
Ask HN: How to compensate remote workers? - salinan
Hi all,<p>I&#x27;m struggling to find a good formula how to compensate remote workers and was hoping to find some guidance from the HN community.<p>A bit of background. First couple of years of the company we worked in full remote mode. However the results weren&#x27;t great. I then spent over 2 years moving the team into single location (SF) and hiring mostly locally. Worked well, up until couple of our long time employees had to move back home (outside of US) for personal reasons. We wanted to keep them on, so we tried to find a structure that would fit everyone well. This works fine, but as we&#x27;re trying to expand the remote team, we&#x27;re running into some issues.<p>Our current formula is designed around Buffer&#x27;s. We start with a base salary that we would pay for the position in LA (where we are currently based). Then based on numbeo.com we identify the ratio between cost of living where the candidate lives and LA. We apply that to the salary, adjust for health care and that&#x27;s what we pay.<p>Here is an example:
- $130k base in LA
- Candidate is in Berlin. Based on https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.numbeo.com&#x2F;cost-of-living&#x2F;compare_cities.jsp?country1=Germany&amp;country2=United+States&amp;city1=Berlin&amp;city2=Los+Angeles%2C+CA&amp;tracking=getDispatchComparison it comes to 3,500.00&#x2F;5,202.64 = 67.27%
- and we get $87.456 base<p>Where this works ok for more expensive cities (Berlin, Paris, ...) we run into issues for the other ones, where the discrepancy is much more significant, for instance Mexico City.<p>We try to stay fair to all people working for us, including adjusting salaries when they relocate to more expensive areas, covering 30 days of PTO for all workers (remote or on site).<p>Do you find this a fair compensation? What would you do differently? Really appreciate it.
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citilife
Personally, I always just list the salary range. I offer them in the range.

By being upfront about the amount you're willing to pay, it doesn't really
matter if it's "fair". "Fair" is what they are willing to accept and they go
in knowing that. If I offer $120k to get a job done, who cares if it's in San
Francisco or Nigeria? If they're the correct person for the job and I
budgeted, I'll make money either way.

Its a world market for remote workers, you price accordingly. The best
developers in the world appear to congregate around a few locations (with high
pay), so it's likely you'll have to make a competitive offer for those highly
skilled developers. If you just need any old developer off the street, then
offer them that price (regardless of location).

I always find this debate interesting... I remember working at 14 years old,
making $8.50 an hour doing software development. I'm sure the guy next to me
was making $70k a year, but given the situation I was happy to have the job,
happier than he was (we did comparable work). Not many people were willing to
sign the paperwork to enable me work at 14, and I was making more than my
friends at $5.50 an hour.

Go with your gut, find the right person, and offer them what you feel is fair.
If you really think they can deliver high value, offer them more money. If you
feel they can deliver less, offer less.

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sharemywin
you may want to look at payscale.com or something like that and come up with a
percentile you want your pay range. 60-70 percentile or what ever(110%). and
adjust from there.

