3 ms·

I see where you're coming from, but in practice offering location-agnostic salaries means you're not competitive in areas that command higher salaries (notably,

by vitus 3y ago

I see where you're coming from, but in practice offering location-agnostic salaries means you're not competitive in areas that command higher salaries (notably, large tech hubs like the Bay Area, Seattle, New York). If anything, you're trading the talent pool near those hubs (and let's be honest, the rest of the US) for talent in other countries. That's a trade-off you might be willing to make, but I hope you understand that not every company is willing to write off the entire talent pool of the US. (As a point of reference, the only two countries that Google pays comparably to even the cheapest parts of the US are Switzerland and Israel.)

ozr 3y ago
Salary is one part of comp, which is one part of what makes a company attractive. There are plenty of levers to pull that are not salary, and not based on geography.
paulddraper 3y ago
Somehow you just lumped "the entire US" with a couple high-cost metropolitan areas. When the cost of living is easily 50%+ higher there. If you're remote, IDK why you would want to pay that premium.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  Because software developers overseas make barely more than 6 figures usd. Basically everywhere in the US beats that so if you do a "global wage" youd get no one from the us.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    > so if you do a "global wage" youd get no one from the us Is that a problem? If no: congrats you used your $$$ very efficiently. If yes: Determine why (language, time zone, quality, regulations), and raise the price point until you are appealing to employees that satisfy those.
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      Companies clearly dont want a 100% overseas work force. If they raise the price point so that they get Americans to accept why have overseas employees at all? The entire point of bringing them on was to save money on their salary.
      - paulddraper 3y ago
        > Companies clearly dont want a 100% overseas work force "Overseas" is a symptom. What positions are you looking for, and how many for each? What are the requirements of those positions? "Native English speaker" or "live within 50 miles of headquarters" are possible requirements for a particular position, if those are important. Whatever the requirements are for your positions, you'll pay the least possible market rate to achieve it.
toomuchtodo 3y ago
Is there data showing the talent in those tech hubs is better than what you can find elsewhere? If not, what are you overpaying for? Landlord revenue?
- nemothekid 3y ago
  >Is there data showing the talent in those tech hubs is better than what you can find elsewhere? There are great engineers everywhere, but this line of reasoning misses why talent hubs exist in the first place. It's more likely a qualified individual will line near a talent hub along side other companies that demand those skills. A better question to ask is how much time & effort will a company put in finding a qualified candidate outside of the talent hub. For example, Apple has a similar problem with regards to manufacturing in China.[1] Do talented tooling engineers exist in the US? Of course. Is Apple going to spend 5 years trying to hire 100 tooling engineers in the US, or spend 6 months hiring the engineers it needs in China? [1] https://twitter.com/mariocavolo/status/1747599350438437364 https://twitter.com/mariocavolo/status/1747599350438437364
- vitus 3y ago
  You have bigger talent pools in the tech hubs, at the very least. And recent college graduates from top-tier institutions are most likely to either stay put (depending on the source, I saw 40-60%) or move to a hub, so you have a lot of untapped potential. Talent being "better" is too subjective to really quantify, though. Something like 15% of devs worldwide are in the US, so if you don't want to play ball, you're losing a nontrivial chunk of the total talent pool (even without accounting for timezone affinity or English fluency). If you think paying market rate for a Bay Area dev is overpaying, are you exclusively hiring devs in Argentina (with the rapidly-devaluing peso)? You can get 10 devs for the price of one person based in SF! Even paying Amsterdam's market rate is drastically overpaying in comparison to the areas with the lowest cost of labor.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    My experience is from a fully remote unicorn startup that hires globally. Not Gitlab. Have continued equity exposure and strongly believe in the remote first model as a differentiator. There is exceptional talent globally, but you must be intentional about finding it.
immibis 3y ago
If you have the budget to hire someone from the Bay Area with a Bay Area salary, then you also have the budget to hire someone from Bumfuck Nowhere, with a Bay Area salary. I agree with the other commentator who said: It's not stupid to pay a location-based salary, but please don't pretend it has anything to do with fairness. It's not about being fair - it's about the company trying to save money by getting a discount on employees when that discount is available.
- vitus 3y ago
  I should emphasize that I'm not trying to comment on fairness, one way or another. I'm pointing out that location-agnostic salaries are often trading one segment of the global talent pool for another, since what I've seen in practice is more like "everyone gets paid 80% of a Bay Area salary".
nucleardog 3y ago
You don’t need to lose access to the entire US talent pool. The company I work for paid high-mid US salaries before going remote. It has continued paying high-mid US salaries after going remote, just expanded to hiring from more locations. So before we had access to the talent pool of one metro area in the US. Now we have access to the talent pool of all of the US besides a few very HCOL locations (which we didn’t have access to before anyway), and also most of the rest of the world. Our costs are the same as before, but hiring is easier and we can often get a higher caliber employee to fill an opening. As the guy you replied to said—it was about expanding the talent pool, not about saving money.

by vitus 3y ago

ozr 3y ago

Salary is one part of comp, which is one part of what makes a company attractive. There are plenty of levers to pull that are not salary, and not based on geography.

paulddraper 3y ago

Somehow you just lumped "the entire US" with a couple high-cost metropolitan areas. When the cost of living is easily 50%+ higher there. If you're remote, IDK why you would want to pay that premium.

HDThoreaun 3y ago
Because software developers overseas make barely more than 6 figures usd. Basically everywhere in the US beats that so if you do a "global wage" youd get no one from the us.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  > so if you do a "global wage" youd get no one from the us Is that a problem? If no: congrats you used your $$$ very efficiently. If yes: Determine why (language, time zone, quality, regulations), and raise the price point until you are appealing to employees that satisfy those.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    Companies clearly dont want a 100% overseas work force. If they raise the price point so that they get Americans to accept why have overseas employees at all? The entire point of bringing them on was to save money on their salary.
    - paulddraper 3y ago
      > Companies clearly dont want a 100% overseas work force "Overseas" is a symptom. What positions are you looking for, and how many for each? What are the requirements of those positions? "Native English speaker" or "live within 50 miles of headquarters" are possible requirements for a particular position, if those are important. Whatever the requirements are for your positions, you'll pay the least possible market rate to achieve it.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

Is there data showing the talent in those tech hubs is better than what you can find elsewhere? If not, what are you overpaying for? Landlord revenue?

nemothekid 3y ago
>Is there data showing the talent in those tech hubs is better than what you can find elsewhere? There are great engineers everywhere, but this line of reasoning misses why talent hubs exist in the first place. It's more likely a qualified individual will line near a talent hub along side other companies that demand those skills. A better question to ask is how much time & effort will a company put in finding a qualified candidate outside of the talent hub. For example, Apple has a similar problem with regards to manufacturing in China.[1] Do talented tooling engineers exist in the US? Of course. Is Apple going to spend 5 years trying to hire 100 tooling engineers in the US, or spend 6 months hiring the engineers it needs in China? [1] https://twitter.com/mariocavolo/status/1747599350438437364 https://twitter.com/mariocavolo/status/1747599350438437364
vitus 3y ago
You have bigger talent pools in the tech hubs, at the very least. And recent college graduates from top-tier institutions are most likely to either stay put (depending on the source, I saw 40-60%) or move to a hub, so you have a lot of untapped potential. Talent being "better" is too subjective to really quantify, though. Something like 15% of devs worldwide are in the US, so if you don't want to play ball, you're losing a nontrivial chunk of the total talent pool (even without accounting for timezone affinity or English fluency). If you think paying market rate for a Bay Area dev is overpaying, are you exclusively hiring devs in Argentina (with the rapidly-devaluing peso)? You can get 10 devs for the price of one person based in SF! Even paying Amsterdam's market rate is drastically overpaying in comparison to the areas with the lowest cost of labor.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  My experience is from a fully remote unicorn startup that hires globally. Not Gitlab. Have continued equity exposure and strongly believe in the remote first model as a differentiator. There is exceptional talent globally, but you must be intentional about finding it.

immibis 3y ago

If you have the budget to hire someone from the Bay Area with a Bay Area salary, then you also have the budget to hire someone from Bumfuck Nowhere, with a Bay Area salary. I agree with the other commentator who said: It's not stupid to pay a location-based salary, but please don't pretend it has anything to do with fairness. It's not about being fair - it's about the company trying to save money by getting a discount on employees when that discount is available.

vitus 3y ago
I should emphasize that I'm not trying to comment on fairness, one way or another. I'm pointing out that location-agnostic salaries are often trading one segment of the global talent pool for another, since what I've seen in practice is more like "everyone gets paid 80% of a Bay Area salary".

nucleardog 3y ago

You don’t need to lose access to the entire US talent pool. The company I work for paid high-mid US salaries before going remote. It has continued paying high-mid US salaries after going remote, just expanded to hiring from more locations. So before we had access to the talent pool of one metro area in the US. Now we have access to the talent pool of all of the US besides a few very HCOL locations (which we didn’t have access to before anyway), and also most of the rest of the world. Our costs are the same as before, but hiring is easier and we can often get a higher caliber employee to fill an opening. As the guy you replied to said—it was about expanding the talent pool, not about saving money.