in the office. As much as I'm supportive of having flexible working and with that flexible office space, I really don't like the idea of non-fixed desks/hotdesking. Ergonomics and having a correct desk setup up for your needs is incredibly important and something we don't value as much as we should. I'm 50/50 on whether I'd like to go to back to the office in the future (not having to take the tube in London is massive plus) but if I do I'd want my own desk setup, monitors set up at my required height and a comfortable chair. Hopefully that's not much too much to ask?
- jdhn 6y ago
  >I really don't like the idea of non-fixed desks/hotdesking. Ergonomics and having a correct desk setup up for your needs is incredibly important and something we don't value as much as we should. Someone who gets me! Hotdesks sounds like a good idea in theory, but in practice definitely are not. What happens if you show up late and somebody has your seat, do you boot them out? I'd just rather have a fixed desk, thank you very much.
  - the8bit 6y ago
    It is really for people coming in 1-2 days a week. Very impractical to have 5x desk space for 5 people who all come in one day a week.
- jedberg 6y ago
  The way I've seen this work out in reality is people who care about ergonomics and their setup end up going in every day and hoteling at the same desk every day, which basically just becomes their desk. Everyone else just uses what's available. It's kinda like when you were in college. Even though there were no assigned seats, most everyone sat in the same seat each class, after the first few.
ponker 6y ago
Was sure that with this title it would be a mass layoff announcement.
xur17 6y ago
Is anyone else incredibly bullish on coworking spaces, and coliving operations (ex: outsite + a long tail of smaller offerings) post pandemic?
TeeMassive 6y ago
> we want Reddit to be positioned as a workforce that’s as diverse as its ecosystem of communities and users So only left-leaning people living in big American urban centers?
dreamcompiler 6y ago
I was pleasantly surprised to find I could read the article without being badgered to use the reddit app.
fareesh 6y ago
Didn't reddit and a lot of other companies (I think Yahoo?) at some point mandate that all remote employees move to their HQ cities so they could work at the office, leading to a lot of folks quitting? I seem to remember a lot of blog posts lamenting this at the time
doh 6y ago
I think that's great. More the merrier. We at Pex went through this kind of transitions few years back, although we are basing our compensation on LA for USA and CA and on Vienna for Europe. We made this decision with the understanding that we can't compete for talent in the most expensive places of either continent but we are still left with great amount of people. It worked well for us. Not only while hiring candidates, but more importantly allowing our employees to move closer to their families or finding places to live that better match their lifestyle. We generally notices overall increase in happiness across the company while people are not restricted to single area. Also the financial pressure dropped significantly which means people stay with us longer even if they are offered better paid jobs (at least in the cash portion).
bawolff 6y ago
I always thought geographic zones for remote employees are a bit weird. Living somewhere expensive (within your country) seems like a lifestyle choice like any other. People would think its rediculous if we had different salary bands based on other lifestyle choices like how much you like to go to fancy resturants or something.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  Cost of living is almost a red herring at this point. The real driver of geographic compensation disparities was always just the cost of competing for talent in that area. The only thing that mattered was if a compensation offer was higher than the employee’s other options. Cost of living tends to follow from the prevailing wages in the area, not the other way around.
  - opportune 6y ago
    This assumes there is no elasticity to where people live. For many people there is a cost at which moving to a higher COL area for an adjusted salary makes sense. Or in general someone may be looking to move for the right job at the right price, etc. >Cost of living tends to follow from the prevailing wages in the area, not the other way around. I tend to agree with this, but I think there is also a dichotomy of destination cities (where people with lots of money move to because it's nice, not necessarily because they will make more money there) vs. non-destination cities which can distort prices absent of wages. See: Vancouver, parts of LA, parts of the NY area, Miami, etc.
- johnward 6y ago
  > Living somewhere expensive (within your country) seems like a lifestyle choice like any other. Right. I'm really looking to be able to drive a Tesla and vacation several times a year on remote tropical islands. Should my company pay me more for that choice?
visarga 6y ago
I don't like the fact that they don't offer personal desks anymore. It's a net loss. They didn't mention office perks such as food, I presume that's going out of the window as well. It's a rare opportunity for companies to back down on office costs and they are all to happy to take it.
octoberfranklin 6y ago
Is anybody else put off by the amount of corporatespeak ("reimagine" "explore" etc)? I almost dry heaved.
tsjq 6y ago
Irrespective of whatever HR-PR speak they do, the fact remains : Reddit sucks these days.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- echelon 6y ago
  Reddit used to have a high signal to noise ratio. After acquisition and several leadership changes, they decided to ramp up user acquisition and engagement. Essentially, the website is an ad funnel. They've added bells and whistles that attract the type of audience that watch videos, buy add ons, and click on ads. Reddit is turning into exactly the vehicle they want. It's going to be worth so much more money now. Not much can be done about it.
  - tsjq 6y ago
    Would HN become like that one day?
    - ngokevin 6y ago
      HN isn't a moneymaker. It's a goodwill-maker and brand-maker for YC so it's better for them to keep it the way it is.
      - krapp 6y ago
        Come on. HN gives YCombinator some measure of "street cred" in the tech community, it gives visibility to startups (especially YC's.) It's the water cooler where people gather trying to appear innovative and thought-leaderish just in case sama or pg wander by. Obviously it's a moneymaker. The goodwill and the brand make money. The low-tech anti-modern anti-business aesthetic makes money. There's a reason this forum is a subdomain of a venture capital firm. I agree that they shouldn't (and probably won't) change in Reddit's direction but only because they don't need to. Why bother with ads when your entire culture is in essence an ad funnel?
mensetmanusman 6y ago
We have to applaud Reddit for their compensation strategy. Every company that does this puts upward pressure on wages throughout the company. The scenario where every company goes remote simultaneously is what we are witnessing play out. That means workers in every major city will have a 1000 different businesses to offer their skills to. The businesses that offer ‘local salary’ cuts will be on the lower end of people’s interest. This still might be very bad for innovation (missing a critical mass of a range of experts accidentally trying new things in SV), but it may be very good for increasing wages in non costal cities (and the knock on effects that positively has on the communities there).
johnward 6y ago
This is great news. I wish worker pay was more based on the value they provide versus where they decide to live. If you're making $200k in the valley and you decide to move to Ohio, why are you suddenly worth less to the company? If everyone goes remote you no longer have to live in a high cost of living area. If you choose to that's on you.
- gamechangr 6y ago
  I think The answer might be that there were good developers in Ohio that for various reasons (family) didn’t want to move to the valley. They already accepted a lower salary. They were comfortable passing up valuable networking opportunities in HCOL. Now the $200k in valley, doesn’t provide as much value as $125k in OHio. That’s one example. I’m sure there is some examples that support both ideas, but there are some that support Paying the same developer less In LCOL areas

248 points by NearAP 6y ago

The key bit in the article ....To help drive the idea home (pun intended), we’ve reimagined our approach to compensation in the US. To support employees to live where they want to and do their best work, we are eliminating geographic compensation zones in the US. It means that our US compensation will be tied to pay ranges of high-cost areas such as SF and NY, regardless of where employees live. We believe this is the right balance of flexibility and support for employees, recognizing the varied tradeoffs people consider when deciding where to live. Internationally, we have had one pay range per country, and now the US will be consistent with this approach.....

seibelj 6y ago
In a remote-working world, the best talent should always command top-dollar, regardless of where they live. If they are absolutely rockstar talent and can be just as good remotely, then why wouldn't they command the highest salary? In fact, they should be able to command even more money now as all the remote-OK companies bid for them without any friction over moving / commute issues. Honestly it's a win-win-win - a win for the company that has far larger talent pool, win for the employee who gets paid more and can move to a more desirable, low cost-of-living location, and win for the "left-behind" areas of the country where many rich techies will move to. This will reduce class divisions and equalize our communities without any coercion and continue to allow highly-skilled labor to extract maximum income from capital. I very much like this shift towards remote work - it is the silver lining to come out of the pandemic.
- tomarr 6y ago
  Well this assumes the management cost (or inefficiency) does not go up for remote, which is unclear.
  - jnwatson 6y ago
    From personal experience, top-tier individual contributors are cheaper to manage.
    - kevinventullo 6y ago
      That's part of what makes them top-tier!
  - corobo 6y ago
    Considering all the middle managers I know of are desperately trying to get the workforce back into offices because they seemingly have bugger-all to do now, I'd say you can cut out a fair few of them if you need to balance out a new cost. Without being overworked, can a remote manager manage more people than an on-site manager? I don't know any remote managers
    - thedufer 6y ago
      > Considering all the middle managers I know of are desperately trying to get the workforce back into offices because they seemingly have bugger-all to do now, I'd say you can cut out a fair few of them if you need to balance out a new cost. Are you sure you've diagnosed this correctly? The managers I know are ready to get back to the office for the exact opposite reason - managing remotely is much harder and more time-consuming.
      - corobo 6y ago
        I'm talking about the types that value ass in seat over output. Of course good managers are still needed :)
- gotoeleven 6y ago
  The best talent always has and always will command top-dollar. We're talking about reddit here.
- jcrawfordor 6y ago
  I think there's an even simpler reason than this... some companies that hire remote employees use the same payscale everywhere, and that gives remote workers substantial negotiation leverage. An offer for remote work from one employer that was NYC-based and offered me an NYC-competitive salary in a much cheaper city was enough to talk a different company which leveled by city substantially upwards. Having watched this effect happen, if I were considering moving while working for a company that would relevel salary based on CoL, I would almost certainly be considering offers from other employers - and if I were a manager with an employee who was moving to go remote I would really push back on adjusting their salary, knowing that there are competing employers who won't, and the employee will probably find out one way or another. I wouldn't call myself a source of advice on remote work necessarily because I kind of fell into remote work by accident pre-COVID, and COVID has really solidified the situation. But it also seems like remote work is going to be on the rise outside of the context of COVID. I live in a city with very little tech industry and so I only rarely here from recruiters, and those that do contact me are usually talking about relo to a different city. Just over the last two months or so I've started hearing from recruiters at nearly the level I did when I lived in San Francisco - and they're mostly not talking relo.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >if they are absolutely rockstar talent and can be just as good remotely, then why wouldn't they command the highest salary? because this isn't how market economics work. You're not payed for being a rockstar, you're payed for the least amount of money you're willing to work for. Indian rockstar coders may be as productive as American ones, the difference is their cost of living is lower, so they're willing to do the same work for less money. Same reason your barista in SF makes more money than the same barista in Podunk Idaho despite serving just as much coffee.
  - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    The end result will be a huge equalization in pay. People in low cost of living areas will become a lot richer and those in high cost of living places will become a lot poorer. Likely those high cost of living places will quickly drop in cost as most people spread out.
    - xur17 6y ago
      This seems like a desirable outcome. Wouldn't this mean a more even distribution of wealth rather than large concentrations in a few big cities?
      - Rebelgecko 6y ago
        It's interesting because that equalization would only affect people in certain industries which are already fairly well compensated. If people making tech salaries move to overlooked parts of the country, I wonder to what extent their wealth would trickle down to benefit their new communities? It would be interesting if a bunch of people leaving the Bay Area ended up congregating in certain low-COL communities. I wouldn't be surprised if a sort of rural gentrification occurs in the handful of Midwestern towns that have gigabit fiber. Would those areas remain low COL? Would the existing inhabitants become a sort of underclass?
        webmaven 6y ago
        > I wouldn't be surprised if a sort of rural gentrification occurs in the handful of Midwestern towns that have gigabit fiber. Would those areas remain low COL? Would the existing inhabitants become a sort of underclass? You'd see something like that, but keep in mind that outside of dense urban cores, you mostly don't have the same constraints on available real estate that drive existing residents out by rising prices (and the SF Bay Area's lack of housing inventory is largely self-inflicted, unlike, say, Manhattan). So, yes, some competition from well-heeled newcomers will drive prices up a bit (encouraging new construction), but without a constraint on housing inventory that drives the newcomers to compete with each other, what you get is just a bit of urbanization, rather than gentrification per-se.
manningthegoose 6y ago
This is great, glad to see reddit leading on this front. I do wonder what effect this would have on metro areas with high COL if more companies adopted this policy. Mass exodus? Probably not. But I imagine the effect will at least be measurable.
- paxys 6y ago
  I'm more interested in the effect on metro areas with a lower COL. Imagine an influx of young professionals with Bay Area salaries in cities like Denver, Austin, Huntsville, Madison, San Diego, Nashville, Charlotte, Salt Lake City. I can't imagine current residents would be too happy.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    In the short-term. In the long-term wouldn't everyone's wages rise?
  - manningthegoose 6y ago
    Definitely agree. Although maybe the increased dilution of tech workers (roughly same # spread across larger set of cities) will help mitigate this.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - silentsea90 6y ago
    The only case where residents would be unhappy is when said residents flood the market causing meaningful inflation across local markets. It takes the entirety of the bay area young professionals to keep the bay area as expensive as it is. 1. Would the dispersion of the same talent (assuming talent isn't suddenly growing in size) + local tech talent being paid higher cause the same inflation even when split over a large number of cities? 2. If said inflation happens, would they not move again? I believe incentives here are to distribute this talent across the US, not concentrate in new cheaper centers
  - sologoub 6y ago
Thaxll 6y ago
This is such a bad idea, why would someone earning 150k in sf should earn the same in Deroit? It will just increase the price of living in cheaper area which will create the same problem as in SF, you work in IT you're ok otherwise life gets too expensive.
- core-questions 6y ago
  > It will just increase the price of living in cheaper area Also seen by some as the value of their houses rising, which they might welcome; and this only happens if there's some demand from other workers to work remotely from their area, which brings money into the area's service sectors. This could breathe new life into many parts of the country that are currently without any particular reason to go on existing. I could see smaller townships deliberately incentivizing remote workers and designing things around them as a primary source of monetary influx.
- alfalfasprout 6y ago
  Typical shortsighted viewpoint... cost of living increases along with the economy. Those higher paid workers will then spend their dollars in the economy thus bolstering local businesses. So many places in the US would kill for an influx of high paid individuals to kickstart their economy.
  - Thaxll 6y ago
    It works until too many people are paid big salary, it increases the cost of living because of demand. You should talk to the people in the bay area.
    - shuntress 6y ago
      You already refuted this in your original statement. >why would someone earning 150k in sf should earn the same in Deroit? Just replace Detroit with [Some other place] and replace SF with Detroit
- paxys 6y ago
  Why should two people adding the same amount of value to a company be compensated differently?
slg 6y ago
>we are eliminating geographic compensation zones in the US I am worried about the precedent this sets and the long term consequences. I can certainly imagine a scenario that plays out like the following: Step 1 - Eliminate geographic considerations for salary. Step 2 - Scale all salaries to expensive markets. Step 3 - Slowly allow salaries to stagnate until employees in expensive markets are no longer receiving fair pay. Step 4 - Employees in expensive markets leave for other jobs. Step 5 - Allow steps 3 and 4 to repeat themselves as many times as you like. Step 6 - Company has now decreased employee salaries and physical expenses like office space. Step 7 - Profit.
- fakedang 6y ago
  Step 6.5 - Watch as all the good talent ends up elsewhere Step 7 - Watch your lovely forum turn to shit Step 8 - Fail and declare bankruptcy/get sold to Yahoo
  - vermilingua 6y ago
    “Turn to shit” makes it sound like it hasn’t already. Reddit is no longer trying to innovate, they’re milking their incumbent userbase for the ad money until they can sell.
    - cvhashim 6y ago
      That’s unfortunately what happens when you’re funded and scale up with VC money. The investors want their returns so this is just a result of that. VC backed companies like Reddit will add unpopular features and intrusive ads to make money — users be damned.
    - 0-_-0 6y ago
      Looking at the horrible website redesign, they are trying to innovate
      - dralley 6y ago
        The day the "new" reddit design is enforced without some way to get around it is the day I quit permanently. "Old" reddit and HN, while not perfect, feel vastly more usable.
banana_giraffe 6y ago
I am curious: Why stop at the US? If reddit feels this is a good idea, then why not eliminate geographic compensation zones worldwide? I suppose the answer is: There's little friction to move inside the US, but a lot of friction (well, a ton right now, but even pre COVID, there was still a lot) to move outside the US and keep working for a US company. Not to mention time zone issues. I probably answered my own question, though I am curious what their rational is. That bit about time zones, though, is interesting to me. In my experience working with a team on both coasts, one side's gotta give. Generally, it's the side with fewer people, but one side ends up syncing up their work schedule to either be early or later. Tough to avoid.
- grecy 6y ago
  Earn a US salary but not have to put up with the US political nonsense while living in essentially the same timezone while living as a king in Costa Rica, or Ecuador, Chile, Argentina or similar? Yes please, times 1000.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
    You're also held hostage by their infrastructure too. I'm not saying it's bad cause I don't know, but if something went out, do you really trust them to get things back online in a reasonable amount of time?
    - kyawzazaw 6y ago
      how much reliability of an infrastructure does an an individual engineer need?
      - function_seven 6y ago
        I suppose if you have reliable and reasonably-priced mobile data, then you can deal with any other infrastructure issues that arise. Laptops don't need perfect power uptime, and software engineers don't always need to shower. But without that, at least the telecoms should probably be reliable.
tareqak 6y ago
That’s an excellent start, so hats off to Reddit for that. The next item on the list would be other things that vary within the US, such as the enforceability of non-compete clauses. Reddit can’t change the law for each state, but they can agree to not add those clauses for any US employee. How they would be held accountable is not a question I know how to answer beyond the realm of public opinion/memory. Again, I congratulate Reddit for the steps they took so far.

anuila 6y ago

The only way they should reimagine their workforce is to fire them all. The website has become embarrassing, with videos loading ridiculously slow or without audio. They’re basically helping me off of the addiction to Reddit, which actually isn’t such a bad thing.

neeeeees 6y ago
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. A little harsh and hyperbolic , sure, but their website has become an unusable joke in recent years.
- Deimorz 6y ago
  Using an article entirely as an excuse to soapbox about something that's barely related should always be downvoted. Even if you agree with it, that doesn't make it a relevant (or good) comment.
bigbubba 6y ago
I don't think you're being hyperbolic, the ruinously bad updates broke my addiction to reddit too. The charitable take is that they made it deliberately shit to drive adoption of their official app. If it's not that, then they must be hilariously incompetent.
- ilaksh 6y ago
  I cannot view new messages on mobile without putting Chrome in Desktop Mode. In mobile view it always shows me the same old moderator message instead of new ones. Since it's been like that for so long, I have to assume it's deliberate. Some executive at Reddit decided they were going to try to break things to force people into the app.
0xy 6y ago
The mobile website has deliberate unnecessary delays in order to force you onto the mobile app. Are reddit frontend engineers actually proud of this behavior?
6y ago

mimikatz 6y ago

Didn't Reddit not too long ago fire everyone who wouldn't move to SF?

RandallBrown 6y ago

Didn't Reddit start as a remote company before laying off everyone that wouldn't move to SF?

xeromal 6y ago
I was thinking that same thing. They nuked a few great people a few years ago
konjin 6y ago
Yes. They even had an open source client that you could contribute to and run your own copies of.
- RandallBrown 6y ago
  We actually had an instance of Reddit that someone at my company hacked together an integration with our ActiveDirectory and we used it like an internal wiki and discussion board. It was better than anything else I've used.
jahlove 6y ago
This was one of the previous CEO's initiatives (Yishan Wong) back in 2014. https://venturebeat.com/2014/10/01/after-raising-50m-reddit-forces-remote-workers-to-relocate-to-sf-or-get-fired/ https://venturebeat.com/2014/10/01/after-raising-50m-reddit-...
cmdshiftf4 6y ago
What Reddit started as, and what is has become, are two entirely different beasts in virtually every manner.
- purplecats 6y ago
  tragic what they did to the real founder
jedberg 6y ago
Reddit was never a remote company. We had a few remote employees at some point, and then in 2014 that was stopped, and now it looks like remote is back. But for at least the first five years, no one worked remotely (except the last two weeks of December, when we all worked remotely).

jaggederest 6y ago

Ironic considering this move in 2014: https://venturebeat.com/2014/10/01/after-raising-50m-reddit-forces-remote-workers-to-relocate-to-sf-or-get-fired/ https://venturebeat.com/2014/10/01/after-raising-50m-reddit-... If I were being hired remotely by Reddit I would be pretty wary of a sea change the moment it becomes possible to work in an office again.

jbellis 6y ago
Fair point, but 6 years and 3 (?) CEOs is an eternity in startup years. It's effectively a different company with the same name now.
- hitekker 6y ago
  Perhaps. I've heard that Reddit engineers still push features to production without PMs in the loop.
  - ryanSrich 6y ago
    That sounds awesome TBH. I hate Reddit, and think it's Orwellian, but smart engineers shouldn't have to slow down to appease PMs.
    - silentsea90 6y ago
      Can imagine PMs at a product focused HN like forum complaining about the opposite aka engineers spending time at the wrong places
      - ryanSrich 6y ago
        I've managed enough PMs to know that's 100% true. It happens at work, in the open.
    - _ah 6y ago
      A good PM saves work for the team by shifting work away from from valueless investments. If a team is "slowing down to appease a PM" then that PM is worthless.

ianmobbs 6y ago

> Our US compensation will be tied to pay ranges of high-cost areas such as SF and NY, regardless of where employees live This is exactly how it should be, kudos to Reddit. Major tech companies taking advantage of employees relocating to lower-CoL areas completely ignores that the value they bring to the company doesn't change at all.

ilaksh 6y ago
Right but you better believe they have already started planning what they are going to say for the next phase where they reduce the pay and recommend that people don't live in SF or NY etc.

jnwatson 6y ago

Perhaps I'm a little late to the game; I've now read enough of these articles that I sense a genuine seismic shift in the way that knowledge work is done in the US. Especially now, it is looking like we're in this situation for at least another year; it makes sense for companies to make longer-term changes. I was fortunate to start working for a 100% remote company 2.5 years ago; it is nice to see that I'll have more options for future employment if I ever need to seek it.

soared 6y ago
I'd imagine its similar to the whole 'hotdesk' topic. I read about hotdesks and how people hate them, but nobody I know in real life even knows what that is, much less works at a company with them.

TheRealDunkirk 6y ago

More power to them, but I would weigh giving anyone a raise until their web page stops being so user-hostile as to be worse than useless. The web site is so bad that I will go back and add "-reddit -site:reddit.com" to my searches if they've SEO'd the terms I'm looking for, and it comes up on the first page of results. The only reason the site exists now is as the world's largest porn aggregator. I'm sure there's enough money in that to continue to prosper, but I have no use for it any more.

fooey 6y ago
old.reddit.com still works, and if you make an account, you can set old as your default so //reddit.com uses that layout instead You can only change "Opt out of the redesign" setting on the new site though, which is super annoying, and a pretty big signal https://new.reddit.com/settings/ https://new.reddit.com/settings/
- eznzt 6y ago
  You can also use extensions that do the same thing (redirecting you to old.reddit.com) without having to create an account.
  - RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 6y ago
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-redirect/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re... Works fine for me. But I also run it in a dedicated full-fat profile I use only for Reddit, because I'm paranoid.
- ryanSrich 6y ago
  Call me old fashioned, but the old version of reddit on mobile without mobile styling or any media queries is a far better experience than any Reddit app.
- repsilat 6y ago
  This doesn't work for me. When I "opt out" it just redirects me to old.reddit.com, and then when I go to reddit.com I get the new look again. And the opt-out button is missing on mobile. I think something changed a month or two back, that preference used to work.

grumple 6y ago

Excellent! I've never though it made much sense to tie compensation so tightly to geography. If I'm providing enough value for you to pay me $X, and I move somewhere cheaper but provide the same value, you'll either pay me $X or I'll find someone else that will. If you think you can find a suitable replacement for cheaper, you should be doing that anyway.

Thorentis 6y ago

It all starts with celebrating people getting paid the same. Then you realise that when Reddit starts doing pay cuts, everybody across the board will get them and SF/NYC become even more unaffordable.

cma 6y ago
Maybe SF will allow more dense housing to be built.
- refurb 6y ago
  With the number of empty apartment in SF right now, I don't think more housing is the issue right now.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    Until I can rent a 2BR apartment for $1200/mo, it’s the issue.
    - refurb 6y ago
      In a major city like SF? Will never happen. That's the price for a 2-bed in a mid-west city with excess supply, super cheap labor and materials costs, limited permitting, etc. I could never see a $1200 2-bed in SF ever coving the costs of construction.
      - kortilla 6y ago
        Yes, that’s the price in cities that haven’t fucking failed to address housing issues. The building materials are not meaningfully different in costs and labor isn’t that much worse (not nearly enough to justify 100% difference). There is nothing magical about the bay compared to Indianapolis that means I can’t find a 2 br apartment anywhere on the outskirts of even San Jose for a similar price. The only difference is the overbearing NIMBY crowd protecting their own investments in their homes.

corobo 6y ago

> Our employees, or Snoos as we’re known, rose to the occasion Well yeah weren't they all remote a few years back before Reddit forced them to move to SF or something?

forpayandlabor 6y ago

Posting from a throwaway since I use my real name (and reference my employer) on my primary account... Is nobody else worried that policies like this are going to end up penalizing workers who genuinely prefer living in an urban, high-COL area? I'm not sitting here in Brooklyn eagerly awaiting a chance to move to a cheap giant home in the suburbs - I genuinely like walkable communities, and moved to one, and found a job there which paid me enough to justify the high COL. This feels like a regression-to-the-mean sort of move, where the net effect over time will be all tech salaries becoming reduced as the labor pool spreads to cheaper areas and the national average market rates become depressed. It'll be great for those who genuinely like living in small towns in the midwest, they'll probably still be doing well relative to the local average. It'll be horrible for those who genuinely like living in expensive coastal areas - the pressure to move to a cheaper place will be enormous. (And thats not to say anything about my belief that a lot of low-COL areas afford to be cheap by providing poor social services, which feels like we're diminishing the ability of high-COL areas to apply social pressure to elevate the standard of living of other states and regions...) Am I thinking about this the wrong way, or are high-COL urban workers going to take a hit here?

claydavisss 6y ago
You're being paid for your value, not your zip code. If you like the amenities of more expensive locations, pay the price. No different than people who enjoy expensive cars...its a choice and your own expense. In any case what would even be the conclusion of these discussions anyway? This is developer wages getting normalized as the inevitable decoupling from expensive tech hubs draws out. Its happening no matter who gets upvotes on HN.
R0b0t1 6y ago
How would this penalize you?
- forpayandlabor 6y ago
  I'm basically operating with the assumption that with the expansion of programs like this, enough tech workers would be willing to leave high-COL tech labor markets to reduce the average tech worker pay nationally as NYC/SF are no longer hyper-competitive, but not so many as to meaningfully reduce the cost of living in those areas, especially in NY where the COL is driven by many other industries. The end result (as I'm imagining it) would be that these new national-average tech salaries can still provide a very comfortable living in low-COL areas, but are no longer comfortable in high-COL areas.

azuriten 6y ago

> Imagine: casual and coffee shop-style seating, private space for heads-down focusing, larger bookable resources and collaboration spaces for teams to strategically meet IRL, and no more fixed desks—we’ll have neighborhoods for teams to gather and bookable desks for employees working in the office. As much as I'm supportive of having flexible working and with that flexible office space, I really don't like the idea of non-fixed desks/hotdesking. Ergonomics and having a correct desk setup up for your needs is incredibly important and something we don't value as much as we should. I'm 50/50 on whether I'd like to go to back to the office in the future (not having to take the tube in London is massive plus) but if I do I'd want my own desk setup, monitors set up at my required height and a comfortable chair. Hopefully that's not much too much to ask?

jdhn 6y ago
>I really don't like the idea of non-fixed desks/hotdesking. Ergonomics and having a correct desk setup up for your needs is incredibly important and something we don't value as much as we should. Someone who gets me! Hotdesks sounds like a good idea in theory, but in practice definitely are not. What happens if you show up late and somebody has your seat, do you boot them out? I'd just rather have a fixed desk, thank you very much.
- the8bit 6y ago
  It is really for people coming in 1-2 days a week. Very impractical to have 5x desk space for 5 people who all come in one day a week.
jedberg 6y ago
The way I've seen this work out in reality is people who care about ergonomics and their setup end up going in every day and hoteling at the same desk every day, which basically just becomes their desk. Everyone else just uses what's available. It's kinda like when you were in college. Even though there were no assigned seats, most everyone sat in the same seat each class, after the first few.

ponker 6y ago

Was sure that with this title it would be a mass layoff announcement.

xur17 6y ago

Is anyone else incredibly bullish on coworking spaces, and coliving operations (ex: outsite + a long tail of smaller offerings) post pandemic?

TeeMassive 6y ago

> we want Reddit to be positioned as a workforce that’s as diverse as its ecosystem of communities and users So only left-leaning people living in big American urban centers?

dreamcompiler 6y ago

I was pleasantly surprised to find I could read the article without being badgered to use the reddit app.

fareesh 6y ago

Didn't reddit and a lot of other companies (I think Yahoo?) at some point mandate that all remote employees move to their HQ cities so they could work at the office, leading to a lot of folks quitting? I seem to remember a lot of blog posts lamenting this at the time

doh 6y ago

I think that's great. More the merrier. We at Pex went through this kind of transitions few years back, although we are basing our compensation on LA for USA and CA and on Vienna for Europe. We made this decision with the understanding that we can't compete for talent in the most expensive places of either continent but we are still left with great amount of people. It worked well for us. Not only while hiring candidates, but more importantly allowing our employees to move closer to their families or finding places to live that better match their lifestyle. We generally notices overall increase in happiness across the company while people are not restricted to single area. Also the financial pressure dropped significantly which means people stay with us longer even if they are offered better paid jobs (at least in the cash portion).

bawolff 6y ago

I always thought geographic zones for remote employees are a bit weird. Living somewhere expensive (within your country) seems like a lifestyle choice like any other. People would think its rediculous if we had different salary bands based on other lifestyle choices like how much you like to go to fancy resturants or something.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
Cost of living is almost a red herring at this point. The real driver of geographic compensation disparities was always just the cost of competing for talent in that area. The only thing that mattered was if a compensation offer was higher than the employee’s other options. Cost of living tends to follow from the prevailing wages in the area, not the other way around.
- opportune 6y ago
  This assumes there is no elasticity to where people live. For many people there is a cost at which moving to a higher COL area for an adjusted salary makes sense. Or in general someone may be looking to move for the right job at the right price, etc. >Cost of living tends to follow from the prevailing wages in the area, not the other way around. I tend to agree with this, but I think there is also a dichotomy of destination cities (where people with lots of money move to because it's nice, not necessarily because they will make more money there) vs. non-destination cities which can distort prices absent of wages. See: Vancouver, parts of LA, parts of the NY area, Miami, etc.
johnward 6y ago
> Living somewhere expensive (within your country) seems like a lifestyle choice like any other. Right. I'm really looking to be able to drive a Tesla and vacation several times a year on remote tropical islands. Should my company pay me more for that choice?

visarga 6y ago

I don't like the fact that they don't offer personal desks anymore. It's a net loss. They didn't mention office perks such as food, I presume that's going out of the window as well. It's a rare opportunity for companies to back down on office costs and they are all to happy to take it.

octoberfranklin 6y ago

Is anybody else put off by the amount of corporatespeak ("reimagine" "explore" etc)? I almost dry heaved.

tsjq 6y ago

Irrespective of whatever HR-PR speak they do, the fact remains : Reddit sucks these days.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
echelon 6y ago
Reddit used to have a high signal to noise ratio. After acquisition and several leadership changes, they decided to ramp up user acquisition and engagement. Essentially, the website is an ad funnel. They've added bells and whistles that attract the type of audience that watch videos, buy add ons, and click on ads. Reddit is turning into exactly the vehicle they want. It's going to be worth so much more money now. Not much can be done about it.
- tsjq 6y ago
  Would HN become like that one day?
  - ngokevin 6y ago
    HN isn't a moneymaker. It's a goodwill-maker and brand-maker for YC so it's better for them to keep it the way it is.
    - krapp 6y ago
      Come on. HN gives YCombinator some measure of "street cred" in the tech community, it gives visibility to startups (especially YC's.) It's the water cooler where people gather trying to appear innovative and thought-leaderish just in case sama or pg wander by. Obviously it's a moneymaker. The goodwill and the brand make money. The low-tech anti-modern anti-business aesthetic makes money. There's a reason this forum is a subdomain of a venture capital firm. I agree that they shouldn't (and probably won't) change in Reddit's direction but only because they don't need to. Why bother with ads when your entire culture is in essence an ad funnel?

mensetmanusman 6y ago

We have to applaud Reddit for their compensation strategy. Every company that does this puts upward pressure on wages throughout the company. The scenario where every company goes remote simultaneously is what we are witnessing play out. That means workers in every major city will have a 1000 different businesses to offer their skills to. The businesses that offer ‘local salary’ cuts will be on the lower end of people’s interest. This still might be very bad for innovation (missing a critical mass of a range of experts accidentally trying new things in SV), but it may be very good for increasing wages in non costal cities (and the knock on effects that positively has on the communities there).

johnward 6y ago

This is great news. I wish worker pay was more based on the value they provide versus where they decide to live. If you're making $200k in the valley and you decide to move to Ohio, why are you suddenly worth less to the company? If everyone goes remote you no longer have to live in a high cost of living area. If you choose to that's on you.

gamechangr 6y ago
I think The answer might be that there were good developers in Ohio that for various reasons (family) didn’t want to move to the valley. They already accepted a lower salary. They were comfortable passing up valuable networking opportunities in HCOL. Now the $200k in valley, doesn’t provide as much value as $125k in OHio. That’s one example. I’m sure there is some examples that support both ideas, but there are some that support Paying the same developer less In LCOL areas