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Spotify is letting employees work from anywhere while paying SF and NY salaries
- nivenkos 6y agoDo they pay those salaries in Europe? Because European salaries are usually 1/3 of the US rate.
- magnusmundus 6y agoThey weren't doing that in 2019, at least -- and yes, 1/3 sounds (broadly) accurate.
- akmarinov 6y agoVery interested in that as well
- hocuspocus 6y agoFrom what I've gathered when interviewing and the public data you can find on levels.fyi, Spotify doesn't pay their Stockholm employees very well, even by European standards.
- rightbyte 6y ago"Most of our offices are in large cities like New York, London and Stockholm" I looked out my window and laugthed abit reading that. They can't compare Stockholm with London amd NY like that ... Spotify in Stockholm does not pay NY wages today atleast.
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 6y agoAre their glassdoor salaries accurate? 58000 kr/mo for senior developers? You could find similar jobs in Warsaw with half the cost of living.
- rightbyte 6y agoI don't have first or 2nd hand info but most likely they are. 58 000 SEK/month total compensation (7000USD/month) is approx. the 75th percentile of unionized software engineers (all ages) in Stockholm according to the engineering union.
- oblio 6y agoAre jobs where developers make $7k per month that common in Poland, though?
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 6y agoNot as common as I presume they are in Sweden - nowadays most job contracts for individual contributors without significant seniority or additional duties fall short of that (~6k gross or around 8k cost for employer), although with covid they are seen more frequently. I was mostly surprised to see Spotify in particular not paying more.
- rightbyte 6y agoSpotify is kinda hype and it is cool saying you work at Spotify in a bar, so they have no problems finding workers (but they sure complain about "engineering shortage"). Music streaming is probably not even a especially hard technical challenge. Quite low bandwidth, open source audio codec and no real time syncing requirements between users. I guess most SWE work is in DB management, cataloguing music or fixing phone vendor bugs in the Android app. Why would Spotify pay eg. twice what Ericsson, Volvo or Scania pays to reach parity with Apple, Tesla or whatever big truck manufacturer there are in the US.
- raverbashing 6y ago1/3 is too little No, a person making 120k$ in NY is not making 40kEUR in a western European city. Maybe half of that, sure. But not 40k (even if you account the EUR-USD diff)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bonzini 6y ago130k$ is probably 60k€ or more in Europe. It's like that in Italy and IT wages are abysmal here.
- I_AM_A_SMURF 6y agoAre you sure? 130k is fresh out of grad money in SF/Seattle (not sure about on the east coast, but presumably is similar). For reference senior is ~300-350k (this is for big tech companies)
- javajosh 6y agoMy experience in Germany may not be typical. But with the EU's higher taxes, 80% indeed goes down to 50%. However if you have kids, the numbers climb up again because, at least in Germany, you get "Kindergeld" and "Elterngeld" and state-sponsored day-care (Kita) for your kid(s). Plus, 30-days a year vacation standard, you get walkable cities, very good public transportation (so, no car costs) AND you get to take inexpensive weekend trips to Greece, London, Prague, or wherever you want to go. It's up to you to compute that value.
- vidarh 6y agoYou really can't just make blanket statements about EU taxation effect on take home salary. There are massive differences in rates, and you also need to consider specific income levels as the profile of taxation by income band and dependents varies greatly. Germany and (especially) Belgium tends to top the OECD lists over taxation, so for Germany you may well be right, while e.g. Denmark, Ireland and Poland (may be true for others too, but those are the ones I happened to be aware of) has tax rates that in several of the categories the OECD tracks are below US tax levels. (Source: OECD Taxing Wages 2020)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mewpmewp2 6y agoAs someone from Europe, I work in a company with US presence and my counterparts do get 3x salary, according to levels.fyi at least.
- superbcarrot 6y ago> That's an exaggeration. At worst its 50%, but usually its ~80%. That's too high. In London getting 80% of equivalent pre-tax salaries in a big US city is virtually impossible. And then 1/3 of it goes to taxes and national insurance deductions.
- eloisant 6y agoThere are many countries in Europe, and many cities, and salaries differ wildy. You'll get a higher salary in northern Europe (Germany, UK, Netherlands, etc.) than in southern Europe (Spain, Italy, France). Also you'll get a higher salary in a tech hub like London or Berlin and a lower one in the country side. There are variations in US too, although probably not as big as between European countries.
- xtracto 6y agoI think European salaries are more like 1/2 of the US rate. Mexico/LatAm salaries are 1/3.
- patall 6y agoMost European salaries may be 1/2 the SF rates. But that is not a fair comparison. A Google engineer in Zurich, Switzerland makes almost as much as one in SF, at an also very high cost of living.
- FartyMcFarter 6y agoThis could create a "golden chains" situation for employees, whereby they don't leave their job only because of the money, despite not being happy or as productive as they could be.
- dannyr 6y agoDoesn't that already exist working remote or not?
- TulliusCicero 6y agoThe effect is much more muted living somewhere like SF or NYC, because there's a bunch of companies around those areas that pay similarly that you could switch to. If other high-paying companies started also paying major tech hub wages to anywhere in the US for remote work, then this problem would be similarly alleviated.
- kungito 6y agoSince I've been feeling like this for most of my working life, I don't see why this would be a new thing.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ivanche 6y agoIt could also be a fast track to the financial freedom. Work for 10 years receiving an SF salary living in a low COL area, save agressively and invest in low-cost broad-market ETFs. One should be pretty well financially doing this.
- nly 6y agow.r.t investing: If you're on a good income you are actually incentivized to do so in some countries. In the UK every pound you earn between $140K and $170K USD is effectively taxed at 65%. Investing via contributions in to a pension is tax free. 100% gross salary. Even if the market goes nowhere for 30 years that's 3.5% annualized return. You pay tax when you take your pension of course, but by that point its on your terms.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- JackPoach 6y agoLet's see how long this lasts. This used to be the pathos for many US manufacturers 30 years ago, but it did not last.
- chrischen 6y agoThey were already paying what they were paying. You can either get same talent at lower salaries or higher salaries and better talent.
- jobvandervoort 6y agoFWIW we [0] employ a lot of people in the EU working remotely and a large part of them earns SF/NY salaries. Probably a strong selection bias to the types of companies that choose to work with us. [0]: I'm the CEO of remote.com
- bombcar 6y agoI couldn't help but remember the classic IRC exchange: http://bash.org/?258908 http://bash.org/?258908
- raverbashing 6y agoToo bad that employee's poker face was lacking
- tsss 6y agoSure because remote.com is so outrageously expensive that only people earning 100k and more can afford it.
- jobvandervoort 6y agoWe tend to be the most affordable employer of record with quite some margin. Paying contractors is free through us.
- tsss 6y agoOne of my colleagues works remote from another country and you were going to charge him $600/month. That's more than $7k per year, a good 10% of the gross salary of a senior developer in Germany. For that much money our company can contract a tax accountant just for him many times over.
- jobvandervoort 6y agoCan you email me with the needs? I'm sure we can work something out. I don't think the tax accountant is able to be a local liable employer, like we are.
- TENACIOUSANT 6y agothat's nice - it would be even better if they paid artists remotely equitably.
- nly 6y agoMake hay while the sun shines. A true shift to remote work, should it happen, spells the eventual end of insanely high SF FANMAG salaries. Market forces will soon close these opportunities. My limited experience tells me people aren't prepared for homogenization of salaries across geographies: South East England, outside London: 1x London: 2x New York: 3x San Francisco: 6x On making hay: A friend of mine is currently earning around 3-4x in Romania paying almost no tax.
- syshum 6y agoNot even homogenization, for the US this will be the precurser to the next round of Layoff's, and all those people that took part in the #LearnToCode and other movements to retrain people displaced from other employment into Programming jobs / office style jobs are going to be shocked when their nice remote job is outsourced to another nation. Round 1 was the manufacturing Sector, Round 2 will be the office sector. Economically the US is on a down hill path, and there is not a money printer large enough to fix this problem
- tester34 6y agoI hope you're right That's what I'm looking for - increasing salary 4 times for similar stuff while having living costs of 400-500 USD / month
- ilkan 6y agoMany companies tried and failed since the 90's, because most coampanies' software dev is a core group of skilled people using vague specifications to build a product for their first time.
- lanevorockz 6y agoThat is true, it might be the end of the sustainability of overpopulated cities ...
- 0_____0 6y agoFunny because cities are more efficient from an energy and carbon footprint perspective. The only thing that makes it unsustainable is that some cities haven't figured out how to make it so everyone who should abbe able to live there can afford it
- senko 6y agoPSA: When comparing US and EU salaries (or anywhere, really), use total cost to employer (excluding fixed office costs), or total benefit to employee (incl. taxes paid in their name and health/retirement costs). US salaries are mostly discussed before taxes, while often for EU countries it's after taxes and/or after mandatory health insurance and retirement savings.
- raverbashing 6y ago> US salaries are mostly discussed before taxes, while often for EU countries it's after taxes and/or after mandatory health insurance and retirement savings. Citation? I think pretty much all salaries discussed in Europe was before tax (Stock option on the other hand are usually not counted)
- saiya-jin 6y agoThis is country specific but in many European countries there are employer's and employee's social deductions. Usually salaries discussed are already without employer's part, but with employee's ones. Taxes should be taken away only once AFAIK. So salaries discussed/negotiated will still have in them 1) tax; 2) employee social deductions; 3) health insurance. This is deducted, and result goes to employee's account. In many places, its cca 50% or less that gets into account depending on many things (state, family situation, type of employment etc.)
- vidarh 6y agoEmployer payroll taxes exists in a number (all?) of US states too.
- bonzini 6y agoBefore tax but after retirement savings (or most of them, e.g. in Italy it's about 4:1 with the employer paying the larger part). Depending on the country after healthcare costs too, since often healthcare is simply financed from taxes (if not, anyway it will be lower and also come with hardly any deductibles).
- 6y ago
- ThePadawan 6y agoI can't see a reference if this is for current employees only or will be applied to future hires as well. Does anyone have more details?
- timvisee 6y agoMaybe they should pay their artists more, instead of their employees.
- peteretep 6y agoWho are Spotify’s artists? I thought the artists contracted with record labels
- garbagetime 6y agoThe people who make the music. Some don't have record labels, so it would be weird to not just talk about the artists.
- steverb 6y agoIt is pretty straightforward to get your music on Spotify and all the other streaming platforms. No record label needed. There are very inexpensive services that will do all the leg work for you, but it take approximately 230 streaming plays on spotify to earn a dollar.
- cabbageoverload 6y agoHow many plays should it take to earn a dollar? I don't know anything about the music industry.
- steverb 6y ago
- dd_roger 6y agoI just hope the home office trend doesn't lead to an urbanization of the countryside. I'm from a charming village that was overtaken by ugly and expensive developements during the past 20 years because people from the nearest city realised it was within commutable distance. I die a little inside every time I see someone oneline saying "I can't wait 'till X area has better internet so I can move there", understand "I can't wait 'till X area has better internet so 10k people can have the same idea as me and turn this rural community into a city". Now in bigger countries (the US, France, Germany, etc.) there will always be cheap rural areas left (though the most desirable areas will probably urbanize and/or become completely unafordable for workers of the primary and secondary sector) but I'm very worried for smaller countries like mine where rural areas are already sought after as of now and it's only going to get worse.
- humanrebar 6y agoIt's tragic, yeah, but the same thing happens to different urban neighborhoods. And the resistance to this kind of transformation just limits residential option and drives up housing costs for everyone.
- throw14082020 6y agoPlease embrace the visitors. You share this planet with them. Your fear of losing your resources is natural, but they weren't yours to begin with. If you still want your special benefits on Earth, well thats what politics is for.
- cumwolf 6y agosounds like visitors aren't the problem it's visitors who come and force an area to change to their liking, being disruptive to existing culture.
- ecf 6y agoThat’s just the nature of change at this point. I’d like to think the culture we value today wouldn’t be near what it is without prior generations moving around the planet and blending their beliefs with those of the locals.
- coldcode 6y agoThis is making finding people for our (large but non tech) company (not in a high tech area) very difficult; we never paid those kind of salaries (cost of living here is much lower) but now you no longer need to be local to work for us, so we have to compete with these high paying companies which our company cannot afford to. It takes the location requirements out of the picture entirely. This is going to kill SF and to a lesser extant, NY, to no longer have these high tax paying employees, but also ruin the work environment elsewhere with now super affluent employees living in low cost but desirable locations.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoIt sounds like you don't think people doing the same job you do don't deserve the same pay. It comes across as classism to be honest, looking down your nose at people because they don't live in the most expensive areas of the country.
- tpetry 6y agoYou do understand this wrong! The message is that any startup/company not in the valley will have a hard time finding employees. Until now every company paid a salary fitted for the locale the company is in: You are in an area with a low cost of living you are paid a lower salary than elsewhere. But from now on you can get the inflated valley salaries from everywhere. They are so high because cost of living is very high and competition with other companies too. But from now on your potential new employees can choose to work for your local company or some fang company for a much higher salary. And many companies will not be able to pay these high salaries. There is a world outside of investor money burning valley startups and the most profitable software companies on the world. And they may have a big problem now.
- humanrebar 6y agoSome business models would need to adjust if pay outside of tech centers started going up, yes. Possibly some will have to be abandoned entirely. My instinct is that if a tech problem doesn't have a fairly high upside, though (5-10x), it already has a tenuous business model given how famously risky technology projects are. It's very hard to impossible to consistently complete them as estimated and budgeted. Not to mention actually getting folks to adopt the finished product.
- wdb 6y agoWill they start paying SF salaries when you started working in London?
- noetokyo 6y agoProbably just means they will pay it to those that leave and not retain the amount afterwards because its unsustainable.
- superbcarrot 6y agoI still think that remote in general won't be that prevalent after covid. Remote with SF/NY salaries? I seriously doubt that they will keep this up long term or that many companies will do the same.
- solosoyokaze 6y agoAccess to world class talent, not paying for office space and greatly improved corporate culture all seem like things that are going to stick. Every new startup I’ve seen in the past year has been 100% remote since day one.
- superbcarrot 6y agoYou're right about the reduced cost but I can't agree that remote leads to improved corporate culture (that's largely personal preference though). > Every new startup I’ve seen in the past year has been 100% remote since day one. Any reasonable company that had the option to work remotely has done so over the past year, it's hardly a trend that you can project into the future.
- solosoyokaze 6y agoI’m saying that new companies that were remote from day one will never be non-remote. They’re not going to go buy a bunch of office space and force their disparate workforce to relocate. All hiring has been remote the past year, that’s not really reversible.
- ghaff 6y agoInstead, they'll do like Basecamp and get people together a couple times a year. If you hired people on the basis of being remote and they're all over the place, if at the end of 2021 you tell them they all have to relocate to San Francisco, expect to hear a whole lot of big "Nope"s.
- 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- komuW 6y agoI wonder what the mood was like when homo sapiens was transitioning - unbeknownst to many - from a hunter gathering nomadic lifestyle to a sedentary agricultural one. I know the scales are different but sapiens is in another transition, again unbeknownst to many.
- m4tthumphrey 6y agoRecruiting is proving insanely difficult right now. We are based just outside of London and have been offering "local remote" (1 day in week office generally) for about 4 years now. Candidates were always hard to attract (salary and office location) but offering remote work 4 days a week really helped. Now, that perk is now a norm so access to even remotely (no pun intended) skilled candidates is next to impossible.
- solosoyokaze 6y agoIt shouldn’t be that hard. I’d drop the one day a week in office requirement and make sure you’re paying market rates (e.g. £100k+ for mid level devs). Lots of good people looking to go fully remote right now.
- ghaff 6y agoPossibly. Although the surveys I've seen show something like 75% of employees want to come into an office at least one day per week. Of course 25% is still a lot of people and opens up options considerably for someone that doesn't want to live near a city or at least near your city. Monthly team off-sites are also an issue if you don't mind paying for some travel/hotel.
- m4tthumphrey 6y agoThis is a definitely a polarising issue. Some devs prefer to come in to be social, some prefer the office environment and others prefer it at home for the flexibility or are just more productive at home (me included).
- ghaff 6y agoI expect those who can will seek out workplaces that conform to their preferences. Those who want a bustling office won't have that if none of their teammates comes in on a regular basis. And someone who lives a 2 hour drive from the office, much less someone who wants to move out to the mountains, will deeply resent teammates who constantly bug them to come into the office more often.
- ornornor 6y agoWhat does it take to work for this kind of company though? I have about ten years experience, been focusing on frontend for the last few years. I have never worked at any of the big names and I have a bachelor degree that’s not in CS or mathematics but I’m a decent developer in my opinion: I write clean, testable code. And yet the major tech players always reject me before even a screening call. Which makes me think I must be missing something in my CV or experience. But what? What are recruiters screening for at these companies?
- interlocutor2 6y agoI'm was a full stack dev with a similar self-taught background but only 5 years experience and I just started as a Google SRE last year. Maybe it helped that I attended a lot of meetups and conferences.
- ornornor 6y ago> Maybe it helped that I attended a lot of meetups and conferences. How so? Did you meet people there that were part of your recruitment process, or for another reason?
- techolic 6y agoMaybe try different channels, like working with a different recruiter or getting a referral? For the few times I've been approached in the last few years, recruiters differ by miles for how they prepare and present you.
- frongpik 6y agoYou're missing a referral.
- ornornor 6y agoI’m not sure. I was referred by an employee several times at Shopify for instance and it did nothing for me. A referral in a lot of places is just so that the company knows who to give the referral bonus to if you’re hired but it doesn’t give you any kind of edge.
- penguin_booze 6y agoI wonder if this will make non-techies' life even harder. Right now, thanks to the relatively higher pay, techies are concentated in cities/urban areas. With rermote work possible on a permanent basis, all these relatively well-off techies moving to rural areas; and with their spending power, wouldn't they drive up prices?
- ilkan 6y agoMaybe the firefighters, nurses and restaurant staff who work in cities will be able to afford a shorter commute if city housing prices fall?
- almost_usual 6y agoRent will fall, I doubt home prices will fall that much though.
- almost_usual 6y agoIt will in desirable places that techies frequent. Think this is a rising problem in the Tahoe region right now.
- chillacy 6y agoProbably good for the businesses in the area which can raise prices though. Someone's profiting.
- PhoenixReborn 6y agoReally depends on the location. I spent a bunch of time with family in suburban/rural Ohio as a kid, and the area where I used to live has rapidly been emptying out over the last 10-20 years. IMO, techies moving to rural areas is good as those areas have been experiencing depopulation for quite some time.
- nassycheezy 6y agoPlease take note that Spotify pays sub-market salaries for these cities. The reason being that they do not offer RSUs but instead public stock options without any discount. - Typical FAANG compensation: X base pay + Y RSUs + Z signing bonus - Spotify: X base pay + Y stock options (public, so equivalent to you purchasing stocks really) + no signing bonus
- doctorbaum 6y agoWhat's the difference, for the laymen
- tomerico 6y agoYou only earn money if the stock price appreciate
- closetnerd 6y agoI'm envious of your laymen speak. Exactly right. RSU means they gave you the stock at price X. Options mean, they gave you the right to buy the stock at price X sometime in the future.
- dominotw 6y agoso its like call options where employer eats the option fee?
- TheCoelacanth 6y agoYes, except I think they usually just issue new stock when you exercise and dilute the existing owners instead of actually paying someone else for an option.
- iso1210 6y agoSay Spotify's share price is $100, and as part of your compensation you are given an option to buy 100 shares at $100 in 5 years time If Spotify in 5 years time is $500, you buy 100 shares for $10k, and immediately sell them for $50k, making a $40k profit (or you keep them). If Spotify in 5 years time is $102, you buy 100 shares for $10k and sell for $10,200, making $200 If Spotify shares in 5 years times is $90, you don't bother buying the shares, but your options are worthless. Now imagine you were given 100 shares instead, but couldn't sell them for 5 years (an RSU - or restricted stock unit) In 5 years time, if Spotify is $500/share, your shares are worth $50k In 5 years time, if Spotify is $102/share, your shares are worth $10,200 In 5 years time, if Spotify is $90/share, your shares are worth $9,000
- cccc4alll 6y agoThis is the right move. All FAANG companies will have to fall in line quick. All the nonsense about location based COL salary adjustments are based on pure HR fantasy. High performance engineers are valuable and rare. All this talk about more talent being available remote to companies and companies can demand salaries lower miss out on the other aspect. More companies are now available to high performance engineers. High performers can now negotiate higher salary with multiple companies for remote positions. It will be upward feedback loop, pushing higher salary offers for higher performers.
- auiya 6y agoIt will be both. The higher performers will have higher employer pool availability driving demand up, the entry-level performers will have higher competition barriers to entry from peers.
- dustinmoris 6y agoThat’s the only right way. Talent is still scarce, even remote. There is not nearly enough good developers out there to fill all the demand. Employers who try to tell you differently in order to cut pay for going remote cheat you out of the salary which a good dev deserves. I’ve explained it in great detail here: https://dusted.codes/equal-pay-for-equal-work https://dusted.codes/equal-pay-for-equal-work
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- robinhood 6y agoThis will just end very quickly. Soon every company will do what Gitlab did: pay average salary based on your geographical location and call it fair. Markets will always try to find a way for cheap labors, and this is no exception.
- xtat 6y agoI actually know a very talented guy that turned down a gitlab offer for this reason- their loss.
- nvr219 6y agoThat's cool. They should pay artists fairly, too.
- screye 6y agoI find it absurd that wealthy Tech people are making decisions on where to live based on the financial value proposition. People in Tech are rich enough to comfortably live anywhere. Surely, the lifestyle and character of a town/city/country plays a much larger role in where you choose to stay. Life in cheaper cities in the interior is very different from that in massive cities like SF/NY/London/etc. No amount of money can fix life in the wrong location. On HN, the Remote vs Local argument often ignores critical advantages of a local setup. Over 1 year of remote work, I haven't been able to replicate the magic of physical work a single time. This is while having an social workplace that has really tried to make people feel included. This may sound like heresy to some but, if I am going to be spending 50% of my waking time with a dozen people, then I would want to be good friends with them, and remote work certainly doesn't make that easy. ____________ I also don't buy the flexibility argument of remote work. It requires a lot of discipline and deliberate action. All of my acquaintances (all single, wealthy and in tech) have increased their working hours during Covid, due to unclear expectations around remote work. None have used this freedom to travel or fulfill their 'live in a cabin' or 'digital nomad' dreams. (ofc, it is challenging to fulfill these during covid). Now let be clear. I love the idea of companies letting their employees choose what's best from themselves. But, there is a feeling in the air that remote work will be the norm for effective teams after Covid. I have feeling these people will be in for a rude awakening. Offices are most effectively leveraged by the 90-99th. Those who are doing productive work that needs focus, but not deliberately effective enough to make in the '1' Percentile. (don't read too strongly into the numbers). The structures lent by the office are most useful to these people. Those who are smart enough to use structures to improve, but not smart enough to not need them at all. The bottom 0-90 percentile are often in jobs that 'require' a physical presence (chefs) or ones that are mundane enough to be done from any location. (excel table filling)