[Hamuko]

The $150k is not what your work is directly valued at, but rather an agreement of what it'll take for you to drag your ass to San Francisco, which is objectively a bad place to live if you're a human that has to make budgets, and come to work at Facebook.

Also yes, if Facebook starts to hire remote workers, then your value will drop because they now have the access to a pool of workers who don't want to drag their asses to San Francisco and can pretty easily settle for less since their rent doesn't require them to bleed money.

[jldugger]

> The $150k is not what your work is directly valued at

Indeed, presumably you are worth more than that to them. It's a pretty naked cash grab to cut salary in response to a location move, and somewhat illogical considering they moved their HQ to the bay area in the first place. If it's objectively bad and expensive, why not move your HQ to Austin or San Antonio or Portland?

> if Facebook starts to hire remote workers, then your value will drop because they now have the access to a pool of workers who don't want to drag their asses to San Francisco and can pretty easily settle for less since their rent doesn't require them to bleed money.

For now. It remains to be seen if bay area rents are high because of tech salaries, or if tech salaries are high because of rents. Likely they feed back into each other. And as a worker in SF, you have access to all the same remote opportunities.

[ipnon]

All business decisions are cash grabs.

[TeMPOraL]

Not all, but businesses with that attitude are worth trusting about as far as you can throw them.

[PunksATawnyFill]

Amen. Anyone running a company who opts to put it in San Francisco or Silicon Valley at this point is issuing a big F-U to employees.

And this pay-cut policy is bullshit. If employees are allowed to work offsite, then that site should not be dictated. It's a win/win, because although the employee saves money, so does the company. And thanks to Trump and Republicans, employees can't even deduct the money they spend on electricity, office equipment, and rent.

[GhettoChild]

I have heard so many people justify companies locating in the Bay are due to the talent found in the area. While that may be true I have a hard time believing that companies would not be able to recruit in cheaper large cities like Austin, Dallas, Chicago, Philly, Etc if they offered Bay Area money.

[stackcrash]

100% of the jobs I turn down are ones wanting me to move to the Bay area. I get paid the same already as my peers in the Bay and don't have to live there.

[volkk]

i'm kind of super interested (also scared) in the effects FAANG companies allowing remote workers will have. sure, maybe salaries at FAANG might decrease as supply/competition rises, but then all of the other companies that arent FAANG now have to sort of raise the lower boundaries of their pay since they cant just say "well you can go ahead to move to SF if you dont like it". Are we looking at lower high end of the spectrum but a higher median?

[ip26]

It seems like the top end would drop a lot more than the median would rise. Given the poaching it seems clear SF has a scarcity of developers that satisfy FAANG, and scarcity drives price up radically. If remote work becomes more widespread, the scarcity condition would presumably evaporate.

Socially speaking it could be a very good thing. Many of the big challenges we are facing (wealth disparity, political polarization, housing crunch) can be tied to the gross disparity in economic opportunity between places like SF, Austin, NYC, vs everywhere else.

[mrkurt]

Those companies already hire all over the world for the scarce, high dollar engineers. I don't think top end compensation will drop while those companies are monopolies. Most of those salaries balloon because they poach people from each other.

[stackcrash]

The amount of remote positions FAANG offer is tiny compared to other companies. If they open up to hiring the majority of positions as in office or remote the salaries will drop a lot for the Bay area. They will be more inline with the other companies in the Bay that hire in office or remote as options for almost any position.

[perl4ever]

You have to consider that FAANG companies already outsourced work to companies that use both offshore and remote employees. Policy changes aren't necessarily as big a deal as they seem, or at least they aren't what they seem, because they concern the direct hiring practices only.

[Vysero]

If the company was hemorrhaging money on employee salaries by being based in SF then why wouldn't they simply move the company somewhere else?

[rconti]

Greater supply of employees, and potentially greater attraction TO employees.

Sure, they have to "import" employees, but importing 10% of the workforce in the Bay Area at X cost is apparently more appealing than importing 98% of employees to Tulsa at Y cost.

(Relatedly; Tulsa's not exactly a small place, but if you think the influence of "big tech" is bad in a larger metro like the Bay Area, I'd HATE to see what it would look like to bring a deluge of 'outsiders' into a much less populous region)

[smm2000]

Tulsa is not geographically limited and has enough empty space for practically unlimited build out (similar to bay area or LA in 50 years ago). Tech in Tulsa will cause construction boom but not bay area house prices.

[0max]

I hear DC/VA/MD with the contractor industrial complex is a good example

[pyuser583]

The bay area offers a guaranteed supply of qualified employees.

A tech firm in Boise might not be able to hire and Elixir developer at any price.

In SF, there will be employees as long as you have cash. Not so elsewhere.

[ForHackernews]

> A tech firm in Boise might not be able to hire and Elixir developer at any price.

I think the timescale matters. If it became known over a period of years that some company was paying $1mm for Elixir devs in Boise, loads of folks would consider learning Elixir and moving to Boise.

[talmr]

Also, they might not even want to hire for such a thing.

There are plenty of businesses that don't need to be on fancy infrastructure or use the coolest new language for their backend.

[pyuser583]

Going old school is hard too. Not many COBOL programmers in New Jearsy.

[bcyn]

Because the Bay Area is one of the only places where the supply of potential employees is high enough to meet the company's demand.

[Vysero]

You mean to tell me that companies in the Bay Area never pull employees from schools outside of the Bay Area? I get the feeling there is a much more valuable reason for being based in the Bay Area than that.

[bcyn]

Of course, it's not so cut and dry. It's sort of cyclical IMO:

- There are already a ton of existing technology companies in the Bay Area, and also a ton of employees.

- Students from schools around the country who are interested in tech might plan to move to the Bay Area due to the number of companies there.

- If your company doesn't hire in the Bay Area, it may miss out on the chance to hire the employees in the groups above.

The end result is an abnormally high supply of technology workers in the Bay Area. I'm not saying that's something intrinsic to the location, it seems to me it's more a result of recent circumstances.

[Vysero]

So no tax or media related incentives to being in the Bay Area? You don't think it's worth more to Google to say: "Our headquarters are in SF" rather than: "Our headquarters are in podunk MT"?

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that 90% of the reason FANG companies operate in large metropolitan areas has almost nothing to do with employees and everything to do with global image.

[marssaxman]

That does not make a lot of sense to me. Google did not open a Seattle office because it enhanced their "global image", but because the presence of Microsoft, UW, Amazon, and a generally thriving tech scene meant that they would gain access to lots of experienced engineers who might be unwilling to move to California. Now they employ thousands of people up here. Facebook did the same thing; they also have a large Seattle office, right down the street from Amazon. Apple has a Seattle office too, focusing on machine learning. Not quite up to a thousand people yet, last I heard, but they have plans to grow. Lots of ML going on in Seattle.

When Intel acquired the AI startup I worked for a couple years ago, they built us a downtown office, much bigger than our team currently needed. Why? Because there are lots of AI people in Seattle who will not move to California, and Intel wants a chance to hire them. But it's still a very small office compared to Intel's global footprint; it does not affect their "image" at all. It's just a practical way of gaining access to Seattle's engineering talent.

It is a simple virtuous cycle. The presence of good jobs draws people who want to work in the field, and the presence of people with experience draws the companies who want to hire them. Geographic concentration is efficient.

[bcyn]

Would that image or media related incentive exist without the huge amount of tech work in the Bay Area? My point is that the pull of the Bay Area is cyclical - supply of tech workers fuels the SV image which fuels more supply of tech workers. I think it all started with tech workers though.

If Stanford or another incubator of tech innovators was in podunk MT, then we would be discussing that location instead.

[perl4ever]

Ever notice how competing drug stores are frequently on the same intersection? You might think they would try to be far away from each other.

[kthejoker2]

That's certainly true at my parent company (Accenture) - we're (in a completely neutral way) a completely different animal than "Silicon Valley unicorn", but we still have a huge gleaming building in SF because it projects a particular image.

[chongli]

If they did that then they'd have to give everyone at the company a pay cut. They don't want to do that. They'd rather use these pay cuts to bully individual employees. If they went after everyone at once then they'd have a problem.

[pyuser583]

It means you’re adding at least that much value to the company - or at least that’s what whoever is hiring you thinks.