[sarciszewski]

Person: "I'm starving and barely able to get by working for Yelp in SF."

Yelp: "You're fired." (Good luck paying rent without a job.)

Yelp CEO: "The cost of living is too high here, so we're going to instead move offices to Arizona and pay the same wage."

Does this mean that Yelp is going to...

    a. Help all of its employees move to AZ where they can enjoy
       a lower cost of living?
    b. Fire all of its employees and hire replacements in AZ?
    c. Something else?

Because if they're going with option B, wow.

The cost of living in SF is one of the reasons I refuse to ever move there for work, but it seems like a scapegoat in this case. Why not just pay your employees a livable wage to begin with?

[lesdeuxmagots]

Eventually, probably. There's a reason why most companies don't scale their customer rep teams in high cost areas like the bay area to begin with. Many companies either offshore or open their customer rep centers in places like Arizona or the Midwest where the low wage work will still be a living wage. It's inherently low wage work, and paying significantly above market wage for low skill labor is something businesses are understandably reticent to do.

[saganus]

I think it would be more likely to do the transfer in a more phased way.

For example, if they start to need more low-wage positions you start hiring directly in Arizona, and when someone leaves the SF office you just don't hire someone there again, you re-open the position in your other location.

Do this for some time and at some point you are probably going to have only a few employees left which would be easier to fire.

So it's kind of like option B except not everyone at a time.

[qbrass]

They'll hire entry-level workers in AZ, quit hiring them in SF, and let the high churn rate take care of the transition.