

Remote work: an engineering leader's perspective - seikatsu
http://dec0de.me/2014/11/remote/

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paul_milovanov
posted in article comments: ============================

Quote: "Over time, we’ve encountered some remote candidates who want London
rates whilst living in a lower-cost country. I don’t mean them any harm, but
can’t think of any other term but “greedy”."

Julien, I'm sorry, but if I were considering your company as a potential
employer, a statement like this would immediately make question your good
faith. Ensuring that I can afford an "identical standard of living" as my
colleagues is an extremely questionable principle, even if you were able to
actually objectively determine that (which you can't).

What business of yours is it that I choose to live in Berlin vs. Zurich or
Bratislava? You wouldn't pay more a person with a severely disabled dependent
requiring round the clock care, would you, even though this circumstance will
affect her happiness and productivity greatly. You wouldn't be able to pay
less a person that lives in a London suburb an hour and a half away on a
train. The choice of locale and cost of living is one of principal advantages
of working remotely, and it's the employee's decision and not yours whether
the net benefit of their arrangement (salary + cost of living + subjective
locale benefits) is adequate.

You may think that your ability to hire doesn't suffer as a result of your
beliefs on this point, but I suspect that you're (perhaps knowingly) giving up
on a category of highly qualified senior candidates that are smart enough to
not accept your self-proclaimed bullshit right to decide (conveniently) what
compensation is fair based on their locale alone.

~~~
mezis
answer posted in article comments: ====

Hi Paul, thanks for taking the time to read this and for the comment. I faced
similar reactions while setting this up, so I may be somewhat equipped to
respond.

I’m not hoping to convince you here but I'll still try to provide a more
complete picture.

From a team perspective, let's take a first example. Two senior engineers,
Alice and Bob, work for company X. They have similar experience and roles.
Alice lives in Central London, and Bob lives in Sofia, Bulgaria. In both cases
that's because their respective families live there.

Say we chose to pay both the same exact amount: 75k£ gross per year, a fair
senior wage in London.

In real terms, adjusting for difference in cost of living (for which hard data
exists), Bob makes the equivalent of 150k£ per year; twice more than Alice,
and also over twice what others in Sofia make for a similar job.

Such effective compensation discrepancies in a team can rapidly create
extremely nasty jealousies.

In a word, balance in a team is important.

The principle we’ve tried to live by here is “fairness”. To the point I
_asked_ for my salary to be cut by 20% when I went remote myself. Perhaps this
proves my “good faith”.

We did try to provide identical standards of living, be we’re of course not
imposing lifestyles—the point of remote, as you point out, is in part that you
can choose where and how you live.

For a practical example: living in the countryside in France, I have to spend
money on a car but my rent is lower; I go to the restaurant less often but I
spend more on food. In other words, I balance my lifestyle and budget
differently but my “living standards” are similar.

To be coldly statistical about it, I was in the Xth percentile in terms in
revenue or taxes in the UK, and I’m probably in the same percentile in France.

Let’s consider your examples. I’ll ignore the dependent person example, as
that’s not relevant to the discussion (not being locale dependent).

Regarding the example of the person living in the London suburbs, you’re
correct. We probably couldn’t pay them less for a similar job in absolute
terms. But the example makes my point: for various reasons that person
balances their lifestyle differently: e.g. spend more money and time on
transport, less on rent. In my experience, they probably still have the same
“living standards” (again, not a very precise term).

Finally, regarding having a “right” to decide what compensation is fair… well,
that’s an employer’s prerogative.

It is, indeed, the employee’s decision whether their salary+costs+locale
benefits is suitable, but as an employer it’s also possible to use factual
data to keep balance.

Note that given our math involved tax systems in various countries, which can
be hairy, we’d openly discuss this with candidates and make sure we’d reach an
understanding.

Perhaps you’re correct and this kept us from hiring some of the talent out
there. We still did hire several brilliant folks I enjoyed working with (and
vice versa, from what they tell me), so it’s still an improvement over the
previous status quo.

We don’t expect to have the ultimate answer to remote comp this or anything
else — please remember, all I’m doing here is laying out what we attempted,
how we reasoned on it, and what worked. I’m hoping others with similar
experiences will come forward to complete the picture. Perhaps theirs will
prove me completely wrong!

~~~
paul_milovanov
reposting again from article comments -- I guess I'm just trying to score HN
points :)) ========================

Hi Julien! Thanks for engaging in discussion :)

Your argument is certainly reasonable and logical! What I disagree with is the
starting premise of "fair == same standard of living == same % of disposable
income" and your characterization of candidates not subscribing to that
reasoning as "greedy". ("Same standard of living" would make a lot of sense if
your company was based in Bangalore and trying to hire in London -- e.g
ensuring "minimum standard of living" \-- not that you'd be able to hire in
London with Bangalore rates.).

You're absolutely right that ultimately it all boils down to what the market
will bear, and you're happy with your ability to hire to your desired standard
the way you're doing it -- which is great! I'm afraid however that it's a bit
overly enthusiastic to say that this has anything to do with whether your
compensation policy is fair.

As a candidate, I would expect to at least be told about this compensation
policy before spending any time on the interview process -- I'm sure you'll
agree, and perhaps start doing so if you're not doing so already :)

Cheers!

P

------
welshguy
You don't need to think of any other term - 'greedy' is correct. London rates
are London rates because the work is in London, with all the baggage that
involves. Take a look at the job listings for non-London work.

~~~
collyw
So if a remote working can get twice as much done as a London based office
worker, is it greedy or value for money they are providing?

~~~
mezis
In my humble opinion, if a given remote worker can get twice as much done as a
on-site worker, they're either:

\- more senior, so they'd get paid relatively more anyways;

\- exceptional, so they'd get paid relatively more anyways;

\- working too many hours, which is never a good idea for knowledge workers,
and doesn't last long.

~~~
collyw
or get better working conditions, not being interrupted every 20 minutes. This
is a major motivation for me to find remote work (as well as the fact that the
pay is fairly poor where I am).

~~~
mezis
> not being interrupted every 20 minutes

Completely agree this is a major issue in many companies.

This said, I'd call it more a _problem_ with how a given company works on-site
(open plan offices) than an inherent _advantage_ of remote work; in other
words, it's incidental.

But then you can't easily convince anyone to abandon silly open spaces these
days :)

[http://www.designcurial.com/news/survey-reveals-open-
plan-44...](http://www.designcurial.com/news/survey-reveals-open-
plan-4445881/)

