
Facebook’s New Remote Salary Policy Is “Barbaric” - illuminated
https://medium.com/swlh/facebooks-new-remote-salary-policy-is-barbaric-1fca3f451e67
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mark_l_watson
I don’t really agree with the article. Since 1998 I have lived in the
mountains in Arizona, certainly a reasonably inexpensive place compared to
California or the east coast. When working remotely I have always charged much
lower rates, with the understanding that I do work on my own schedule, that
is, I may be off line a lot, but in a weekly time scale I put in the required
hours.

Twice I have temporarily relocated to work on site (Google in Mountain View,
Capital One in the Mid West). I earned much more money but my expenses were
larger.

I think Facebook’s plan sounds OK.

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GhostVII
Calling it 'Barbaric' to reduce the already absurd salaries of Facebook
employees to slightly less absurd levels seems hyperbolic to say the least. No
one is forcing you to work there, and if you are at Facebook you almost
certainly have lots of other options (essentially all of which have the same
policy of adjusting compensation based on CoL).

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gregd
It's not a stretch to imagine other companies looking at what Facebook gets
away with, to also model their behavior. This isn't endemic to Facebook, so
disregarding this as "only applying to Facebook" is absurd.

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sceptical
Not barbaric at all. This is normal for almost all larger companies. Pay is
based on the local geographic market. Only at higher levels L6+ does the span
diminish. It is basic supply and demand, < L6 is easy to replace.

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skeeks
I think it is not fair that everyone earns the same regardless where they
live. Cost of living must (and probably already is) included. If everyone
would earn the same amount, consequence would be more people moving to areas
with lower living cost . Why not even move into a 3th world country and live
like a king with your first world salary? Of course, one could argue, that
Zuckerberg & co only want to make more money by decreasing salaries for their
workforce. Instead of giving this money to shareholders, why not donate it?
Especially now, when millions of people lost their jobs..

~~~
rumanator
> If everyone would earn the same amount, consequence would be more people
> moving to areas with lower living cost .

What's supposed to be the downside, exactly?

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skeeks
Sooner or later, costs would begin to rise in that area, because the
infrastructure, healthcare, etc. must be improved (due to population growth).
Meanwhile, in the former high living cost area, prices would drop. Unskilled
low wage employees would loose their jobs because of decreasing demand. And
somewhere in the future, everyone starts recognizing that the tables have
turned and people would start moving back. It's an endless game...

And in the case of gitlab, they state an interesting reason: [1]

> Paying the same wage in different regions would lead to: [...]

> \- A concentration of team members in low-wage regions, since it is a better
> deal for them, while we want a geographically diverse team.

[1] [https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-
rewards/compensation...](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-
rewards/compensation/#paying-local-rates)

~~~
rumanator
> Sooner or later, costs would begin to rise in that area, because the
> infrastructure, healthcare, etc. must be improved (due to population
> growth).

How many towns were forced to upgrade their infrastructure because you moved
in?

It seems to me you are making up extreme slippery slope-type catastrophical
scenarios.

Getting back to the real world, I know a few IT workers who had to move to an
extremely expensive city when they were hired by FAANGs but since then they
were able to move back to their home town while keeping their salary. Could
you please explain how your scare story applies to this type of case, which
represents most if not practically all cases?

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belorn
Can someone explain how cost-of-living salary adjustment work in practice? Can
you move to an exclusive area, say a small island where the average house and
land value is in the millions, and now demand a significant raise in order to
afford living there?

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jerf
I think this is the currently-inchoate reason people are finding this policy
problematic... we know that it's bullshit. You'll be able to move from
downtown $EXPENSIVE to rural $CHEAP and the company will aggressively and
happily cut your salary and perhaps even "helpfully" backdate it for you, but
if you one day announce to the company out of the blue that you want to move
the other way for whatever reason, the company will at the very least drag
they feet and probably eventually won't approve it.

I've even seen this already happen in real life for distributed companies who
already have non-Silicon Valley offices; when someone wants to move to SV and
asks for the corresponding fairly massive raise, they've been told "no".

There'll be a honeymoon period where this may be true but this is the
inevitable stable point, and we all know it on one level or another.

The only reason this looks even remotely feasible for the companies is the
accidental historical fact of them all living in a high-expense area. Once
they get more used to a more widespread remote workforce, this policy will
only ever work out in the company's favor, never yours. There is NO WAY we're
going to have the right to simply announce to our companies one day that of
our own free will, we've decided to move to a 30% more expensive place
(because why not? they'll pay for it, supposedly) and they'll just give us a
30% (or whatever) raise. Ludicrous nonsense. It's a lie.

If this point isn't a stable point, it'll end up tipping in the other
direction... companies pressuring their remote employees to stop living
somewhere so expensive and move somewhere cheaper. "Pressuring" here includes
things like "when layoffs hit, hit the high-cost-of-living employees first",
in addition to direct threats.

Enjoy the remote work honeymoon; it isn't going to last.

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dandanqu82
I think a pay increase depends on the needs of the company. If your company is
looking to hire someone with the job as you in the higher cost of living area,
then a transfer and pay bump would be potentially easier than hiring a new
employee. Now, if the company isn’t looking to employ more people in the high
cost of living area I don’t see them paying someone more if that type of
salary was not in their budget.

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dareobasanjo
What's actually barbaric is forcing people to move away from their friends and
family in their hometowns to come live in San Francisco where there's
literally faeces in the streets and a shack costs $1M let alone a livable home
when can do the work just fine from their homes. The medium to large 6-figure
salaries are a trade off and it's actually fairer to employees to allow them
to make the choice themselves.

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fzzzy
A shack in SF is a million bucks precisely because Facebook won't pay a SF
salary unless you are in SF. If they paid a SF salary no matter where you
lived, then a shack in SF would not be worth one million dollars any more.

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fao_
So you're saying that not only would it be better for the workers, but San
Francisco would become more affordable to poorer people who don't have tech
jobs and who were perhaps born there? Sounds like a win-win to me.

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nunez
I have two issues with this article:

1\. The author uses Zapier as an example of how to "make up" for CoL salary
adjustments. However, Glassdoor tells me that Zapier pays WAY under market
compared to FAANG and others. They also have a high recruiting bar, which
tells me that they are good at getting their engineers on the cheap.

2\. Facebook will still likely pay higher to much higher than the local market
since they use RSUs as the bulk of their total comp.

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pyuser583
There’s a big difference between market value, and cost of living.

There are plenty of places with lower cost of living where a software
developer can earn Silicon Valley-level salaries.

That’s especially true when you consider that lots of compensation comes in
the form of stock options. I’ve heard stories of companies outsourcing to the
Phillipines, etc. They build an ecosystem to train workers overseas. Then
other companies swoop in.

Pretty soon, the salaries are the same as in the US.

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fzzzy
[i was overly emotional when i posted this, sorry]

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sojournerc
Just to be clear, you're comparing actual discriminatory laws to a private
company setting compensation on cost of living? No one's forcing people to
move out of the valley...

I live in Colorado and have plenty of opportunities, and the perks of living
here, for me, far outweigh any salary increase I could get moving to the Bay
Area. In fact I don't think you could pay me enough to move there.

Quality of life is far more important to me than doubling my salary.

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saargrin
which you will then spend on housing anyway

