[ones_and_zeros]

It's not about where you live. It's supply and demand. Those companies artificially limited their supply and provided a ton of demand within their narrow market. They are now opening up to new markets and spreading out the demand accordingly.

Forced analogy time: It's like if I decide I'll only buy peaches from the organic farm down the road. They charge $20/lb. I calculate that I get $21/lb worth of utility. The Farmer is happy.

A few years later I decide that purchasing organic peaches online for $15/lb fits the bill, and utility dropped slightly to $19/lb but still better in comparison. The farmer is no longer happy.

[aeternum]

The part that doesn't make sense though is keeping the employees that live in SF, or paying an employee more if they choose to relocate to SF.

Tech companies typically do increase your salary if you move to a higher CoL area.

[lotsofpulp]

>The part that doesn't make sense though is keeping the employees that live in SF, or paying an employee more if they choose to relocate to SF.

The buyer (Facebook) may not be playing all their cards. They may very well intend to reduce SF employee headcount, but want to experiment, and so saying otherwise will allow them to do it in a slow, controlled manner.

[Tade0]

Relocating for most people is actually a bigger deal than it may seem.

I personally have no problem with it and did just that at least once, but after returning I asked around and most if not all of my friends and family would not do the same even for - and this was especially shocking to me - 4x the salary.

Apparently flexibility is rare and sought after.

[TeMPOraL]

Was that 4x the salary truly 4x, after subtracting out the costs of living?

I got an offer for an on-site job in London the other day, that would technically be ~1.5x salary boost - and ~5x the salary I had the last time I worked for a local company. But after subtracting out the costs of living, it turned out it would be effectively a 3x salary decrease, and at the same time a significant degradation in the standards of living. Turns out, London isn't a particularly friendly place for a couple with a toddler to move to.

[Tade0]

Given that it was Zürich where CHF = PLN looking at sticker prices(with exceptions), my cost of living as a percentage of salary actually went down since I was renting a room instead of a whole apartment.

In terms of what I could nominally save every month the difference was enormous.

But yeah, with a child on board I would definitely have to get something larger paying somewhere in the order of 25-35% of my salary. But that's just CHF = PLN again, so no increase here.

[foogazi]

> it turned out it would be effectively a 3x salary decrease

What do you mean by 3x decrease? X/3 ?

[TeMPOraL]

Right. Bad phrasing. I meant X/3. I.e. after subtracting the essentials, I'd be able to afford 1/3 of good and services equivalent to what I could afford in my current location on previous salary.

[pertymcpert]

If you're only being offered 1.5x your salary to move to London, then assuming you're in Poland, your current salary is very high for your region.

[foogazi]

I moved to the Bay Area for a 2.5x increase in TC and none of my former coworkers followed up for referrals

Later I asked one of them if they wanted to know the salary range difference preferred not to think about it

[Jare]

Lowering salaries all of a sudden for a large % of their workforce who are currently very productive, would be a bad move, destroy value instantly that would take long to recover. It makes sense to pay to keep that value, at least for a while, and let market dynamics slowly do their thing.