4 ms·

Twice in the past 5 years I interviewed at companies which did “salary leveling” to make sure that there was no discrimination in salaries (moz and zoom). Sala

by belatw 5y ago

Twice in the past 5 years I interviewed at companies which did “salary leveling” to make sure that there was no discrimination in salaries (moz and zoom). Salaries were all published to prevent gender / age / race discrimination. Both were about 20% below all of my other offers, if I livdd in the usa. Worse still, I expect make a San Francisco salary working remotely from other countries. They were both shocked when I laughed out loud when their offers were based on the country where I live rather than USA where I pay my taxes. I’m all for equality, but, fuck you, pay me. I work in tech for the money, nothing else. Cash rules everything around me.

JaceLightning 5y ago
> I expect make a San Francisco salary working remotely from other countries I don't even making a San Francisco salary working not remotely in the US. It should be illegal to pay people different wages based on where they live, but it's not. Companies pay the market value of labor in a given region.
- belatw 5y ago
  I dont think it should be illegal, companies exist to make as much profit as possible. I work to make as high of a salary as possible. My life us privileged, right now I make almost 5x what a local engineer would make. I also pay more than a local engineer’s salary in child support and get fuck-all in benefits for my americam taxes so I have to save more. It’s just business.
- hctaw 5y ago
  Why should it be illegal? Framed from the other side, people are willing to take less salary if they live somewhere more affordable. My mortgage is half the price of my last apartment in the Bay Area, and while I won't take half the salary of my Bay Area job I'm not going to cry over the 15% difference between what companies are paying for locals out there and working remote out here (which is competitive with local companies). In some ways it makes me more marketable as a candidate. There are many things about employment that should be illegal (at-will employment, enforceable non competes, ownership over IP, etc) but taking away the ability of either company or candidate to determine their compensation is a terrible idea that makes outcomes worse. It's as bad as banded salaries or any other kind of standardized pay scales.
  - mitchdoogle 5y ago
    Or perhaps you could argue living in a cheap place in the middle of nowhere allows a more spacious and comfortable work environment which is more productive and thus produces better work, so someone living like that should get more money, not less.
    - joshuamorton 5y ago
      You could argue that, but the data disagrees.
JMTQp8lwXL 5y ago
Perhaps a controversial perspective, but if you aren't working in the same timezone, and can't synchronously communicate with your colleagues, can you provide as much value with respect to your California-based peers? Sure, you can watch Zoom recordings, but when folks have to connect, it'll be a 24-hour turn around to get questions answered, and those lags could materially impact business outcomes.
- dv_dt 5y ago
  The flip side is if problems exceed their original time zone, then employees outside the time zone can continue to work the problem and a business might get a solution sooner than they would have
- harrisonjackson 5y ago
  Most remote teams are well setup for async communication. If you have employees across a bunch of timezones it is a must.
- mitchdoogle 5y ago
  Why wouldn't they be able to work at the same time? People adjust their schedules for work when necessary. I work the standard 9-5 nowadays, but several years ago I worked at a warehouse from 6pm - 4am. I slept from 5am to 1pm as a result. Sure, there are outside pressures, like family obligations, but the job usually trumps all schedule conflicts in my experience
- belatw 5y ago
  In my current situation I have the added benefit of being in a close time zone to our team which was in Belarus (who now are in Ukraine and Netherlands). I manage an 8-person devops team and act as liason to our backend and frontend dev teams, as wrll as manage the customer relationship. Before this job I was an individual contributor getting 3-5 hours of overlap at a company distributed all over the USA. This afforded me more than enough overlap, extra on-call coverage hours and a solid 4 hours of uninterrupted project time. It is actually a huhe benefit that I get that much uninterrupted project time. Again, if a company sees value in my skillset and multiple decades of experience then they will have to pay me the salary I want. If not, another one will. It has been at least a decade sincr I have spent more than 2 weeks per year in-office or worked in a team that wasn’t distributed over 4-10 time zones.
quesera 5y ago
I think this is a bit oversimplified. Another perspective is that your skills are worth X to the company, and when they felt constrained to hire in the SF market, they found they had to increase pay by Y. So your resulting salary of X+Y might be artificial. Also, moving to a different timezone/non-local presence might actually diminish your value to the company. It might even cost them money, though usually a small amount. So your new rate might reasonably be X-Z. Regardless, when you turn yourself into a different product, your value to the buyer changes, and is reevaluated in the context of competing products. Relocating is just a qualifying event for triggering that reevaluation.
walshemj 5y ago
why would a company pay and offshored resource the same as localy? Sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it
- belatw 5y ago
  I’m pretty fat, so yes, I love earing cake. I’m an American with American expenses and my terms are that I only work for an American wage. If a company wants to pay me based on the payscale of how much people make in the country where I live, yet they don’t have a presence here, it tels me they’re low balling shuysters and I laugh them off. The primary restriction limit is I cannot work for companies which have a presence in the country where I live, or then I would pay taxes in that country and would require a work permit. I also cannot work this way frok countries which do not allow for “digital nomad” arrangements.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Because they want that specific offshore resource. Some people can have their cake and eat it too. Most people can’t, but everyone like to think they can. The former won’t complain about having to accept lower wages, because they will have options at higher wages and will not have to accept lower wages.
Mandatum 5y ago
Fuck you, pay me for those of you uninitiated, this talk by Mike Monteiro is awesome - about not getting paid in creative services: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U
- belatw 5y ago
  Actually, for me I am always referencing Goodfellas, but thanks for the link! https://youtu.be/3XGAmPRxV48 https://youtu.be/3XGAmPRxV48

by belatw 5y ago

JaceLightning 5y ago

> I expect make a San Francisco salary working remotely from other countries I don't even making a San Francisco salary working not remotely in the US. It should be illegal to pay people different wages based on where they live, but it's not. Companies pay the market value of labor in a given region.

belatw 5y ago
I dont think it should be illegal, companies exist to make as much profit as possible. I work to make as high of a salary as possible. My life us privileged, right now I make almost 5x what a local engineer would make. I also pay more than a local engineer’s salary in child support and get fuck-all in benefits for my americam taxes so I have to save more. It’s just business.
hctaw 5y ago
Why should it be illegal? Framed from the other side, people are willing to take less salary if they live somewhere more affordable. My mortgage is half the price of my last apartment in the Bay Area, and while I won't take half the salary of my Bay Area job I'm not going to cry over the 15% difference between what companies are paying for locals out there and working remote out here (which is competitive with local companies). In some ways it makes me more marketable as a candidate. There are many things about employment that should be illegal (at-will employment, enforceable non competes, ownership over IP, etc) but taking away the ability of either company or candidate to determine their compensation is a terrible idea that makes outcomes worse. It's as bad as banded salaries or any other kind of standardized pay scales.
- mitchdoogle 5y ago
  Or perhaps you could argue living in a cheap place in the middle of nowhere allows a more spacious and comfortable work environment which is more productive and thus produces better work, so someone living like that should get more money, not less.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    You could argue that, but the data disagrees.

JMTQp8lwXL 5y ago

Perhaps a controversial perspective, but if you aren't working in the same timezone, and can't synchronously communicate with your colleagues, can you provide as much value with respect to your California-based peers? Sure, you can watch Zoom recordings, but when folks have to connect, it'll be a 24-hour turn around to get questions answered, and those lags could materially impact business outcomes.

dv_dt 5y ago
The flip side is if problems exceed their original time zone, then employees outside the time zone can continue to work the problem and a business might get a solution sooner than they would have
harrisonjackson 5y ago
Most remote teams are well setup for async communication. If you have employees across a bunch of timezones it is a must.
mitchdoogle 5y ago
Why wouldn't they be able to work at the same time? People adjust their schedules for work when necessary. I work the standard 9-5 nowadays, but several years ago I worked at a warehouse from 6pm - 4am. I slept from 5am to 1pm as a result. Sure, there are outside pressures, like family obligations, but the job usually trumps all schedule conflicts in my experience
belatw 5y ago
In my current situation I have the added benefit of being in a close time zone to our team which was in Belarus (who now are in Ukraine and Netherlands). I manage an 8-person devops team and act as liason to our backend and frontend dev teams, as wrll as manage the customer relationship. Before this job I was an individual contributor getting 3-5 hours of overlap at a company distributed all over the USA. This afforded me more than enough overlap, extra on-call coverage hours and a solid 4 hours of uninterrupted project time. It is actually a huhe benefit that I get that much uninterrupted project time. Again, if a company sees value in my skillset and multiple decades of experience then they will have to pay me the salary I want. If not, another one will. It has been at least a decade sincr I have spent more than 2 weeks per year in-office or worked in a team that wasn’t distributed over 4-10 time zones.

quesera 5y ago

I think this is a bit oversimplified. Another perspective is that your skills are worth X to the company, and when they felt constrained to hire in the SF market, they found they had to increase pay by Y. So your resulting salary of X+Y might be artificial. Also, moving to a different timezone/non-local presence might actually diminish your value to the company. It might even cost them money, though usually a small amount. So your new rate might reasonably be X-Z. Regardless, when you turn yourself into a different product, your value to the buyer changes, and is reevaluated in the context of competing products. Relocating is just a qualifying event for triggering that reevaluation.

walshemj 5y ago

why would a company pay and offshored resource the same as localy? Sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it

belatw 5y ago
I’m pretty fat, so yes, I love earing cake. I’m an American with American expenses and my terms are that I only work for an American wage. If a company wants to pay me based on the payscale of how much people make in the country where I live, yet they don’t have a presence here, it tels me they’re low balling shuysters and I laugh them off. The primary restriction limit is I cannot work for companies which have a presence in the country where I live, or then I would pay taxes in that country and would require a work permit. I also cannot work this way frok countries which do not allow for “digital nomad” arrangements.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
Because they want that specific offshore resource. Some people can have their cake and eat it too. Most people can’t, but everyone like to think they can. The former won’t complain about having to accept lower wages, because they will have options at higher wages and will not have to accept lower wages.

Mandatum 5y ago

Fuck you, pay me for those of you uninitiated, this talk by Mike Monteiro is awesome - about not getting paid in creative services: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U

belatw 5y ago
Actually, for me I am always referencing Goodfellas, but thanks for the link! https://youtu.be/3XGAmPRxV48 https://youtu.be/3XGAmPRxV48