[xoxoy]

If you want to remain an IC then remote is probably the best option, but if you want to climb up into a leadership role I don’t really see how you get there in a remote role.

Also Facebook’s admission that salary will be tied to cost of living wherever you choose to live sets a bad precedent. Anyone who thought they could just keep their Bay Area salary is going to be disappointed, and it gives cover to every other company thinking of going remote to do the same.

I’m also wondering how easy it would be to change jobs once you go remote. The benefit of being in the Bay is that the number of companies is so high that it makes it easy to interview if you’re looking for a change. While possible to interview remotely it’s much more difficult since the number of companies open to that is still small.

[throwaway4715]

As far as I know, ALL big tech cos have paid differently based on where you live since forever. If you work for Google Pittsburgh you make less than Seattle/Bay/NYC, if you work for <FAANG> London office you make less than American hubs. I don't know why people are surprised that that applies to remote workers as well.

[waheoo]

Isnt it pretty obvious? People are under the illusion they are paid for the work they do.

They are not and never have been. They have always been paid what someone is willing to pay them for the work they do.

It's subtle but important distinction.

Salary is a function of demand and supply like any other price on an open market.

This is why its important to not think in terms of work when negotiating a salary. Instead you need to think in terms of cost to find someone to take your place.

If that cost is more than your salary, you can ask for more.

[amscanne]

> They are not and never have been. They have always been paid what someone is willing to pay them for the work they do.

“Willing” is the wrong word. People are paid based on what the company can get away with paying them, as long as it’s less than the amount that they are “willing” to pay (then they don’t get hired).

In other words, the labor market is more like a 2nd price auction than a 1st price. This is obvious when considering the “go get a competing offer and show it to your current employer who will match” strategy. You just changed the 2nd price!

[take_a_breath]

Yes, companies have an information advantage in labor economics. People need to stop treating it like an Econ 101 equation.

[waheoo]

But it is. Just because people are conditioned to avoid sharing information doesnt mean they cant break that norm and gain the advantage.

Unions are exactly that.

[take_a_breath]

This is like saying python is the same as COBOL because they are both computer languages. Unions are not something studied in Economics 101 as labor economics is its own field of study and typically isn’t covered until 300 or 400 level courses.

[waheoo]

Truth.

[xoxoy]

Published Cost of living calculators rarely reflect reality in my experience. I definitely don’t pay anything close to the average cost of living for a single person in San Francisco, for example.

Hard to tell whether you are getting a “fair” deal when cost of living is so different depending on your individual situation

[avalys]

I don’t get why the pay adjustment is so controversial. Facebook (and Google, and Apple, etc.) already have offices throughout the world, and they already set pay based on the local market and cost of living. Not sure why “remote work” independent of an office should be any different, or why this is surprising?

[hobos_delight]

Google sets pay on local market rate only, not cost of living - they're very specific about this. And generally, the local market rate tends to lag the CoL increases,

[xoxoy]

Exactly. It’s usually by local market, which isn’t necessarily a reflection on cost of living.

So now if I say I want to move to Miami where the software eng market is limited, what exactly should I expect as far as pay cut goes based on cost of living?

[xoxoy]

It’s different when you’re already hired at one salary level and then forced to take a cost of living pay cut based on some fuzzy cost of living calculator.

I rarely find publicly available cost of living calcs to accurately reflect lived cost of living.

[volandkit]

You will get a pay cut if you relocate from one office to another today, e.g. moving from New York to Huntsville, Alabama will result in significant decrease in salary.

[CyanLite2]

Correct, but I'm still pretty sure that $BigTechCompany pay is still pretty darn good for the area and the work is probably more interesting too. At the end of the day, $200k in Alabama for an experienced developer is still a fraction of the cost for the same experienced dev onsite in Menlo Park.

[fma]

Forced? If you want the same salary than stay where you are.

[guessmyname]

> Also Facebook’s admission that salary will be tied to cost of living wherever you choose to live sets a bad precedent […]

Facebook didn’t set this precedent, GitLab did with their Salary Calculator years ago [1].

[1] https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation...

[xoxoy]

I mean a big co doing it.

[acwan93]

Back when I was looking at SV companies they had several satellite offices, but the perception at the time was that if you wanted to climb the ladder you had to be at HQ. That would be Mountain View, Cupertino, etc.

It feels like that wouldn’t change even after COVID-19. Partial remote work is definitely coming and I hope it’s permanent, but needing to be at HQ on a semi-regular basis doesn’t seem like it would go away. It’s also probably why the LA-SF airline routes will probably bounce back rather quickly.

[lm28469]

> Also Facebook’s admission that salary will be tied to cost of living wherever you choose to live sets a bad precedent. Anyone who thought they could just keep their Bay Area salary is going to be disappointed, and it gives cover to every other company thinking of going remote to do the same.

But that's good, some people in sv make more money in a year than some other people make in their entire life. If this was allowed it would probably destroy so many places. Faang salary makes you a king just about anywhere in the world besides a few major cities, in my home town you could buy a flat per month and still have some money to invest somewhere else.

[Acen]

Gitlab pretty publicly has the same pay system in terms of living area with a direction relation to pay.

[xoxoy]

True cost of living is such a nebulous thing to calculate no matter how meticulous the data source is.

[intopieces]

Yes but lots of people locked into a 4 year vesting schedule based on Bay Area COL. I don't think they're going to take those back. So even with a pay cut, you're likely to come out ahead -- maybe even paid-for-house ahead.